Recommended Practice for Teaching Students with Severe Disabilities

Introduction

Parents with children with severe disabilities should know the different techniques that may be used in teaching. This Parent Teacher Conference Hanndout provides them with a variety of techniques and explanation. These recommended practices include: systematic and direct instruction within natural learning environments; individualized, meaningful and culturally responsive learning; active family involvement; collaborative teaming; and positive behavior support.

 

Systematic Instruction

When teaching individuals with severe disabilities, the use of systematic and direct instruction has been highly recommended (Downing 2008; Snell and Brown 2006; Westling and Fox 2009). A systematic instructional approach consists of a well laid out plan of teaching that involves targeting and evaluating what students can learn given meaningful opportunities to practice their skills. Such instruction involves specific procedures for identifying, prompting and reinforcing targeted behaviors, within typical age-appropriate environments. A founding principle of systematic instruction is that educators base their teaching upon their students’ individual learning styles. Therefore, the types of prompts and reinforcers used during systematic and direct instruction can be visual, verbal, or tactile, and reflect individual strengths, needs and preferences.

Systematic instruction stems from both formative and summative forms of assessment that effectively assesses student progress within natural environments and meaningful contexts. Assessment data is used both to measure student progress and to provide teachers with important information used to modify and change instructional programs. Systematic instruction is used to teach both academic skills and nonacademic skills (e.g., communication, self-care, self-determination), and can occur in typical classrooms at schools as well as in the community.

Individualized, Age Appropriate and Culturally Responsive Learning

Recognizing the needs and strengths of students leads to individualized instruction that is chronologically-age appropriate, culturally responsive and meaningful for the student. Researchers have stressed the importance of considering student interests as well as cultural implications when teaching various concepts (Edeh 2006; Richards et al. 2007). In keeping with the trend to educate students with and without disabilities together, making the core educational curriculum that is taught to all students relevant and meaningful to students with severe disabilities has become of utmost importance (Downing 2008; Kennedy and Horn 2004). Big ideas (vocabulary and concepts) are identified within each lesson and adapted materials are used to make learning relevant to the student’s situation. Adaptations are individualized to allow for the student’s optimal participation in learning within chronologically age-appropriate lessons. Students have access to the academic content of their same age peers, but at a level that reflects their needs and in a manner that is culturally sensitive and relevant.

Active Family Involvement

Given the importance of meeting individual needs that reflect cultural differences, religion, experiences, and language, active family involvement to assist with assessments and determining instructional programs for a particular student is a recommended practice (Downing 2008; Turnbull et al. 2006). When students are unable to speak for themselves, which is often the case for students with severe disabilities, information from family members regarding expectations at home, skills and interests of the student, concerns, and future goals serves to guide educational programs. The home-school relationship is vital, and specific approaches have been developed to facilitate this bridge, such as these seminal approaches: Person Direct Support (O’Brien et al. 2005), and Choosing Outcomes and Accommodations for Children (Giangreco et al. 1998). These approaches to obtaining information from families are designed to keep the individual student as the focal point, with those closest to the student using their in-depth knowledge and caring for the person to guide their comments and hopes for the future.

Collaborative Teaming

This teaming approach prioritizes the collaboration between the families of individuals with severe disabilities and educators to better develop and implement intervention and support strategies (Janey and Snell 2008). Collaboration among team members includes shared assessments and development of instructional programs, co-teaching in age-appropriate classrooms by special and general educators, use of natural peer supports, and use of related service providers, such as speech-language therapists, who provide support within natural learning environments. Instead of adult members of the team providing services on a one-to-one basis in a specialized environment, these service providers incorporate their expertise into the existing program (Snell and Janney 2005). Members of the team pool their resources and knowledge to support the overall learning goals of the student, rather than isolated skills representative of one discipline.

Positive Behavior Support

Positive behavior support (PBS) is a recommended practice in the field of severe disabilities for learners with challenging behaviors (O’Neill 2004; O’Neill et al. 1997). PBS is a proactive approach that takes into consideration identifying problem behaviors early and integrates many of the procedural guidelines that drive systematic instruction, such as access to meaningful routines and activities, teaching meaningful adaptive skills with an emphasis on communication skills, and functional assessment. The challenging behavior is perceived as a student’s way of self-expression to meet unique needs and desires, not as “bad” behaviors that need to be punished and extinguished. Positive and proactive means of supporting the student are used to remove the need for the student to engage in the undesired behavior, and alternative skills are taught (usually communication skills) to encourage self-expression in a more acceptable and conventional means. The focus of PBS is on determining the function of the challenging behavior for the student, and helping the student to engage in other behavior that assumes that same function.