SPED 80100 - Research on Effective Practice and Curriculum for Students with Disabilities

from placing them in specialized schools to providing no education whatsoever. Grounded within the Civil Rights Movement, the institution of special education evolved as society’s response to children and youth with disabilities who had traditionally experienced a significantly inferior education in comparison to their non-disabled counterparts. In 1975, with the passage of P. L. 94-142, The Education of All Handicapped Children Act, children and youth with disabilities came to enjoy the same rights as children without disabilities, being guaranteed a “free and appropriate” public education. However, the institution of special education has always inspired disagreement among various constituents in society, including parents, policy makers, theoreticians, researchers, educators, and people with disabilities. It has offered hope to countless families whose disabled children. It also guarantees an education to all citizens, reduces the number of students with disabilities dropping out of school, increases the number attending college, and develops many forms of innovative pedagogy. Critics have pointed out special education’s relationship to: stigmatizing difference; maintaining racial stratification in schools; segregating many migrant and indigenous children; diluting the curriculum; and contributing to the “school-to-prison pipeline” in which three-quarters of those incarcerated have significant struggles in literacy.

Given these tangled issues, some questions that they raise include: Who defines disability within schools? Who benefits? Who is disadvantaged? Where and how should students with disabilities be educated? What constitutes effective teaching practices and curriculum for students with disabilities? Whose responsibility are they? What are some differences among scholars who look at disability as scientific fact versus those who view it as a natural form of human variation? Most importantly, in what ways does how to understand disability impact upon creating and executing research upon students with disabilities?

This course provides the opportunity to consider disability in the context of schools and society—with view to engaging with, and critiquing, existing research in the fields of special education and disability studies in education (DSE). We will be mindful of how the disposition and paradigm of researchers influences all aspects of their work including: problems identified; questions asked; methods used; analysis employed; findings or results; interpretations, and: implications. This course focuses on the nature of evidence-based practice involving students with disabilities within specific contexts. The course is designed to provide a foundation for the course work, independent scholarship, and educational research that students will undertake in the process of completing the doctoral degree.

Hours 3
Credits 3