DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 047 436 EC 031 506

AUTHOR Jordan, June B., Ed.; McDonald, Phyllis L., Ed.TITLE Dimensions: Annual Survey of Exceptional Child

Research Activities and Issues - 1970.INSTITUTIGN Council for Exceptional Children, Arlington, Va.

Information Center on Exceptional Children.SPONS AGENCY Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (DHEW/OE),

Washington, D.C.PUB DATE 71NOTE 65p.

EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29DESCRIPTORS *Educational Trends, *Exceptional Child Research,

Interviews, *Research Needs, Research Problems,Research Reviews (Publications), *Surveys

IDENTIFIERS CEC-ERIC Information Center, Council for ExceptionalChildren

ABSTRACTThe text is a result of a telephone interview survey

conducted by the CEC-ERIC Information Center in which 57 selectedleaders in the field of special education were asked to identifycurrent and significant trends, activities, products, issues, andindividuals. In summarizing and interpreting responses to theinterview questions, articles examine the convergence on key topicareas, response of organizations to problem areas of concern,problems and obstacles in exceptional child research, and currentcontroversies in special education. Additional articles containreviews of information files and journal literature compiled apartfrom the survey focusing on computerized information, recent trendsin research, and a review of content in basic speech and hearingjournals. Introductory articles provide information concerning theproducts and activities of the Council for Exceptional Children andthe CEC-ERIC Information Center. (RD)

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DIMENSIONS

Annual Survey of

Exceptional Child Research Activities and Issues 1970

Editors

June B. Jordan

Phyllis L. McDonald

The Council for Exceptional Children, Suite 9001411 South Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202

U.S. DEPARTMENT Of HEALTH, EDUCATION 8 WELFARE

OFFICE Of EDUCATION

THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE

PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS

STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION

POSITION OR POLICY.

2

ECO 31506

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-153 089

1971, CEC-ERIC Information Center, The Council for Exceptional Children

Printed in the United States of America

The work presented or reported herein was performed pursuantto a Grant from the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped,US Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and

Welfare. However, the opinions expressed herein do notnecessarily reflect the position of policy of the US Office

of Education and no official endorsement by the US Officeof Education should be inferred.

3

Contentsiv Authors

v Preface

1 Information Dissemination A CEC GoalWilliam C. Geer

2 The CEC Information Center Progress and PotentialDonald K. Erickson

5 Dial G for Grapevine: A Conversation in Exceptional Child ResearchJune B. Jordan

18 Target Areas of Concern Organizations ReplyJune B, Jordan

21 Problems in Exceptional Child ResearchPhyllis L. McDonald

29 Current Controversies in Special EducationPhyllis L. McDonald

36 Computerized Information in Exceptional Child EducationRaymond S. Cottrell

40 Recent Trends in Research with Exceptional ChildrenAlexander J. Tymchuk

46 A Review of the Content in Basic Speech and Hearing PeriodicalsVilma T. Falck

iii

A -AuthorsRaymond S. Cottrell

Donald K. Erickson

Vilma T. Falck

William C. Geer

June B. Jordan

Phyllis L. McDonald

Alexander I. Tymchuk

is Director, Mid-Atlantic Regional SEIMC, and Associate Professor ofSpecial Education, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

is Director, CEC Information Center, Arlington, Virginia.

is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of St.Thomas, Houston, Texas.

is Executive Secretary, The Council for Exceptional Children,Arlington, Virginia.

is Assistant Director, CEC Information Center, Arlington, Virginia.

is Program Associate, CEC Information Center, Arlington, Virginia.

is Psychological Examiner, Psychology Department, Clover BottomHospital and School, Nashville, Tennessee.

Copy for this publication was prepared at CEC on an IBM MT/ST Composer Unit. Elaine Barker, Editorial Assistant;Linda Lindsay, MT/ST Operator.

iv

PrefaceDimensions is a unique publication. Wedecided to write it after completing amost interesting and revealing experiencein information analysis product planning.

Last spring, like other ERIC Clearing-houses, the CEC-ERIC Information Cen-ter was instructed by the Office of Educa-tion to conduct a comprehensive andsystematic planning effort to determineappropriate publications and products forgrant support in the next budget year.Guidelines suggested that a Clearinghouseidentify research trends in its particularfield, identify significant research areas tobe analyzed, and determine priority re-search areas for product development.

To ascertain significant research ac-tivities and trends in special education,we looked at some of the usual sourcesfor information. Appropriate computer-ized information files were searched andrecent journal literature analyzed. Profes-sional organizations and CEC Divisionswere invited to identify topics of signifi-cance and concern. However, our mostpromising endeavor was an attempt to tapinto the special education "grapevine."This provided us with a current, dynamicpicture of significant research activitiesand perceived research problems, issues,and trends.

The CEC Information Center staffwas fortunate to have Mr. TheodoreMelnechuk as a consultant in its grape-vining project. Mr. Melnechuk is Directorof Communications, Neurosciences Re-search Program, Massachusetts Instituteof Technology. For a number of years, hehas successfully employed similar proced-ures in the neurosciences to reduce the

6

publication lag in current research know-ledge. His premise and approach greatlyinfluenced our mode of operation.

Melnechuk reduces the time lag be-tween the completion of a research reportand its dissemination through profession-al journals by identifying and plugging in-to a research community's inside informa-tion grapevine. According to his grapevinemodel of communication, within a givenscience is a grapevine of 10 to 20 peoplewho are leaders in that particular field.The most important knowledge in thatfield emanates from, or at least passesthrough, that group of leaders. Mel-nechuk contends that this "invisible col-lege" of leaders can provide important,immediate data on where a field is, whereit is going, and why.

A telephone interview survey was themechanism we used to begin tapping intospecial education's grapevine. With the as-sistance of an Advisory Committee, a ros-ter of 58 individuals was prepared. Theinitial proposed list numbered more thantwice that many, but time restrictionsand staff resources necessitated a moremanageable number of interviews. A let-ter was sent to each person, explainingthe purpose of the project and invitingparticipation through a telephone inter-view. Only one person declined, and a to-tal of 57 interviews were conducted. Withthe approval of the participants, tele-phone conversations were recorded.

The interviewer asked the individualto (a) identify several projects they foundinteresting and significant and the namesof the individuals working on them; (b)describe their own work; (c) identify the

hottest controversy in the field; (d) iden-tify any problems in technology or re-search methodology holding up researchefforts; (e) name a creative maverick inthe field; and (f) suggest people the Cen-ter should interview with similar ques-tions. Other brief questions were relatedto his opinions of other works and indi-viduals that had not been mentioned. Aninterview lasted 20 to 45 minutes.

The results of this survey served asthe primary basis for the CEC Center'sselection of topic areas for product de-velopment in 1971. Additionally, the in-terviews provided the beginning of a databank of people and projects for contin-uous monitoring and "grapevining."

We acknowledge with much apprecia-tion the assitance of our Advisory Com-mittee who reviewed the planning pro-posal, helped identify individuals for thetelephone interviews, and reviewed theproject report: Dr. Burton Blatt, Direc-tor, Division of Special Education andRehabilitation, Syracuse University; Dr.Vilma Falck, Associate Professor, Depart-ment of Psychology, University of St.Thomas; Dr. Herbert Goldstein, Director,Curriculum Research and DevelopmentCenter in Mental Retardation, YeshivaUniversity; Dr. James McCarthy, Profes-sor, Department of Studies in Behavior-al Disabilities, University of Wisconsin;Mr. Theodore Melnechuk, Director ofCommunications, Neurosciences ResearchProgram, Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology; Dr. Maynard Reynolds, Professorof Educational Psychology, Departmentof Special Education, University of Min-nesota; and Dr. Charles Strother, Direc-tor, Child Development and Mental Re-tardation Center, University of Wash-ington.

Dimensions contains articles summar-izing and interpreting responses to thebasic telephone interview questions. DialG for Grapevine: A Conversation in Ex-ceptional Child Research discusses theconvergence on key topic areas. Problems

vi

in Exceptional Child Research and Cur-rent Controversies in Special Educationanalyze the responses regarding technicalobstacles to research and controversial is-sues. Also included are the reviews of in-formation files and journal literature pre-pared for the Information Center by Ray-mond Cottrell, Alexander Tymchuk, andVilma Falck. The introductory articles byWilliam C. Geer, CEC Executive Secre-tary, and Donald Erickson, Director ofthe Information Center, provide appropri-ate background information about the or-ganizational structure in which this sur-vey took place.

Dimensions is an expression of cur-rent activity, interests, needs, and con-cerns in exceptional child education. It isa multifaceted view of the base for de-veloping publications and media pro-ducts.

