Full Description
This thought-provoking textbook explores how special education became distinct from general education over time, through changes in teacher education, research funding, teacher licensure, school organization, and student stratification. Each chapter offers key ideas and discussion questions that invite readers to examine the construct of disability and how it came to merit an established, distinct position within education in light of our improving understanding of the learning needs of each individual child in the classroom and community. The book challenges current models of segregated placement, curriculum, and behavior management and poses alternatives that recognize the tremendous, rich diversity found in classrooms, acknowledging overlapping opportunities to address the needs of students in a more comprehensive, integrated way. Challenging the Singularity of Special Education is key reading for graduate and undergraduate students in issues- or special topics-oriented courses in teacher preparation or educational leadership programs. The book is also a useful resource for designing course curricula.
Contents
1. Introduction: Special Education Comes of Age; 2. Roots of Special Education Pedagogy: Persons, Places, and Ideas; 3. Development of Residential Institutions for Persons with Disabilities in the United States; 4. Public Schools and Teacher Education: Foundations of an Alternative to Institutionalized Special Education; 5. Post-Civil War Developments: Special Education Enters the Public Schools; 6. Professional Training for Special Education: Building from the Ground Up; 7. Teacher Training, Special Education, and the Oswego Method; 8. Licensure, Credentials, and Developing Professionalization; 9. Supporting Professionalization: Enter the Federal Government; 10. Special Education Responds to PL94-142; 11. Professional Validation, State Certification, and the Council for Exceptional Children; 12. Building Walls, Building Bridges; 13. Minority Overrepresentation in Special Education; 14. Special Education, Higher Education, and Professional Separation; 15. Rethinking Inclusive Education: Disability Rights in Education and International Perspectives; 16. Epilogue
