Sandra Lewis

Home Literacy Environments of Young Children With Down Syndrome Findings From a Web-Based Survey

Early home literacy experiences, including parent—child book reading, account for a significant amount of childrens later reading achievement. Yet there is a very limited research base about the home literacy environments and experiences of children with cognitive disabilities. The purpose of this study is to describe findings from a Web-based survey of home literacy environments of young children with Down syndrome. Respondents (n = 107) were mostly mothers; a majority were well educated. Findings suggest that respondents gave literacy a higher priority than reported in prior research on children with disabilities. More than 70% of respondents had 50 or more childrens books and also had literacy materials including flash cards, magnetic letters, and educational videos or computer games. Most parents read to their children and used these literacy materials 10 to 30 min per day. Respondents reported that their children had reached many important early literacy milestones, and they also described having relatively ambitious lifelong literacy goals for their children. Important implications for research and practice are discussed.

A school-university collaboration for preparing teachers of students with visual impairments : linking the university and a state residential school.

To address calls for restructuring and reform in the mid 1980s, educators proposed joining schools and universities in collaborative partnerships to improve education. Little attention has been given in the educational reform literature, however, to the field of teacher education for teachers of students with blindness or low vision. Reform efforts in this field have been directed at redefining the relationship between universities and state residential schools. In this paper, the authors examine the identification of partners and the establishment of partnerships for teacher preparation, and the resulting lessons learned from developing a school-university collaboration between a state residential school for students who are blind or who have low vision and a university teacher preparation program for the teachers of these students. The authors follow the progress of this residential school-university collaboration through its stages and analyze the implications of the lessons learned for all teacher educators.

Three Areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum for Students with Visual Impairment: Research Priorities for Independent Living Skills, Self-Determination, and Social Interaction Skills

Abstract An extensive review of existing literature was conducted to identify intervention research in three areas of the expanded core curriculum (ECC) for students with visual impairments: independent living skills, self-determination skills, and social interaction skills. Students with visual impairments often struggle to develop competence in these three areas without direct instruction, yet it is thought that they are critical for successful adult functioning. After identifying over 700 potential articles through an extensive literature search, 23 intervention studies on school-age children with visual impairments met inclusion criteria for this chapter. Results are summarized by the ECC area, with seven (30%) studies on independent living skills, six (26%) studies on self-determination, and ten (43%) studies on social skills. Single-subject multiple baseline designs were most commonly used, though many of the researchers failed to demonstrate experimental control through sufficient replications of their interventions to support causality. Based on the paucity of intervention studies, the authors conclude that there are few research-based strategies to facilitate the development of skills in these three areas. More research, and research of higher quality, is needed.