Junt Jordan

7

Information Dissemination A CEC Goal

vv ilidam C. Geer

The Council's publications are an impor-tant means of dispersing information. Inaddition to the CEC Information Centerproducts, CEC publishes ExceptionalChildren, a general journal for theassociation, which focuses on researchprograms, and issues and trends in specialeducation. The monthly periodical, IN-SIGHT, provides legislative and otherinformation useful to administrators inplanning programs.

Another journal, TEACH/NG Excep-tional Children, contains articles onmethods and materials for use in theclassroom. Education and Training of theMentally Retarded is a quarterly journalwhich is the official journal of the CECDivision on Mental Retardation. Its

"(

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The Council for Exceptional Children is approaching its Fiftieth Anniversaryin 1972. As it moves into its second fifty years, it appears that the Councilwill continue to be a prime agent in the dissemination of information for theentire field of special education.

articles relare specifically to the field ofmental retardation. The organization alsopublishes special publications and nowoffers a list of more than 30 professionalpublications to the field.

The Council for Exceptional Chil-dren has been influential in the develop-ment of federal legislation for theeducation of exceptional children, bothhandicapped and gifted. The Councilserves as a source of information aboutstate and federal programs for thehandicapped. These activities are com-bined in the CEC unit on governmentrelations.

The Council has published onestatement on professional standards foreducators and is presently planning

8

another study to update this policystatement. To further its purposes, theCouncil conducts conventions and confer-ences for educators and other profes-sionals involved in the field. Annualconventions have attracted up to 8,500persons, and regional conferences haveserved to stimulate the development ofspecial education in specific areas of thecountry. In recent years, specializedconferences on effective use of federallegislation, early childhood education,and educational technology have servedto promote knowledge in specific areas.The Council constantly is searching tofind ways to serve most effectively its40,000 members and the children theyserve.

1

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2

9

The CEC InformationCenter Progressand Potential

Donald K. Erickson

The decade of, the 1960's .witnessedsharp increase in national attention to theneeds of exceptional children. Federalsupport of educational research, research

f,"Ce'

application, training and program de-velopment, and the concurrent growth ofstate, local, and private agency efforts onbehalf of exceptional children producedthe well known "information explosion"in special education. Thus, the age of theeducational information resource centerwas launched.

As we move into the 1970's, theresults of increasing numbers of researchprojects offer guidance for improvedtechniques in special education. There-fore, the information center has anessential role in informing special educa-tors about recent findings related toexceptional children.

CEC Information Center Established

To meet the demand for organizedaccessibility to pertinent information,The Council for Exceptional Childrenapplied for and received a United StatesOffice of Education grant to establish anInformation Center on the Education ofExceptional Children. Since inception in1966, development has been guided by itsfour original objectives:

1. To serve as a comprehensive informa-tion resource on research, instruc-

I

tional materials, methods, curricula,programs, administration, teacher ed-ucation, and services and facilities forhandicapped and gifted children.

2. To participate in the EducationalResources Information Center Net-work (ERIC) as the Clearinghouse onExceptional Children by cataloguing,abstracting, and indexing documentsfor ERIC products such as Researchin Education (RIE) and CurrentIndex to Journals in Education(CIJE).

3. To participate in the Special Educa-tion IMC/RMC Network, functioningas a central depository for

information on professional andinstructional materials and providinga link between the ERIC andIMC/RMC Networks.

4. To engage in the development ofprint and nonprint products designedto analyze and interpret researchfindings to various practitioners.

Activities of the Information Centerduring its first three years of existencerevolved primarily around hiring staff,defining and developing a data base,adopting a retrieval system, contributingto the ERIC publications, and developingseveral information dissemination andanalysis products. In January 1970,organizational changes were made whichresulted in the establishment of threemajor administrative units in the Informa-tion Center. A brief description of eachunit will outline the present and pro-jected program directions of the Center.

Information Processing Unit. Under thedirection of Mr. Carl Oldsen, this unit:

1. Acquires, abstracts, indexes, andprepares for computer storage andretrieval approximately 4,000 docu-ments per year. All acquisitions arereported in the quarterly InformationCenter publication, ExceptionalChild Education Abstracts (ECEA),which is available by subscription.Each month, selected documents areprocessed into the ERIC publica-tions.

2. Answers information requests. Over600 requests from teachers, admini-strators, parents, students, re-searchers,, and other interested partiesare processed each month. A con-certed effort is made to provideappropriate information which maybe in the form of computer searches,article reprints, newsletters, bro-chures, or bibliographies. Since manyrequests are similar, special topic

bibliographies have been preparedand are provided on a complimentarybasis. Currently there are about 30topics covered in the ExceptionalChildren Bibliography Series.

3. Maintains a comprehensive library onthe education of exceptional childrenwhich includes all processed docu-ments, monthly and quarterly issuesof 125 journals and 200 newsletters,the complete ERIC michrofiche file,products of the ERIC Clearinghouses,IMC's, RMC'S, and many referencedocuments. Although there are nocirculation operations, the libraryfacility is open to individuals wishingto visit the Center and use thecollection.

Information Products Unit. Directed byDr. June Jordan, this unit was created todevelop information summaries, reviews,and other analysis products primarily forthe special education community. Toaccomplish this goal several functionshave been instituted. The unit:

I. Constantly monitors current researchpriorities, trends, issues, projects, andpractices through a "grapevine"method of person to person commu-nication with the research communi-ty; and analyzes research literature,colloquia, symposia and conventioncontent, and related informationfiles.Develops state of the art and reviewproducts on targeted topic areas, aswell as on the overall field in order toidentify what is known, what is notknown, and what needs to be known.

3. Prepares and disseminates print prod-ucts on targeted topics in a variety offormats research reviews, mono-graphs, journal articles and columns,"occasional papers," newsletters, andbrochures.

4. Prepares targeted nonprint productsfor training and informational purposes.

2.

3

Information Utilization Unit. The goal ofthis unit, directed by Dr. Teresa Law-rence, is to determine, develop, anddeliver information that has practicalimplication for classroom practice. Thesegoals are achieved through:

1. TEACHING Exceptional Children(TEC), a quarterly journal designedto implement the primary goal of theunit. TEC is a joint product of theInformation Center and the SpecialEducation IMC/RMC Network.

2. A market analysis survey of specialeducation practitioner needs which isunder way, and is designed to haveimplications for information productand instructional materials develop-ment.

IMC /RMC Network Affiliation

Effective delivery of information to thefield from a single national center poseslogistical problems which would bediscouraging if it were not for theInformation Center's participation in theSpecial Education IMC/RMC Network.The existence of regional, state, and localSpecial Education IMC's (SEIMC's) pro-vides dissemination outlets in the field.More important, the SEIMC's havecontinual, face to face contact withteachers, supervisors, administrators, uni-versity personnel, and other practitioners.Affiliation with the SEIMC's allows theInformation Center to go beyond thetraditional dissemination of information,and aids in the diffusion of more effectiveeducational practice through preserviceand inservice training activities, regularfollowup with practitioners, and constantfeedback on needs in the field. Expansionof the Network concept to includeadditional units will soon lead to an evenmore complete and practical dissemina-tion/diffusion communication system.

4

Information Center Services

Special education practitioners who uti-lize the services of the InformationCenter keep abreast with the latestdevelopments in the education of excep-tional children. They stay in the knowthrough:

ERIC Excerptannouncements of newproducts and publications in relatedfields of education and new services ofERIC and the IMC Network.Research in Educationa monthlysummary of research and resourcedocuments and newly funded researchprojects.Current Index to Journals in Educa-tionmonthly index of articles in over200 journals relevant to special educa-tion, and additions to the ERICdocument collection.Exceptional Child Education Ab-stractsa quarterly which abstractsliterature pertinent to the handi-capped and the gifted.TEACHING Exceptional Childrenaquarterly teaching supplement whichdiscusses methods and materials forthe special education classroom.Information Services unit of theCenter which monthly answers hun-dreds of questions by sending outpackets of selected bibliographies,journal reprints, selected abstracts,and guides to other educationalagencies.Registration with the regional centersof the Special Education IMC Net-work which offer consultation ser-vices, inservice training meetings, andinformation on educational methodsand media.

A Look at the Future

Continual growth of the Information

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Center seems inevitable, due to wide-spread acceptance of and demand forinformation services and products. Sev-eral Center priorities can be enunciatedwhich are already being implemented.

1. Systematic, ongoing assessment ofthe information needs of a widevariety of users to guide all otherCenter activities.

2. Expansion of the data base at a ratewhich allows the Center to be currentwith the generation of knowledge.Information on instructional materi-als and foreign literature will besignificantly increased.

3. Development of print and nonprintinformation products based on theassessment of activities mentionedabove. Products will be developed bystaff and by commissioned specialistsin the field.

4. Increased attention to personalizingresponses to information requests.New computer operations will bedeveloped to support this activity.

5. Active planning and participationwith the Bureau of Education for theHandicapped (BEH) and the SpecialEducation IMC/RMC Network forthe development of a more compre-hensive communication system inspecial education.

