This book provides a clear practical explanation of how educators and service providers can integrate their specialized skills to improve education for learners with severe cognitive and physical disabilities. This practical resource offers valuable information on meeting the health care needs of learners who have sensormotor difficulties, vision and/or hearing impairments, mental retardation, and other disabilities. Readers will also find numerous curricular and instructional adaptations that transform intervention challenges into opportunities for learning. By integrating health care and education, members of an education team can help learners improve their motor, communication, mealtime, and self-care skills and meet other individualized education objectives. This new edition includes two new chapters, written by well-known and respected contributors. Also, several of the chapters have been rewritten for more extensive and updated information. Readers are provided with up-to-date information on assistive technology, the best practices, and the latest research.
In addition to serving as Executive Director of the Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Fred P. Orelove, Ph.D., is a professor of education and directs VCU's program in severe disabilities, which is a participant in the Virginia Consortium for Teacher Preparation in Severe Disabilities. Since the 1970s, Dr. Orelove has taught children and has directed numerous training and demonstration projects related to individuals with disabilities. In addition to this book, he has co-authored two books on teamwork and one on inclusive education. Dr. Orelove remains actively involved in public policy involving individuals with disabilities and families.
Rosanne K. Silberman, Ed.D., is a professor in the Department of Special Education at Hunter College, The City University of New York in New York City, where she coordinates the graduate teacher preparation programs in blindness and visual impairment and severe disabilities including deafblindness. Currently, in addition to serving as Project Director of a training grant from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in Severe Disabilities including Deafblindness, she is Project Director of a long-term training grant from Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) in Rehabilitation Teaching/Orientation and Mobility. Dr. Silberman also is project director of training grants from private foundations including The New York Community Trust, the Allene Reuss Memorial Trust, and the Lavelle Fund for the Blind. She has served as a consultant for many school districts and has conducted educational evaluations of preschool, elementary, and secondary-level students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities in general education classrooms. Dr. Silberman is a member of the Board of Trustees of The New York Institute for Special Education, a member of the advisory board of DB-LINK, and a consulting editor for Deaf-Blind Perspectives. She is co-editor with Sharon Z. Sacks of Educating Students Who Have Visual Impairments with Other Disabilities (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1998). Dr. Silberman is the recipient of several distinguished awards including the 2000 Harold Ladas Award for Exemplary Teaching in the School of Education at Hunter College and the 2002 George E. Keane Award for Distinguished Service and Contributions to the Field of Blindness and Visual Impairment from the New York State Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired.
Dick Sobsey, Ph.D., is Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the JP Das Developmental Disabilities Centre at the University of Alberta in Canada, where he also serves as an adjunct professor at the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre. He has worked with children and adults with severe disabilities since 1968 as a nurse, a teacher, and a researcher. His current research explores the relationship between disability and violence. Dr. Sobsey is also the father of two children, including a teenager who has severe and multiple disabilities and is fully included in his neighborhood school.
