<p> Public Law 94-142 (PL 94-142), the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, was signed into legislation in 1975. This anchor piece of legislation became one of the most influential in the advocacy of a special needs population that previously had been institutionalized or removed from the public school setting because they were not learning as other students were. With subsequent pieces of legislation and continued advocacy, significant numbers of students with disabilities (SWDs) are enrolling in institutions of higher education. Students are provided with transition plans, which are legislatively mandated to offer postsecondary options for SWDs. However, the general problem is the low retention and graduation rates of postsecondary SWDs. Comparatively, postsecondary SWDs earning a college degree range from 11&ndash;13%, whereas 28&ndash;30% of their non-disabled peers earn a college degree. Specifically, academic accommodations have been the catalyst for learning in the K-12 setting, yet there is a common misunderstanding of their purpose and use in the postsecondary setting. This transcendental phenomenological study examined the lived experiences of postsecondary SWDs accessing academic accommodations in their postsecondary educational attainment. Specifically, this study will examine perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and academic accommodations related to the success or failure of postsecondary SWDs. Participants will include postsecondary SWDs attending a small, private, faith-based institution of higher education in Lakeland, Florida, a city in Polk County, which is centrally located between Tampa and Orlando, Florida.</p><p>

<p> Elementary music teachers often have students who are hard-of-hearing participating in their classes. Teachers need to be aware of what hearing impairments are and how these hard-of-hearing students have entered the music classroom. The present text explores assistive hearing technology, general music education for students with hearing loss, adaptations for the general music classroom, instrumental music for students with hearing loss and a brief explanation of song signing. The author attempts to better understand which strategies can be used to improve the music education of hard-of-hearing students. </p><p>

<p> Many students with Down syndrome now receive reading instruction in either inclusion-focused or skill-based instructional settings. There are, however, varied results in the level of reading skills that students with Down syndrome attain. The focus of this study was to determine if there was a significant difference in the reading skill acquisition of students with Down syndrome between those students placed for reading instruction by grade and those students placed in a developmentally appropriate classroom. The specific type of quantitative research design used was quantitative non-experimental because the study used archival data collected in previous testing for a different evaluation. This study analyzed the Wisconsin Alternate Assessment for Students with Disabilities (WAA-SwD) of 136 elementary school students with Down syndrome. The study compared the reading scores of students with Down syndrome placed for reading instruction in a classroom by chronological age with scores of Down syndrome students placed in an a developmentally appropriate classroom. The research questions related to whether there was a significant difference in reading skills acquisition for elementary school students with Down syndrome after receiving either grade-based or skill-based instruction. The hypotheses were tested using a <i>t</i> test. Based on the analysis, there was no significant difference in reading skills acquisition for elementary school students with Down syndrome when their scores were grouped by the two types of instruction (grade-based versus skill-based) they receive after controlling for the student&rsquo;s demographic characteristic of grade level. The importance of this study can inform the educational community of the specific response to the question of the consequence of placement for reading instruction on reading acquisition. The findings provided from this research study will benefit future studies and classroom planning.</p><p>

<p> Teaching students with Intellectual Disability (ID) is a relatively new endeavor. Beginning in 2001 with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the general education curriculum integrated algebra across the K-12 curriculum (Kendall, 2011; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices &amp; Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), and expansion of the curriculum included five intertwined skills (productive disposition, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and conceptual understanding) (Kilpatrick, Swafford, &amp; Findell, 2001). Researchers are just beginning to explore the potential of students with ID with algebra (Browder, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Harris &amp; Wakeman, 2008; Creech-Galloway, Collins, Knight, &amp; Bausch, 2013; Courtade, Spooner, Browder, &amp; Jimenez, 2012; G&ouml;ransson, Hellblom-Thibblin, &amp; Axdorph, 2016). Most of the research examines the development of procedural fluency (G&ouml;ransson et al., 2016) and few researchers have explored high school level skills. </p><p> Using a single-case multiple-baseline across participants design, the study proposes to teach two algebra skills to six high school students with ID, creating an equation (<i>y</i> = <i>mx</i> + <i> b</i>) from a graph of a line and creating a graph from an equation. The six high school students with ID will be recruited from a school district in central Virginia. The intervention package modeled after Jimenez, Browder, and Courtade (2008), included modeling, templates, time delay prompting, and a task analysis. Results showed that all six individuals improved performance during intervention for the target skills over baseline; results also indicated that in three out of the six cases some generalization to the inverse skill occurred without supplemental intervention. The ability of individuals with ID to generalize the learning without intervention provides some evidence that individuals with ID are developing conceptual understanding while learning procedural fluency.</p><p>

abstract: This study re-frames learning disabilities (LD) through the emotion-laden talk of four Latina/o students with LD. The research questions included: 1) What are the emotion-laden talk of Latina/o students about being labeled with LD? 2) What are Latina/o students' emotion-laden talk of the idea of LD? I identified master narratives, the "pre-existent sociocultural forms of interpretation. They are meant to delineate and confine the local interpretation strategies and agency constellations in individual subjects as well as in social institutions," (Bamberg, 2004, p. 287) within the following literatures to inform my research questions and conceptual framework: a) historiography and interdisciplinary literature on LD; b) policy (i.e., Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)), c) the academic and d) social and emotional dimensions of LD; and e) student voice research with students with LD. Interdisciplinary, critical ethnographic and qualitative research methods such as taking into account issues of power, etic and emic perspectives, in-depth interviewing, field notes were used. Total participants included: four students, three parents and three teachers. More specifically, descriptive coding, identification of emotion-laden talk, a thematic analysis, memoing and intersectional and cultural-historical developmental constructs were used to analyze students’ emotion-laden talk. Emotion-laden talk about being labeled with LD included the hegemony of smartness, disability microaggressions, on the trinity of LD: help + teachers + literacy troubles, on being bullied, embarrassment to ask for assistance from others and help as hope. The emotion-laden talk about the idea of LD included LD as double-edge sword, LDness as X, the meaning of LD as resource, trouble with information processing, speech, and silence, the salience of the intersection of disability, ethnicity and language and other markers of difference, struggles due to lack of understanding and LD myths. This study provides a discussion and implications for theory, research, policy, and practice. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Curriculum and Instruction 2016