With the combined efforts of theCEC Information Center, the Network,BEH, professors, teachers, administrators,researchers, and communication andcomputer specialists, success in specialeducation is not far off. The usual twentyyear lag between discovery and imple-mentation will be reduced to a matter ofmonths. Exceptional children living in the1970's will not be educated by thediscoveries of the 1940's and 1950's, butby those of the 1970's. Vive ladifference!

Dial G for Grapevine:A Conversation in Exceptional Child Research

June B. Jordan

Each field of knowledge can be thoughtof as a pyramid. At the top or peak of thepyramid, one will find 10 to 20 leaders inthe field. All new knowledge in the fieldeither emanates from or passes amongthem. These people at the top of thepyramid do not depend on printed pagesof professional journals to stay on top ofthings but develop their own internalgrapevine system of communication. Bytapping into this grapevine, one can getimmediate information on where a fieldis, where it is going, and why.

This description of a communicationprocess is the view of Mr. Theodore Mel-nechuk, Director of Communications,Neurosciences Research Program, Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology. Mr.Melnechuk was a member of the ProjectSPECS Task Force and serves on an ad-visory committee to the CEC-ERIC Infor-mation Center.

Last spring, all ERIC Clearinghouses,including the CEC Information Center,were instructed within the next 90 daysto survey their respective fields, identifycurrent, significant bodies of researchknowledge, and on that basis present apriority program for the development ofinformation publications and products.The special education grapevine was thesource to tap. The telephone was the me-dia to get the message.

The first step was to select a repre-sentative core of key researchers in spe-cial education. With the assistance of anadvisory committee, 58 individuals wereidentified, One did not participate, and

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57 telephone interviews were conductedand recorded. A list of those interviewedis on page 16.

The interviewer asked the individualsto:

I. Identify several projects they foundinteresting and significant and thenames of the individuals working onthem.

2. Describe their own work.3. Identify the hottest controversy in

the field.4. Identify any problems in technology

or research mc:ihodoIogy holding upresearch efforts.

5. Name a creative maverick.

Other brief questions were related to hisopinions of other works and individualsthat had been mentioned and other peo-ple who should be called. An interviewlasted 20 to 45 minutes.

Responses to the first two questionsidentified the current, significant areas ofknowledge for product development. Al-though a number and variety of researchefforts were named, there was a conver-gence on several major topic areas.

Projects and problems which wereidentified grouped under the followingtopic categories:

1. Behavior modification.2. Early childhood.3. Strategies in special education and re-

lated issues.4. Innovations in personnel training.

5

5. Curriculum development in mentalretardation.

6. Pupil characteristics, methods, andmaterials.

7. Speech, language, and communica-tion disorders.

The telephone interview approachwas a most satisfactory procedure. It wasfast, efficient, economic, and provided avery human and personal kind of re-sponse. In addition, there was an oppor-tunity for interaction and clarification ofstatements.

The following discussion of the con-vergence on priority areas contains a se-lection of verbatim responses from the in-terviews.

Behavior Modification

Studies in behavior modification, rein-forcement, precision teaching, contin-gency management, etc., received thegreatest support. There were a total of 37citations; however, 10 of these supportedthe behavior area in general rather thanidentifying any one specific project. Theworks of Hewett, Lindsley, Baring, andSc hi e f e 1 b us ch were frequently men-tioned. It is also interesting that in re-sponse to the creative maverick question,the two individuals .cost frequently citedare leading researchers in this area. Also asubstantial number of others identified ascreative mavericks are known for theircontributions in the behavior modifica-tion area.

Some of the verbatim responses illus-trate most clearly the interest of the re-search community in this particular areaof exploration.

Well, I think there are classes of re-search that I find .interesting, ratherthan particular studies. I think thewhole range of studies in the area ofbehavioral objectives and behaviormodification have great promise. Here,

you're investigating how you set up aspecific short range goal, how you givesystematic rewards to the youngster,and then be able to see whether youhave, in fact, modified the behaviorwhich you wanted to modify . . .We've done research studies on theemotionally disturbed, learning dis-ability kids, and on mentally retardedyoungsters using the same kind oftheme. I don't think any one of thesestudies is worth singling out, but Ithink the whole cluster of studies puttogether have shown that we've gotsome effective tools for modifying thebehavior of children, making themmore ready for learning than we havein the past a very important tool forteachers. I'm very pleased with thatgroup of studies.

You're talking to somebody herethat got sold on the neobehavioristmodels. You can dig that out almostanyplaceBricker, Eric Haugh ton,Kunzelmann, University of Washing-ton. You know, the whole neobe-haviorist society, I think, is on targetfor what's good programing for indi-vidualization of instruction and par-ticularly for the handicapped.

One rather general movement, andthat is the movement toward precisionteaching and data oriented teaching,prescriptive teaching, diagnostic teach-ing, is a kind of generalized movementthat I think is catching on.

Some of the work on the develop-ment of shaping methods and particu-larly behavior modification in childrenwith special learning disabilities is ofreal interest. And here, some of thework of Bijou and of Sidman, I think,is very interesting.

I would guess that for me the num-ber one area outside my own area is

6 13

generally in the ballpark of behavioralanalysis and, I think, specifically someof the work by Eric Haugh ton and Og-den Lindsley on recording, charting,and intervention with specific, pin-pointed behaviors:

In so far as the human operant con-ditioning studies are concerned, I'venot been as much in touch with thisman as I was a few years ago when wewere together at Boston, but I havebeen following his work inliterature- -and Ogden Lindsley, Uni-versity of Kansas, is really just a firstrate guy who is developing models toprepare teachers, to modify behaviorof teachers, to modify the behavior ofchildren, using the human operantconditioning procedures.

One major area is the continued ex-ploration of finding the real practi-cality and usefulness of the behavioralorientation in special education. I thinkwe are probably into exploration ofthis for about ten years at this point. Idon't really think we have gotten theevidence to know if behavior modifi-cation and learning theory and rein-forcement principles, etc., are reallygoing to serve us well in terms of ageneral field rather than a specific lab-oratory kind of oriented area. Thiswork is continuing, and I think thatwe are getting closer to some perspec-tive that will help us actually to under-stand, if indeed this approach is goingto do all that many people hoped itwould in the early 60's. And I amthinking of the work of Norris Haring,at the University of Washington; Og-den Lindsley and Montrose Wolf,Donald Baer, at the University ofKansas--probably two major centerswhere this sort of exploration con-.tinues. And I think the work of GeraldPatterson, University of Oregon, is al-so particularly important in the sort of

social learning area bringing parentsand the families, etc., into a total pro-gram.

One . . . is the work of Dr. FrankHewett and Dr. Frank Taylor at SantaMonica, California and UCLA, whichdeals with what they have rather pop-ularly called the engineered classroom,but deals with the issue of operantconditioning in terms of very broadbehavior and learning models. This,from observation on my part, appearsto have a tremendous amount of po-tential value and I personally thinkought to be extended very markedly,tried out in different kinds of models.He's working basically with childrenthey call educationally handicapped.Many of these are perceptually handi-c,ipped children.

The second area where I see, thesecond bit of research that I see as be-ing very hopeful is also in the samegeneral area of operant conditioningand this is going on under Dr. NorrisHaring at the Experimental EducationUnit at the University of Washingtonin Seattle. This is much more detailedin terms of assessing the specific be-havior of the child, much more indepth than the Hewett approach, andis much more controlled so far as labo-ratory controls are concerned. He,too, is working with the group ofyoungsters that are emotionally dis-turbed, socially disturbed children as wellas perceptually handicapped. I think thatthese two programs are perhaps thestrongest that I've seen in the UnitedStates (I haven't seen them all, ob-viously), certainly the strongest onesgoing at the present time and the onesthat have the greatest amount of po-tential in this area.

Some of the work that Baer andthe others like Lindsley are doing atthe University of Kansas in the area ofbehavior modification, I think is very

I 's+j4 i'k

important, certainly close to some ofthe things we are interested in here.

. . . We are very much interested inFrank Hewett's work at UCLA--workon the engineered classroom .. . .

I feel of great interest now to thearea of special education is the specificmanagement of classroom behaviorand there are several interesting pro-jects going on stressing the use of pre-cision teaching; of classroom con-tingency management; of continuousmeasurement in the classroom for theassessment of progress of learning andfor the developments of more affec-tive instructional programs. These Ibelieve to be the major areas of activ-ity at the present time where impor-tant findings are forthcoming . . . . Athird area, I believe, concentrates onthis area of the utilization of rein-forcement principles in the manage-ment of social behavior. This has cometo play an important role inclassrooms--the utilization of satis-fying experiences and events, socialreinforcements --all the ways inwhich satisfying conditons canbe arranged to motivate children torespond more in the classroom, accu-rately and more rapidly. Some of theapplication of principles of behaviorand, more specifically, principles andprocedures of reinforcement in theclassroom, have given teachers for thefirst time ways of predicting the direc-tion of change of behavior in a class-room. I feel there has been some greatprogress in this area . . . . Those indi-viduals who have been concerned withprecision teaching, essentially Dr. Og-den Lindsley, University of Kansas;Dr. Eric Haugh ton, University of Ore-gon; . . . the program in the Universityof Washington Experimental EducationUnit, . . , have been in the forefront ofthe development of procedures forcontinuous measurement.

