Rud Turnbull

A Blueprint for Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support: Implementation of Three Components

This article provides a case study (focus on an eighth-grader with autism) within a case study (focus on an urban middle school) in terms of the implementation of positive behavior support (PBS). Information is provided on the characteristics of three key components of schoolwide PBS-universal support, group support, and individual support. For each component, information is presented on policy, assessment, and intervention in terms of an evolving approach to schoolwide PBS with descriptions of how the components were implemented at the middle school with a particular emphasis on the eighth-grade student. The authors conclude with implications for practice in terms of assessing current resources, providing professional development, and intensifying universal support within urban schools to address some of the complex issues associated with poverty.

Family Supports and Services in Early Intervention: A Bold Vision

This article utilizes four knowledge sources to characterize a current gap in policy and practice related to serving families in early intervention (birth to 5) programs. It argues that the field of early intervention has focused primarily on implementing family-centered practices by focusing on how families and professionals should interact. The field has not sufficiently addressed what supports and services should be offered to families to enhance the likelihood of positive outcomes for families themselves and for their children with disabilities. The paper concludes with recommendations for enhancing policy, research, and professional development related to family services and supports.

Shakespeare Redux, or Romeo and Juliet Revisited: Embedding a Terminology and Name Change in a New Agenda for the Field of Mental Retardation

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare asked, ‘‘What’s in a name?’’ That is an apt question for the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR) and a suitable introduction to our article. We begin by addressing three major objections to a change in the name of AAMR and in the terminology now titled mental retardation. (We acknowledge that these issues are related but not identical, as we point out later.) These objections are as fol

Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Family Employment Awareness Training in Kansas: A Pilot Study.

Working in competitive employment (employment in community settings with nondisabled peers for minimum wage or higher) has many positive benefits for people with disabilities who have individualized support needs (Johannesen, McGrew, Griss, & Born, 2007). Nonetheless, many of these individuals work in segregated settings or are unemployed entirely (National Disability Rights Network, 2011). The Family Employment Awareness Training (FEAT) in Kansas sought to increase expectations for competitive employment and knowledge about employment services, supports, and resources among people with disabilities who have individualized support needs, their families, and the professionals that support them to increase competitive employment outcomes. Our findings from this pilot study indicate that FEAT succeeded in raising expectations and knowledge among these individuals.

Achieving "Rich" Lifestyles:

At the turn of the century, we resonate with the goals of the positive behavioral support (PBS) literature: &dquo;Effective behavioral support [must] ... build prosocial behavior, document durable change, generalize across the full range of situations an individual encounter[s], and produce access to a rich lifestyle&dquo; (Carr et al., 1999, p. 4). The good news is that PBS goals include access to rich lifestyles. The bad news is that &dquo;there are miles to go&dquo; before research and best practice accomplish the goal. A comprehensive PBS research synthesis revealed that of the 230 participants in the 1985-1996 studies (Carr et al., 1999):

Looking Backward and Framing the Future for Parents’ Aspirations for Their Children With Disabilities

This article frames the past and future role of the parents of children with disabilities within the context of special education. We highlight their past aspirations: to organize nationally to assert that their children could learn, to codify into law their children’s right to an education, and to foster trust-based parent–professional partnerships. Using the past as a prelude to the future, we then identify two aspirations for the future: to foster empathy, compassion, and dignity; and to “get a life” rather than just “get an education.” The theme of future aspirations is to develop schools and communities where empathy, compassion, and dignity abound and where, as a consequence, children and adults with disabilities can experience across the full lifespan the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s outcomes of equal opportunity, independent living, full participation, and economic self-sufficiency.

Understanding Barriers to Competitive Employment: A Family Perspective

Abstract This study reports the results of a survey and interviews with families who attended Family Employment Awareness Training (FEAT), a training designed to increase expectations for competiti...

Right Science and Right Results: Lifestyle Change, PBS, and Human Dignity.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the comprehensive supports necessary for an adult with multiple disabilities and significant problem behavior to experience an inclusive adulthood. Written from the perspective of parents, the article highlights “lessons learned” about how to implement and finance comprehensive supports across domains of home living, work, friendships, community connections, wellness, as well as additional areas. Practice tips are provided in terms of potential replication.