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / There is a dearth of literature about post-secondary transition experiences of Black women with dis/abilities (BWD). In this qualitative study, I explore transition experiences of five post-secondary BWD from high school to college in order to privilege her chronicles and narratives as knowledge. In addition, two urban public high school transition coordinators (TC) participated in the study. Three inquiries guided my dissertation: (1) features of educational experiences narrated by BWD, (2) features of transition services provided to students with dis/abilities, including roles of and approaches as described by the TCs, and (3) how BWD narratives may be leveraged to critique and extend transition services as the TCs described them. I engaged in three semi-structured interviews with six of the seven participants (one interview with the seventh). I drew from Disability Studies/Disability Studies in Education (DSE), Critical Race Theory, and Womanist/Black Feminist Theory and their shared tenets of voice and counternarratives and concepts of social construction and falsification of consciousness to analyze the narratives of BWD participants. I drew from the DS/DSE tenet of interlocking systems of oppression, DisCrit tenet three, race and ability, and constructs of Inputs and Outcomes in work on Modeling Transition Education to analyze the TCs’ narratives and in connection to the narratives of the BWD. Across both sets of participants, three themes in the form of Truths emerged; they were terrible and sticky experiences of racial/dis/ability oppression for the BWDs and, imposing of whiteness and normalization within the transition education practices described by the TCs. For the BWD, those terrible and sticky truths took three forms: (a) Pathologization; (b) Disablement; and (c) Exclusion. Another type of truth in the BWD’s narratives, however, was Subverted Truths: (re)defined identities and radical love, (re)placed competence and knowledge, and (revalued sisterhood and community, the ways of pushing back and resisting the Truths and their effects. I discuss implications for BWD post-secondary transition-planning-and-programming theory, research, policy, practice, praxis, and spirituality.

This qualitative study is concerned with the transition process from school to post-school life for students labelled with learning disability in New Zealand. My interest is in understanding how a particular group of these young people can make a successful transition from school in their search for a good life, as they themselves judge this. I draw on critical social theory to position these young people within contemporary education and society, using a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) framework to understand learning disability as socially, culturally and politically constructed. I draw on Zygmunt Bauman’s critique of neoliberal hegemony and use of metaphor to understand how young people with learning disability are excluded in a contemporary Western society. Post-school outcomes identify very little useful tertiary education or paid employment; long-term reliance on family for living and housing; and extremely limited social networks, mostly founded on family members and paid or voluntary support workers. I argue that these young people are caught in a parallel education system that largely controls and manages them along a restrictive pathway from special education services in schools to special vocational and welfare services post school. The clear voice of the young people through the research findings demonstrates this is not what they want. They want the same opportunities as their peers without disability. Andrew and Caroline, two young people with Down syndrome, and I formed a research team. We came together to explore, understand and respond to an exclusionary landscape during the transition process that I argue leads to unrealised lives. The study utilises a participatory action research approach. It is a collaborative journey and a transformative response to exclusion through what I describe as “the relational dimension.” Further, it is a call to arms on behalf of a particular group of students who have been mostly excluded from rights, responsibilities and opportunities to contribute positively to their lives and the lives of others. This thesis has been a journey of personal and professional, individual and collective discovery. Answers to the question of how young people with learning disability can transition towards a good life are to be found in how we fundamentally value this group of young people in education and society. Valuing can only occur if we recognise our interdependence while acknowledging our unique differences. Only then will we truly provide the opportunities and support that we all need to move forward in our journey towards a good life. This thesis will be of interest to young people; parents; education and social policy leaders; school leaders; career specialists; and all teachers, professionals and support workers in the field. Its findings and recommendations challenge “expert” and deficit constructions of learning disability. They have relevance for a collaborative “whole-school” approach to career and transition policy and practice for students with learning disability; importantly, however, they also have relevance for all students. Effective relationships are central to understanding how, through our relative interdependency; we can collaboratively make the journey towards a good life. Additionally, the thesis contributes to knowledge regarding how to meaningfully involve young people with learning disability in the research process through their lived and our shared experiences that provide ethical, methodological and procedural insights. I develop two main arguments in this thesis. My first argument is that exclusion from educational opportunity must be exposed, challenged and rejected. Exclusion must be exposed in order to understand the unequal power mechanisms at play. Exclusion must be challenged, as the outcome of these unequal power mechanisms is that some students succeed and some fail. Exclusion must be rejected to make way for new relational, transformative education agendas. My second argument is that direct and meaningful involvement and collaboration by young people with learning disability in the research process will support practical solutions towards greater democracy in education and society. The ultimate outcome of democracy in education is a system where all students are valued and celebrated for their unique differences and stories, yet with recognition of their relative interdependency. All students are viewed as capable, purposeful, responsible and contributing. They are provided with the opportunities and support required to realise a good life, leading to active contribution and a sense of belonging in education and society.

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