7

Early Childhood

A total of 58 projects or studies werecited in this area. In addition there wereat least 10 projects with a primary focusin one of the other topic classifications,but work with young children was one ofthe factors. As may be expected, cultur-al disadvantage or deprivation was oftenan element. The kinds of studies mention-ed were concerned with identifying hand-icapping conditions in infants, innovativeday care programs, early intervention pro-grams (particularly noted were the Pea-body Regional Intervention Project andWeikart's study), and preschool and pri-mary curriculum efforts (i.e. Bereiter andEngelmann, Karnes, Guskin, and Spicker).Also several of the researchers in the areasof the deaf and speech and language prob-lems indicated their interest and concernin work with young children.

Well, I think that the major prob-lems that are of current interest arethose under The Handicapped Chil-dren's Early Education Assist-ance Act of the US Office of Ed-ucation. I think those problems andthe related training and evaluation arerelatively new, and I think these arethe revelant projects that are . . . pro-ceeding at this time which, I think,have great possibility.

I guess the third area is the wholerealm of preschool instructional ma-terials versus curriculum. Of course,you've got a lot of people there. MerleKarnes, Spicker, Weikart, quite a widevariety of people working on a curric-ulum model approach to preschool ed-ucation.

. . . early language development,because that's my specific interest... .That is development of language andthe identification of deviancies in lan-guage development prior to 3 years ofage. Many of the projects, or at least

8

severa: of the projects, which are nowgetting started through the Early Edu-cation Assistance Act, I think arequite important there. I'm interestedin all kinds of work that relate to earlydevelopment, particularly of language,whether it's connected with a specificdisability or not. For instance, someof the work they've done at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin with childrenfrom urban ghetto environments andtheir intervention quite early in life, Ithink that some of their findings arequite significant. I think along the lineof identifying the factors early in de-velopment of children with languagedisorders who are not deprived chil-dren necessarily. Along that line ofthinking, some of the work being doneor having been done by GertrudeWyatt is very provocative.

The work that has been the great-est to me in the last year or so hasbeen the work that Marian Blank hasbeen doing on trying to help childrendevelop a thinking system, as she callsit. She has been dealing with pre-school, disadvantaged, and averagechildren. She has done a bit of workwith some kinds of more exceptionalchildren, but I am not sure what it'sbeen. I have been more interested in itjust from a standpoint of the dis-advantaged, but I think it has implica-tions for anybody who is interested inthe cognitive processes of children.She is at Yeshiva University in the Al-bert Einstein College of Medicine.

I think one such project is that onebeing carried out in Milwaukee, Wis-consin that's under the direction ofDr. Heber. The reason it is interestingis because he is working with veryyoung children and he is doing thisover a period of time, either disadvan-taged or core-type children, and thereason it has implications, I think,very clearly is because it goes to pre-

15.

vention. That I think is a very criticalarea, and in my view it is one of themore important studies that is beingdone. Another one that I have becomeacquainted with recently, . . . is also acritical study, and a longitudinal studyby Tom Jordan. And what Tom has iswhat he calls a cohort or a group ofchildren which he is following up andtesting from time to time intermittent-ly getting this basic gross data.

[The Regional Intervention Projectat Peabody College] . . . and what itdoes is to take parents of children whoare severe behavior problems, have au-tistic behavior, or are oppositionalchildren the kind of children thatclimb the walls, that are uncontrol-lable, that have complete control oftheir parents by their deviant beha-vior. Those parents and their childrenare being brought in and the parentsare being taught behavior managementprinciples, and then the parents be-come instructors for other parents. Soit's a parent organized early interven-tion project. And it's proving very suc-cessful . . . . The children are pre-school childrenvery young children.

I an interested in the work beingdone by John Ora at Peabody. He isinvolved in a regional intervention pro-ject, using preschool oppositional orautistic children, and training theirparents . . . . The other project that Ifind most interesting is the DARCEEProject (Demonstration and ResearchCenter in Early Education) and theirwork, with culturally deprived chil-dren. This, too, is at Peabody.

Following are some excerpts from theinterviews in which the researcher de-scribes his own work or a project in hisprogram for which he has some responsi-bility.

I wouldn't want to claim direct in-volvement in any of these things. Letme mention first of all the study inwhich I am directly involved that alsois a program of research studies ratherthan a single study. We call it our peri-natal research study, and sometimesthe educational followup study. Thisis a study in which we're now in ourfourth year in which we pursue chil-dren born into the collaborative peri-natal research study which started in1959 and has been supported since1959 by the National Institute ofNeurological Diseases and Strokes.The Perinatal Research Branch of thatorganization, working with 12 hos-pitals around the country, has identi-fied 50,000 to 60,000 pregnantwomen and then with the respectiveresearch design, followed the course ofPregnancy, the birth itself, and the in-fancy of the children born to thosemothers who become the sample ofthe study. The oldest of those childrenis now 10 or I1 years of age, but morelike 10 than 11. The National Instituteof Neurological Diseases was followingthose children up through about age 6or 7. We have picked up the Minnesotahospital-born children of that group at4 years of age and have been followingthem under US Office of Ed, Bureauof Handicapped support with educa-tional and behavioral measures tryingto find out what relationship theremay have been between various cate-gories of handicap as identified inschool and the early history, partic-ularly the medical history and theanomalies of pregnancy, birth, or in-fancy. We expect that some of thehandicapping conditions we see inschool will have direct antecedents tothose medical problems. We expect al-so that many handicapping conditions,that over the years have been thoughtto be directly caused by medical prob-lems in early years, will turn out notto be so related. That's one study we

think is something that can have im-portant impact in special education.

. . . I'll have responsibility for theprogram in behavioral research. Therehave been three layers of activity thathave gone on in the center one be-ing with infants, mostly involved withnutritional studies on the transmissionof infection. There is a question in mymind whether a major effort might bemade with infants on a behaviorallevel , . . and I'm going to have a plan-ning effort on this and see what weknow about these youngsters andwhat it might be possible to do in ourparticular setting. Then there's a pre-school day care program and the realchallenge there is to do something dif-ferent than what is being done in adozen other places throughout thecountry. I mean everybody is trying todevelop a curriculum to intervene inthe lives of poor children in order tohave them be more effective cognitive-ly; when they get in school. That's agood objective. The question is wedon't want to be the thirteenth in thatparticular series and we need to lookat some differrent elements. I thinkthat the systematic organization of in-structional materials to meet very spe-cific goals is what we're looking for.There is a definite change in the intel-lectual development of children at a-round age 6. That change is not justone that's continuous in which youare getting more of something. It ac-tually breaks off into different kindsof activity mentally. There is reason tobelieve in my opinion that the poorresults in Head Start or the discourag-ing results that have been widely pub-licized are due to the fact that the

, youngsters are shifting into the differ-ent mental type of activity. We don'ttake that into account when we usethe measuring instruments that weuse, so that there's probably a differ-ent reason for the results than on the

16

research that's been done on young-sters who are 4 and 5, particularly intrying to improve their mentalabilities. I think it needs to be lookedat very closely and we need to buildvery specific kinds of instructional de-vices that will help a youngster overthis barrier, cliff, or whatever it is, butit certainly is not just stepping fromone room to another. It's a majormental move. I don't think it's recog-nized as such.

Our current interest is in compar-ing three different educational modelsfor the education of disadvantagedand functionally retarded children. Weuse our own approach which is basedon a Piagetian model which we call acognitively oriented curriculum. Weare comparing this with a unit basedor traditional nursery along with theBereiter-Engelmann language trainingapproach. Now we are finishing ourthird year of operation and indeed arecomplete at this point in collecting thelast of our data.

Right now I am working on de-veloping thinking and communicationtasks for preschool children. We'vebeen working with disadvantaged kin-dergarten children and also with chil-dren who are learning English as a sec-ond language.

. . . A rather lower income, slumarea where we've been working for thelast four years. So some of the workI've done has to do with early child-hood education and the observationof children. My particular interest isdisturbed children and children in in-ner city areas. My research interest hasto deal with observation of children inclassroom settings. . . . I've identified aconceptual area called productivityand I've been trying to get empiricalmaterial on the productivity of chil-dren in classroom situations. This cuts

9

10

across preschool, primary, specialclasses for retarded and disturbed chil-dren.