Education, Ethical Communities, and Personal Dignity

In 1971, John Lennon (Lennon, 1971) encouraged us to imagine all the people, sharing all the world. So, imagine. The year is 1974. Imagine being the parents of a first-grade boy with an intellectual disability. Imagine watching as the school bus comes to pick up all the neighborhood children. But it does not stop to pick up your son. The boy was our son, Jay. Just as there had been no early education for him, so too the school doors were closed to him and many with disabilities. That changed in 1975, when Congress enacted Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142, 20 U.S.C. Secs. 1400 et seq., renamed in 1990 as Individuals With Disabilities Act, P.L. 101476). Jay and all students with disabilities now had a right to an education, because research had shown that all can learn. Now imagine teenagers in a segregated high school, bound for a sheltered workshop, there to be paid less than a dollar an hour. Imagine parents having no federally supported parent information and training centers and no community parent resource centers to help secure their children’s rights to an education. The years: 1983-1987. The remedies under Individuals With Disabilities Education Act: in 1983, an opportunity for preschool and early intervention (P.L. 98-101); in 1986, an opportunity for education of infants and toddlers (P.L. 99-457). Both amendments emphasize parent/ family and professional partnerships. The consequence: real rights; real opportunities to live the American promise; and parent-professional partnerships in pursuit of the American dream. The year is 1988. Jay earns a regular high-school diploma, from Walt Whitman High School, in Bethesda, Maryland. He has been a manager of the football team. He receives his varsity letter-jacket at a seasons’-end football banquet, and players and their families stand to applaud him vigorously. He belongs: all know it, he especially. He has learned skills sufficient to do a job as a clerical aid at a major research university. For just over 20 years he is solidly in America’s workforce, paid a competitive wage, and lives with support in a home of his own. He has a life of dignity until he dies completely unexpectedly in 2009 (Turnbull, 2011). Next, imagine students being disciplined by restraint and seclusion or by noxious sprays and electric shock; being expelled because of their disabilities; and having few rights to resist discipline of any kind, much less these punishing and demeaning ones. The year is 1997. The IDEA remedy (P.L. 105-17): a right to have educators consider positive behavior support to respond to students’ needs. One consequence: the infusion of federally funded research into how schools can use positive behavior support, creating thereby a humane environment for education, a place that incorporates both rights and decent treatment of those with disabilities. Another, a proclamation that positive interventions are means for a quality of life and indicators of the ethic of dignity (Turnbull, A. & Turnbull, R., 2011). Finally, imagine students in schools that have low expectations of them. The years: the first halfdecade of this century. An IDEA remedy (P.L. 108446) is to explicitly re-state a policy goal of independent living. This remedy is achieved by a powerful, evidence-based curriculum on self-determination and supports, guiding students to be autonomous people. The consequence: independent citizens who know how to make their own decisions. This Lennon-based approach is more than a matter of imagining; it is also a matter of remembering IDEA’s history. Our memories capture IDEA’s fundamental messages—first: disability is a natural consequence of the human experience and is no reason for discrimination (20 U.S.C. Sec. 1400(c)); and, second, discrimination in schools will fade as appropriate education in inclusive schools occur (20 U.S.C. Secs. 1414(a) – (d)). The job now is to preserve and improve the law, to constantly be on guard that Congress does not dilute it. To be expected to benefit in school because of rights and education—that is what IDEA has meant before. To be welcomed and dignified—that is what IDEA only implicitly meant (Turnbull & Stowe, 2001). It is what it must explicitly mean from now on (Turnbull, 2013).

Variables Within a Household That Influence Quality-of-Life Outcomes for Individuals With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Living in the Community Discovering the Gaps

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their families face many important decisions as the individuals with IDD enter adulthood, including where to live. Although there are numerous housing options for individuals with IDD outside of institutions, there is a paucity of information available to inform them about how various characteristics of these settings can affect their quality of life. The purpose of this study was to determine key variables within a household that influence individual quality of life (QOL) of people with IDD living in community settings, thereby enabling these individuals and their families to make informed decisions regarding housing options available to them.