Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-253). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-91). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-91). Also available on the Internet.

The purpose of this investigation was to obtain information about special educators' perceptions of the reintegration of special education students into general education classrooms and factors affecting their reintegration decisions. Reintegration is the process of determining when it is appropriate to fade and eventually remove special education services for a student. Special educators often are in a good position to both initiate and facilitate this process. The current study surveyed special educators. Participants read vignettes depicting special education students with mild disabilities and answered a set of survey questions regarding their perceptions about reintegrating the students into the general education classroom. Specifically, two research questions were investigated: (1) Does performance data on achievement affect special educators' willingness to reintegrate students for reading instruction beyond their willingness based only on anecdotal information and, (2) What type of student performance data were most influential in special educators' ratings of willingness to reintegrate special education students?This study found that data on academic performance does affect special educators' willingness to reintegrate students with disabilities into general education classrooms. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate what factors were most influential in the decision-making process. Results of these analyses varied as a function of disability category of the student depicted in the vignette. In two of the four vignettes, pre-data willingness, or anecdotal information accounted for the largest percentage of unique variance indicating that non-academic data is very influential in reintegration decision-making. Implications of the findings for practice, including promotion of the use of CBM data in reintegration decision-making are discussed.

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Educational legislation requires the implementation of a functional assessment for students with disabilities who engage in challenging behavior that could lead to a change in their educational placement (IDEA Amendments, 1997; IDEA, 1990; IDEA Improvement Act, 2004). Research has shown that teachers can implement functional assessments with intensive instruction and performance feedback, yet this training can be difficult to carry out in educational settings with limited resources to provide such supervision. In the health care field, video teleconferencing (VTC) is used to overcome specialist shortages and provide supervision. Such technology might be used to deliver training and performance feedback to teachers learning to assess challenging behavior, but few studies have reported the use of VTC in educational settings. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of performance feedback delivered via VTC on the acquisition and maintenance of functional analysis procedures by 6 teachers. Concurrent multiple baseline designs across teacher-student dyads with embedded multi-element designs were used to evaluate the effects of performance feedback delivered via VTC on the percentage of functional analysis procedures implemented correctly. Performance feedback via VTC was provided once per week over an average of 6 weeks until each teacher implemented the procedures of each functional analysis condition (i.e., escape, attention, and play) at 100% accuracy over three consecutive sessions. Results indicated that performance feedback delivered via VTC was effective to train the teachers to independently implement functional analysis conditions. These results were maintained at or near criterion performance four weeks following the termination of performance feedback for 4 teachers. Each teacher rated performance feedback delivered via VTC positively with respect to the training procedures and the outcomes of training. The results and limitations of this study, and relevant areas for future research are discussed. / text

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education