Another area in which the Centeroperates is the development of preven-tive strategies, such as preschool andprimary curricula which will maintainchildren in regular classes and the ad-ministrative arrangements which willdo this.

Well, I am doing a study on a longi-tudinal study of cognitive develop-ment in children who are at a veryhigh risk of becoming mentally retard-ed, which I have been carrying on forabout 3M years now . . . . Bereiter andEngelmann have been concerned withthis . . . . In Milwaukee, we identifieda population of families where themother is mentally retarded and whereother older siblings tend to be men-tally retarded. In these families wehave picked up babies from birth andwe've placed a group of these babies inan experimental facility where we carefor them during the day. We pickthem up from home in the morningand return them home in late after-noon. In this environment, say whereyou have these kids from the first fewmonths of life, we designed and arecarrying out a stimulation program. Inessence it tries to do everything thatwe know how to do that might facili-tate the development of intellectualskills. So the focus of this project isreally not to see how effectively youcan remediate intellectual deficits invery young children as has been thefocus of preschool studies, rather tosee whether one can prevent the de-velopment of mental retardation in agroup of children who otherwise al-most certainly would be identified asretarded.

So I think the whole thrust of spe-cial education in research at this pointhas to be in terms of looking down-

ward in age to find out at what agelevel these kinds of behavioral disabili-ties can be identified, and secondlythen, how they can be most effective-ly managed or treated by special edu-cators.

I have been concerned very muchwith the ways in which such things asthe pregnancy of which the child is aproduct and the health and nutritionof circumstances to which he has beenexposed in development contribute tothe readiness with which he will de-velop problems in school learning . .We have been very much concernedwith the problem of the very earlyidentification of children who are atrisks for developing learning disabili-ties, and this had led Turkewitz andme and others of my colleagues tomake detailed studies of the behavior-al organization of one- and two-dayold infants with the object of definingthe nature of normal neurological or-ganization of the first days of life andso to develop methods for the veryearly identification of children whoseneurological organization and behaviororganization is abnormal. We havenow completed a number of studies inthis area, many of which are publish-ed, and we are now in the process ofdoing followup studies in which weare looking at the longterm fate ofchildren with deviant organizationswhich are identifiable in the first daysof life . . . . My work in Mexico andGuatemala has, over the past ten yearsor so, continuously pointed to the rolewhich malnutrition, as it effects de-velopment and growth, contributes toschool failure on the part of childrenin those communities. Current workincludes studies and followup studiesof children who have previously beenexposed to severe malnutrition at par-ticular ages to look at critical periodswith respect to brain vulnerability tonutrition in itself.

Strategies for Special Education

This area, which received about 40 cita-tions, deals with the administrative organ-ization of special programs. It includesthe issues regarding special class versusregular class versus alternative programs,the environments in these various pro-grams, the problem of labeling of chil-dren, and related concerns. This area wasmentioned 16 times as the "hottest con-troversy" or issue in the fieldsome ex-pressing much concern that people arelooking at an either/or situation ratherthan at alternatives, and that positions aretaken without supporting data. A numberof research and innovative efforts werecitedamong them the works of FrankHewett, William Morse, and the IndianaUniversity R&D Center.

The selected comments both illus-trate the concern the researchers have forthe problems in this area and discusssome of the current research efforts un-derway. So many of today's professionalpublications on this topic tend to be re-views of the literature or academic dis-cussions of the controversial issue. It ismost gratifying to know that substantiveresearch explorations are underway.

One of the things that I think isexciting work is what's going on at theUniversity of Indiana under Sam Gus-kin the activities in which they'reengaged relating to mentally retardedkids. And they are in a series ofstudies in which the end result ishoped to be a better opportunity forchildren now classified as mentally re-tarded to escape that kind of classifi-cation in school and to be able to re-ceive the kind of normal mainstreamservices in schools rather than the spe-cial classification, special education,special class kind of service. Thatdoesn't mean the absence of addition-al supports such as resource teachersand resource rooms. It simply meansthat they won't be labeled and have all

the educational system and everybodywho conies in contact with them re- ,spond to them according to the stereo-type label mentally retarded. I thinkthat's kind of interesting and excitingstuff.

Well, I'm very interested in thewhole general movement away fromcategorical approaches to children thatis rather, I think as yet, poorly de-fined. I suppose it can, in part, becharacterized as the learning disordersmovement or learning disabilitiesmovement.

One other thing that I didn't men-tion earlier, when I was talking aboutthis special class no special class, thatis going to solve a lot of those prob-lems is the field of learning disabilities,because that's a cause and it's also itin-erant resource teacher-centered. Ithink a lot of answers to some of thecontroversies that were having todayabout special class versus no specialclass and that sort of thing are goingto be solved by the learning disabilityprogram that we have, that we're es-tablishing at the present time, becauseit's probably the closest to regular ed-ucation of any of the special educa-tion fields.

Specifically, the first project thatwe just got underway is trying to de-velop a schema for identifying the be-haviors that cause kids to be labeledexceptional. That is, we're trying tocome up with behavioral classificationrather than the current medical model.We're doing this in terms of rates ofdeviant behaviors that kids show incertain domains, such as the languagedomain, social-emotional behavior,sensory-motor behavior and so on, sothat we hope, instead of labeling kidsemotionally disturbed or learning dis-abled or whatever, to be able to sayhe's deficient in language behaviorNumber 12.

is

Also in California you've got theFountain Valley School District Spe-cial Education Department, whichruns both a Title III and a Title VIprogram that relates. They have beenhighly successful at meeting the needsof educationally handicapped andmentally retarded children withintheir regular class structure. They havealso done considerable work, like a-bout three years worth, on developingskills in teachers for individualizationof instruction, and in fact they willprobably be training teachers from a-round the state in this sometime nextyear.

I have a project right now that isbeing sponsored by the MassachusettsAdvisory Cominittee on Educationand this project has three foci. One,we are evaluating children in specialprograms in the state through a seriesof studies studies of children in in-stitutions, studies of children in clini-cal settings, studies of children in daycare and preschool programs, studiesof children in special classes, studies ofboth exemplary programs and norma-tive programs. Secondly, we are evalu-ating the nature and extent of exclu-sion, exemption, and suspension in theschools. So on the one hand we arestudying handicapped children in pro-grams and on the other handicappedchildren who have been excluded orexempted. And this is a very consider-able problem--much more so thanpeople have realized or much more sothan I have realized heretofore.Thirdly, we are then looking at all ofthese data and through collaborationwith legal consultants on this projectand our own regular staff, we are de-signing prototype legislation that willbetter meet the needs of handicappedchildren in Massachusetts. . . . Wethink that this study, which is basedon some very carefully developedquasi experimental and other field

11

research models, will have some con-siderable significance, not only forMassachusetts but for many, manyother states that are confrontedwith lots of handicapped childrenand very few alternatives institu-tionalization, special class, or some ofthe other more traditional alternatives,and if these things don't seem towork, exclusion or exemption or re-maining in regular programs.

One thing we are working on Li anattempt to get some idea of what hap-pens to children who are in specialprovisions, either in institutions or inprograms in public schools. We'vebeen doing a series of followupstudies. There are five of these, ofwhich four are just about, I think fourare finished, to see what kind of re-sults you get out of them as near as wecan tell. The basic issue seems to bethat these overgeneralizations whichare being made like classes are nogood, or somebody else's are good, oryou should or shouldn't institutional-ize kids is a vast overgeneralization ofthe situation. . . . Our whole researcheffort has gone toward trying to un-derstand what types of kids need spe-cial facilities. We've used some statisti-cal analyses called cluster analysis tokind of see if we can find out. It's nota question of service being good orbad in toto, it's a question of it beingrelated to the kid's problem and to hisown perception of himself and awhole lot of other things. So I thinkthat a great deal of the research thatwe're basing things on, starting withDunn going on through the field, isnow beginning to overgeneralize, andwe're doing the same foolish things wedid before by saying it was good foreverybody. Now we're saying it's notgood for anybody.

First of all, our research and the-wlopment center, of which I'm direc-

ik

,c^

19

tor, is a center for educational re-search and development in mental re-tardation, sponsored by the Bureau ofEducation for the Handicapped of theUS Office. The prime purposes of theCenter are to prevent kids from beinglabeled, identified, and segregated asretarded in the schools, and to retainthem as much as possible in regularprograms; and secondly, for those kidswho are labeled and identified and atleast partially segregated, the goal is toimprove educational practice so thatthey will be maximally accepted asadults. Now, within the Center, wehave four general areas, one of whichis the impact of labeling and expectan-cies upon teacher and pupil perform-ance. And that really has two compon-ents. One is studying the impact ofspecial classes and the other, morecontrolled laboratory studies ofexpectancy and labeling.

For two years we have been at-tempting to extend what we learnfrom the engineered classroom witheducationally handicapped children in-to a program that would serve pri-marily the educable mentally retarded,the emotionally disturbed, and thelearning disabled, but also would in-clude the blind and the deaf. We havedeveloped a sort of administrative andgrouping framework and strategy inthe Madison schools in the SantaMonica District and where, for twoyears, we have had a class for blind,deaf, emotionally disturbed, learningdisability and mentally retarded, edu-cable mentally retarded children - -allparticipating in a single special educa-tion program in which they weregrouped according to their readinessfor functioning in regular classroomsrather than on the basis of any otherdiagnostic evaluation.

Innovations in Personnel Training

Although the people interviewed did notfocus on any particular project or pro-jects, there was a total of twenty-six re-sponses related to personnel training ac-tivities. There was a variety of approachesthat were described as "innovative," "cre-ative," "promising," etc. Examples aredescribed in the following statements.

Another project is one that's beendeveloped by Pete Knoblock (Syra-cuse). What he has done is bring agroup of faculty and students into oneof the elementary schools in Syracuse,and it's a kind of a clinical preparationprogram for crisis and clinical teach-ers. They're essentially his students indisturbance but these students don'tonly work with disturbed children,they work with all of the teachers andthe children in the schools and the ad-ministration. Some are working inclassrooms as a classroom studentteacher; others are working as crisisteachers in the school; others are do-ing remedial work in the school.

I think there's an awful lot of inter-esting work that's being done outsidewhat is generally called special educa-tion that ought to be called to the at-tention of special educators. . . . Forexample, there has been the develop-ment of microteaching and mini-courses that are using video tape andare a teacher training device that hasbeen developed by Stanford and theFa-r West Educational Laboratory.What this does is put on video tape ateacher training program that is prettymuch self contained. A teacher mayhave a camera and some tape mostschool systems of size have this kindof equipment. Using these materials,using the tapes that illustrate differentkinds of teaching practices and variousscales and measuring instrumentswhich allow her to check her own be-

havior off, she can modify her ownteaching performance. This was notdeveloped for special educators butit's just as applicable to teachers inspecial education as it is to teachers inany dimension.

The projects that are going on nowthat would involve training programsfor teachers of disturbed children thatare more experiential in nature are thekinds of things that interest me. Forexample, Dr. Nicholas Long and agroup at Hillcrest Children's Centerare involved in a training project withperspective teachers of disturbed chil-dren and they are being trained in thefield setting and that's the kind of ac-tivity that's most interesting now.There is another project in Atlanta atGeorgia State that I understand fol-lows a similar kind of pattern. Dr.William David is involved with that.

. . . A project called "RemedialDiagnosis" . . . is one of the slickest,uptodate utilizations and multidisci-plinary teams I have ever seen. Notonly doing diagnosis in remedial workwith kids, but in the process trainingteachers to do the same blasted stuff.It is really an effective team, andthat's in Marin County, California andthey are working out of Marin CountySchools Office.

Dan Sage (Syracuse University) hasbeen involved in development of sim-ulation materials for preparing ad-ministrators and supervisors of specialeducation programs. These are theproblems that have been developedand tested and have been utilized in anumber of school districts, both inNew York State and other parts of thecountry problems that have beensimulated using a program which hecalls The SEATS Games. It stands forsimulation, supervision. I don't havethe exact title of that thing, but it is

n4. V

part of an ingenious way of presentingproblems, live problems, to peopleeither in training for administrativework or inservice people, relatively in-expensively, permitting these peopleto simulate the problems and dealwith them and possibly teach theproblems. This is something that has agreat deal of value and, from what Iunderstand, a good number of the ad-ministration programs in this countrywhich are training administrators inspecial education are using these ma-terials.

We're in the process of developing,at the University of Michigan, a veryunique it will be unique in theUnited States and I suspect unique inthe world program whereby we aregoing to be bringing under one admini-strative roof about 20 disciplines,within a philosophy of all disciplinesamong equals, to attack the total issueof manpower training in the broadfield of mental retardation and the de-velopmental disabilities. . . . The issuewill be primarily the conceptualizationand development of techniques where-by, in a very definite interdisciplinaryand multidisciplinary model, a dif-ferent type of special education per-son will be prepared for the field.

I'm spending a considerableamount of time now in new formatsfor training teachers in the area of theemotionally disturbed. We've had arather extensive three year projectwhich was on training preschool teach-ers, and what we're trying to find outis what kind of information you couldcollect about a person ahead of timewhich would influence how particularkinds of training experiences would in-fluence that person, and then finally,what kind of final performance youmight get by some kind of objectivecriteria, as a trainee works with chil-dren. Now such things as whether the

13

trainee gets a more lax supervisor, andwhat kind of anxiety gets into thetraining situation and a lot of thesekinds of issues are what we're workingon. The major thing is that again allthe studies have been group studies.They take all of the teachers ofemotionally disturbed, teachers of re-tarded versus normal teachers, and tryto make studies based upon grossgroup relationships. And what theyget are small differences between themon mean scores, but they meannothing to help you understand whatactually does go on with the trainingand the variance within the group. Soour hope - we're using processes tomake predictions on the basis of indi-vidual people, rather than on the basisof how does this group react to thekind of training program. We're doingthis in a new type of training in whichthey spend a full day in the settingand then we bring the courses to themin the setting. We have an integratedinstitute for this small group of peo-ple, rather than the usual courses andso on.

We are concentrating fairly heavilyon inservice education and particularlyin fairly shortterm modes where wewould work with a group intensively,say, for three days and then comeback and work with them in the class-rooms over the next couple of weeks,but not semester type patterns andthat sort of thing. In doing this, whatwe are aiming for is completely pack-aged inservice programs where thestimulus material and the tasks for theparticipants, the followup activities,and everything else are well enoughdeveloped and spelled out so that oth-er people can take the ball and runwith it. We have done one package inthe area of classroom management foreducationally and mentally retarded.Somewhat of a spin off on these,we're developing sound film strips

14

which boil the whole thing down withvisuals. Those we're going to validatewith several groups, primarily withteachers in sparsely populated areaswhere inservice conferences would beinefficient and uneconomical.

Curriculum Development

Research efforts in curriculum develop-ment for the retarded emerged as a sig-nificant topic because the few projectscited were very substantial and were rec-ognized as promising contributions to thefield. The major projects identified wereHerbert Goldstein's social studies curricu-lum study, John Cawley's work in arith-metic and reading, and the comprehensivestudies at the three USOE-BEH supportedR&D Centers at Teachers College, Colum-bia University, the University of Indiana,and the University of Minnesota.

I'm looking forward to what someresearch and development centers,that have just been funded or recentlyfunded in the last year or two, can do.There's one in Indiana and one in Min-nesota. The reason why I say that isbecause I think one of the real needs,if I may speak about the mentally re-tarded for a moment--educable men-tally retarded--is to develop somesystematic curriculum that is designedfor their needs, instead of just havingthe teacher pick up bits and pieces ofthings here and there and try to putthem together into a program for theyoungsters. To develop a curriculumand develop a major effort in curricu-lum takes money. It takes staff; ittakes constancy; and it takes time. In-dividual investigators cannot do it.What you need are teams of people,each of whom has different skills. Per-haps one that exemplifies that ap-proach as much as any is the studythat Herb Goldstein is doing at Ye-shiva.

21

An area that I guess you would sayis quite interesting is the much moresystematic work and much more eval-uative work currently being conductedin terms of a curriculum program forthe mentally retarded. A couple ofnames on that would be Dr. JohnCawley, University of Connecticut,who's working on arithmetic curricu-lum; Dr. Herbert Goldstein, YeshivaUniversity, who's working in the areaof social learning for the mentally re-tarded; Drs. Dorothea and Sheila Ross,Palo Alto Medical Research Founda-tion, who are working on language andearly reading programs and curriculumfor the retarded; and Dr. Bill Meyer,University of Colorado, who is work-ing on science curriculum for mentallyretarded children.

Well, of course the whole realm ofcurriculumHerb Goldstein's work, Ithink, is very relevant and very impor-tant and in need of an awful lot ofextension and development.

We have a curriculum developmentcenter supported by the Bureau forEducation of the Handicapped in theUS Office of Education. Our centralgoal we have a number of goalsbut our central goal as of the momentis to develop a comprehensive develop-mentally organized educational pro-gram for the educable mentally retard-ed. And our style of operating is toprepare curriculum in our center, thenfield test it in a representative bunchof special classes, in this case, about400 in 15 states. This gives us a demo-graphic cross cut and accounts for anumber of other variables. . . . Ex-ample, we want to establish thevalidity of curriculum and its reli-ability. We want to find out if it com-municates with the teachers wizen it'swritten very basically and evenwhether or not its physical characteris-tics lend the application of the curricu-lum to classroom use.

Other Topic Areas

As we expected, there were a consider-able number of projects and studies men-tioned that were somewhat discrete anddid not cluster around a particular prob-lem. Generally these research studiescould be categorized as dealing with pupilcharacteristics, learning styles, instruc-tional methods, and instructional ma-terials. About 50 different projects werenamed. The topic area of individualizedprescribed instruction was the only onewhich received several citations. Therewas some focus and attention on the de-velopment and evaluation of instructionalmaterials, the development of equipmentrelated to braille and braille codes, andthe study of teacher-pupil interactions inthe classroom.

Within the area of speech, language,and communication disorders, there wasvery little clustering of topics or projects.This is probably due to the compositionof the people interviewed representingthis field. Most were specialists in discretesubareas and reported research interestsin their areas. Thus, there was a scatteringof research studies in stuttering, cleftpalate, voice disorders, and articulation.

Summary

In a telephone interview, 57 selected indi-viduals in exceptional child research wereasked to identify current, significant re-search or research related projects. Al-though a considerable number and varietyof studies were cited, there was a conver-gence on five major topic areas. Thesewere: (1) Behavior Modification; (2) EarlyChildhood; (3) Strategies in Special Edu-cation; (4) Innovations in PersonnelTraining; and (5) Curriculum Develop-ment in Mental Retardation. Not only didthe telephone interviews pinpoint the tar-get areas for the development of informa-tion products but also demonstrated amost effective and efficient mechanismfor tapping into the special educationgrapevine.

15

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15

PARTICIPANTS IN TELEPHONE INTERVIEW SURVEY

SAMUEL C. ASHCROFT, Professor, De-partment of Special Eudcation, GeorgePeabody College for Teachers

BRUCE BALOW, Director, Research andDevelopment Center, Department of Spe-cial Education, University of Minnesota

BARBARA BATEMAN, Associate Profes-sor, School of Education, University ofOregon

ALFRED BAUMEISTER, Professor, De-partment of Psychology, University of Al-abama

CARL E. BEREITER, Professor, Depart-ment of Applied Psychology, Ontario In-stitute for Studies in Education

SIDNEY W. BIJOU, Professor, Depart-ment of Psychology, University of Illinois

HERBERT BIRCH, Research Professor,Department of Pediatrics, Albert EinsteinCollege of Medicine, Yeshiva University

LEONARD BLACKMAN, Director, Re-search and Demonstration Cotter forthe Education of Handicapped Children,Teachers College, Columbia University

BURTON BLATT, Director, Division ofSpecial Education and Rehabilitation,Syracuse University

DORIS P. BRADLEY, Director, CleftPalate and Speech Rehabilitation Clinic,University of North Carolina

JOHN F. CAWLEY, Professor, School ofEducation, University of Connecticut

JAMES C. CHALFANT, Associate Profes-sor, Institute for Research on ExceptionalChildren, University of Illinois

16

WILLAM M. CRUICKSHANK, Director,Institute for the Study of Mental Retar-dation, University of Michigan

FREDERIC L. DARLEY, Consultant andProfessor in Speech Pathology, MayoGraduate School of Medicine

NORMAN ELLIS, Professor, Departmentof Psychology, University of Alabama

JAMES J. GALLAGHER, Director,Frank Porter Graham Research Center,University of North Carolina

FRANK GARFUNKEL, Professor, Spe-cial Education Educational Psychology,Boston University

HERBERT GOLDSTEIN, Director, Cur-riculum Research and Development Cen-ter in Mental Retardation, Ferkauf Grad-uate School of Humanities and SocialSciences, Yeshiva University

ROBERT GOLDSTEIN, Professor, De-partment of Communicative Disorders,University of Wisconsin

SAMUEL L. GUSKIN, Professor, Schoolof Education, Indiana University

NORRIS G. HARING, Director, Experi-mental Education Unit, Mental Retarda-tion and Human 4velopment Center,University of Washington

J. DONALD HARRIS, Professor, Depart-ment of Speech, University of Connecti-cut

RICK HEBER, Professor of Education,University of Wisconsin

FRANK M. HEWETT, Chairman, Depart-ment of Special Education, School cf Ed-

23

ucation, University of California at LosAngeles

KATHRYN HORTON, Chairman, Lan-guage Development Program, Bill Wilker-son Hearing and Speech Center, Vander-bilt University

DORIS J. JOHNSON, Assistant Professor,Department of Communicative Disorders,Northwestern University

SAMUEL A. KIRK, Professor, Depart-ment of Special Education, University ofArizona

PETER KNOBLOCK, Associate Profes-sor, Division of Special Education andRehabilitation, School of Education,Syracuse University

LAURA LEE, Associate Professor, De-partment of Communicative Disorders,School of Speech, Northwestern Univer-sity

OGDEN LINDSLEY, Professor, Bureauof Child Research and School of Educa-tion, University of Kansas

DANIEL LING, McGill University

NOEL D. MATKIN, Associate Professor,School of Speech, Northwestern Univer-sity

BOYD McCANDLESS, Director, Educa-tional Psychology, Department ofPsychology, Emory University

JAMES J. McCARTHY, Professor, De-partment of Studies in Behavioral Disabil-ities, University of Wisconsin

ROBERT B. McINTYRE, Principle Inves-tigator SEIMC, University of SouthernCalifornia

FRANK MELONASCHINO, Director, Di-vision on Mental Retardation, NebraskaDepartment of Mental Health

DONALD MOORES, Assistant Professor,Department of Special Education, Univer-sity of Minnesota

WILLIAM C. MORSE, Professor, Depart-ment of Psychology, School of Educa-tion, University of Michigan

JAMES W. MOSS, Acting Deputy, Bu-reau of Education for the Handicapped,US Office of Education

MAX W. MUELLER, Director, Projectsand Program Research Branch, Bureau ofEducation for the Handicapped, US Of-fice of Education

HELMER A. MYKLEBUST, Professor ofSpecial Education, Northern Illinois Uni-versity

CARSON Y. NOLAN, Director, Depart-ment of Educational Research, AmericanPrinting House for the Blind

WILBERT PRONOVOST, Director, Com-municative Disorders Section, Depart-ment of Special Education, Boston Uni-versity

DANIEL D. SAGE, Coordinator, SpecialEducation Administration Program, Di-vision of Special Education and Rehabili-tation

SEYMOUR SARASON, Professor, De-partment of Psychology, Yale University

RICHARD SCHIEFELBUSCH, Director,Bureau of Child Research, University ofKansas

PAULINE SEARS, Professor, School ofEducation, Stanford University

MELVIN I. SEMMEL, Research Professor,Center for Educational Research and De-velopment in Mental Retardation, Indi-ana University

GERALD M. SIEGEL, Professor, SpeechClinic, University of Minnesota

DONALD STEDMAN, Director, JFKCenter for Research on Education andHuman Development, George PeabodyCollege for Teachers

LAWRENCE STOLUROW, Director, Com-puter -Aided Instructional Lab, GraduateSchool of Education, Harvard University

CHARLES STROTHER, Director, ChildDevelopment and Mental RetardationCenter, University of Washington

E. PAUL TORRANCE, Chairman, De-partment of Educational Psychology, Col-lege of Education, University of Georgia

DAVID WEIKART, President,High-Scope Educational Research F oundation, Ypsilanti, Michigan

HARRIS WINITZ, Associate Professor,Speech and Hearing Science, Universityof Missouri

FRANK WITHROW, Director, Divisionof Educational Services, Bureau of Educa-tion for the Handicapped, US Office ofEducation

EMPRESS ZEDLER, Professor, Depart-ment of Special Education, SouthwestTexas State College

24

V

17

Target Areas of Concern Organizations Reply

June B. Jordan

Responding for the Alexander GrahamBell Association for the Deaf, ExecutiveDirector George W. Fellendorf identified"the problem of communication amongand between parents and professionals ...one of the most important problems fac-ing us."

Excerpts from a "Statement of theAlexander Graham Bell Association forthe Deaf," dated May 18, 1970, point tothe Organization's concern for the dis-semination of information on existing re-sources and the need for additional pro-grams, resources, and trained personnel.

The Alexander Graham Bell Associationfor the Deaf is a non-profit organizationfounded in 1890 by Alexander Graham Bellto collect and disseminate information re-lating to the deaf, to actively promote theteaching of speech and lip-reading to thedeaf, as well as to encourage the use of resi-dual hearing by the deaf through specialtraining ....

It is estimated that today in the UnitedStates there are approximately 3 millionchildren under the age of eighteen withsome degree of hearing loss. This would in-clude an estimated 25,000 children born

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Are there specific problem areas, issues, or trends that yourassociation or unit has identified to receive program emphasis?

with a hearing loss after the 1963-64 rubellaepidemic. Almost 45,000 hearing impairedchildren are now receiving some special edu-cation, either in schools or special classes.Others are receiving some preschool training,some guidance and counseling, and someauditory training and/or hearing aid fitting.But there are probably half of the popula-tion, or more than one million children,whose needs are not being met.

The discrepancy between the estimatesof children needing help and those receivinghelp is due to a widespread lack of informa-tion and informational services. A basic needexists for adequate parent counseling in or-der to identify the handicap and to providesome direction toward alleviating the prob-lems of the handicapped child ....

Throughout the country, there is a lackof information as to the potentials of thedeaf child, and as to how he can be broughtup to function optimally in society. Organi-zations within the community, schools,clinics, recreational facilities, business andindustry need to be aware of the servicesthey can provide for the handicapped, aswell as bow the handicapped can functionwithin or with the help of these organiza-tions. There is also a serious shortage ofteachers and supervisors trained in the

specialized needs of these handicappedyoungsters.

While either residential schools for thedeaf or some program for the education ofdeaf children from first grade through theeighth grade currently exists in every state,many of these facilities are understaffed,overcrowded, or limiting in their educationalresources. Moreover, many of the childrenfrom these schools are unable to continuetheir education beyond the eighth grade be-cause they have not learned to function in anormal hearing society, and/or there are alimited number of programs to which theycan apply. The development of the ModelSecondary School for the Deaf is an initialstep toward providing the necessary educa-tional bridge between elementary educationand either college or vocational training. Butone school will not adequately provide forthe needs of the hundreds ready for thislevel of education every year ....

Significant improvement in comprehen-sive services to hearing impaired children canbe effected only by a three-pronged pro-gram. The public must be made aware ofexisting resources; more programs and re-sources for the hearing impaired as well as asmultiply handicapped children must he de-veloped, and additional teachers,

supervisors, and professionals must be train-ed in services for the hearing impaired. Fed-eral support in carrying out these threerecommendations will be a "giant step" to-ward enabling every handicapped child tolive up to his full potential for a happy anduseful life.

CCBD

The Council for Children with BehavioralDisorders (CCBD) appeared almostprimed for the Information Center's sur-vey. President-Elect Paul Graubard (nowCCBD President) responded not onlywith an official position statement butwith a proposal to take joint action on anidentified problem area.

Your letter came at just the right timebecause our division membership, at its an-nual meeting in Gary, has just given a man-date to the executive board to investigate,publicize, and make recommendations aboutwhat is actually transpiring in special educa-tion classrooms, training schools, detentioncenters, hospitals, and social service agenciesthat have been charged with helping chil-dren. The membership is particularly inter-ested in examining the quality of life inthese schools and institutions. In one sense,we would like to extend the Morse, Cutler,and Fink report so that in addition to quan-titative information we can examine qualita-tive questions as well. We would also like topull together existing literature in thisarea before er,warking on empirical research.

We are reasonably certain that manyyoungsters are excluded from school be-cause of behavior disorders and are some-times maltreated in institutions and schools.In addition, we suspect that many young-sters in hospitals etc. are not receiving ade-quate full-time education. It is one thing tosuspect this and quite another to documentit and come up with constructive criticismsand alternatives which could be useful foreducators, hospital personnel, correctionalpersonnel, legislators, and parents.

We would very much like . .. help fromCEC ,

This is an area that we think is of ex-treme importance and we will be happy to

work with you in any way that we can ....

Paul S. GraubardPresident-Elect, CCBDMay 11, 1970

CCBD's position reflects this CEC Di-vision's great concern with the inade-quacy and quality of existing programsand services for handicapped youngsters.The Division's response supports PriorityArea IIINew Strategies in Special Educa-tion.

TED

The Teacher Education Division of CECwas also initiating activities relative to im-proved teacher preparation programs inexceptional child education.

Just today, a few minutes before I sawyour letter, I had written to the officers ofthe Teacher Education Division. There wereseveral concerns expressed at the Chicagoconvention. Primarily, we have felt that theTeacher Education Division in the past hasnot played a very significant role in eithershaping or promoting policy on behalf ofthe improvement of teacher preparationwith exceptional children. We are exploringthe possibility, now, for a c -derence ... tobe sponsored by the Teacher Education Di-vision and possibly other universities and theOffice of Education ....

We will keep you informed about our ac-tivities and progress in this matter.

26

Burton BlattPresident-ElectMay 12, 1970

Policies Commission

During the 1970 Annual CEC Conven-tion, a series of Impact Sessions were con-ducted by the CEC Educational PoliciesCommission. The sessions were designedto give convention registrants an oppor-tunity to identify and confront current,critical issues and to formulate relevantfesponses. Chairman Maynard C. Reyn-olds provided the following statementsummarizing his impressions of the Im-pact Sessions:

This is a statement of some gaps andproblems as I judge them to exist on thebasis of experiences at the CEC Conventionin Chicago. My involvement there was in oneof t, impact sessions run continuously fort' ..al one-half days by the EducationalP. icies Commission.

1. There is a great need for more effectivesharing on new models for teacher prepa-ration and on new models for offeringspecial education services in the schoolsas these changes are indicated by changesin preparation.

2. There is a serious estrangement which hasbeen long developing between what I callthe decision-makers in special educationand teachers in special education. What Ihave in mind is the problem of schoolpsychologists who make allocations ofchildren to programs without full under-standing or regard of what the programsare all about. This problem really needsto be attended to.

3. There is a gap in communication betweenspecial educators and regular educators.This is to say that there is a gap in com-munication about special education toregular educators.

4. There is some tendency in the wholesystem right now, in which there aremany forces for change in special educa-tion, to react to "straw men." This is tosay that many people are highly criticalof special education, but tend to take ex-treme and rather exceptional cases andstraw man it as if it were the typical pro-gram. We need to enter the controversywith some cool heads.

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5. There needs to be strengthened com-munication among all the agencies in thefederal government which have programsrelating to special education. In particu-lar, I think there is need for communica-tions between the Bureau of Educationfor the Handicapped and the Bureau ofEducational Personnel Development.

6. Finally, I would mention the great con-cern for involvement of more representa-tives from minority groups in all policyplanning activities relating to special edu-cation. And somewhat related, there isneed to find improved ways by whichcommunity forces may be involved insetting policies and plans for special edu-cation.

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2027

Problems in Exceptional Child Research

Phyllis L. McDonald

An optimally functioning technology ofresearch is vital to maintain an educationsystem capable of changing with society'sneeds. Viable research is the appropriateand vigilant response to ineffective pro-grams, treatments, and new or previouslyunrecognized problems in the spectrumof special education services. Researchprovides information necessary for thecreative development of new programsand methods and the modification of ex-isting ones.

Each discipline or field of endeavor ischaracterized by obstacles in its programs

and development which inhibit research.Special education is not an exception.

One purpose of this article is to dis-cuss those obstacles or technical problemscurrently impeding progress in research.A comprehensive assessment of thosemethodological areas which are problemsshould provide direction and guidance totheoreticians in research methodologyand serve as impetus to efforts towardssolution.

In our estimation, on line investiga-tors in special education were in ar ex-cellent position to evaluate the researchprocess and identify methodological pro-blems typically encountered. Investiga-

2 8

tors were asked the following question:"Do you see any research areas currentlybeing held up by technical obstacles orproblems in research methodology that ifthese problems were solved the researchcould be conducted?" Responses weregenerally vibrant, and researchers agreedon two general themes.

First many researchers recognizedthat research in special education needsto change and to continue to change untilevidence accrues that special educatorsare focusing on and serving the needs ofyoungsters in classrooms. It became ob-vious that there is a fermenting drive tochange the whole structure of research, to

21

We are always on the prowl for ways to under-stand a little better what's going on in theseyoung children . . . We have so few adequatemethods for evaluating them.

It's bard to appraise outcomes or effectivenessof methods which are designed to change peo-ple's behavior when we are so limited in ourmeasurement of behavior.

Ideally, in order to collect data on change inlanguage performance we have to collect spon-taneous vocalizations from children on a 24hour basis over a period of several months.

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remove old shackles, to develop new atti-tudes, methods, and goals for research,and to design a research discipline tomeet squarely the needs of special educa-tion.

Second, researchers realized that spe-cial education would profit greatly by es-tablishing effective communication linkswith the several allied disciplines. Lackingat present are time, appropriate forums,and information systems to facilitate ideaexchange across disciplines. Nonetheless,special educators expressed a strong de-sire to begin to establish these links andemphasized the skills needed to take fulladvantage of them.

22

There was no concensus among theresearchers as to major technical obstaclesimpeding progress in research. Obstaclesseem to be varied and representative ofthe whole spectrum of methodology. Thiswide variation in obstacles cited may havebeen due to the fact that researchers re-sponded from differing levels of concern.Some described mechanical or highlytechnical problems. One researcher, forexample, spoke of the need for engineer-ing advances which would lead to the de-velopment of an electrode which could beimplanted in an indi