Special Education

Candidates in this course interpret and apply current special education policy and law to practice, as professional and ethical educational leaders and advocates for students with disabilities.

Candidates in this course learn collaborative teamwork as the means to address literacy, communication, and language development in children with special needs. They learn to collaborate and consult with professionals in order to evaluate students' needs, contribute to IEP preparation, and provide exemplary instruction.

This course provides a framework for understanding students with moderate and severe and multiple disabilities. The impact of these disabilities on the family and community will be discussed. Candidates will evaluate the varied characteristics and communication skills of students with extensive support needs such as health care, self-care, community-living, and self-advocacy. Candidates will focus on how these support needs affect performance at school. Candidates will plan for and effectively teach learners with moderate and multiple disabilities, while incorporating varying levels of guidance, support and prompting into teaching. This course will prompt candidates to explore systematic instructional procedures as a means of ensuring all students have equitable access to learning opportunities.

This course examines the complexity of classroom and behavior management using the framework of Applied Behavior Analysis and Positive Behavioral Supports. Candidates apply knowledge of how teacher behavior, environmental factors, and disabilities influence the behaviors of all students. Candidates research models of classroom and behavior intervention. Candidates develop and deliver effective instruction using behavioral principles within a framework of positive behavioral interventions, supports, and functional behavior assessments. Best practices in behavior and classroom management will be discussed.

This course provides candidates what they need to understand assessment in the schools, and to use it effectively in practice. Candidates explore the entire process of assessment: chronologically, moving sequentially through response to intervention, to prereferral strategies, to assessments, to report writing, to development of the IEP. Candidates explore validity and reliability, tests most often used in assessment, legal issues, and basic statistical terminology. Candidates focus on the practical application of assessment in schools with discussions on interpreting results, screening and diagnosis, writing professional reports, making recommendations from the data, presenting results to parents, and attending eligibility committee meetings. This course addresses best practices in formal and informal assessment from birth through adulthood.

Candidates, in compliance with IDEA transition assessment requirements, will identify transition assessments and programs suitable for individuals with varying characteristics, skills, and aptitudes. They will accurately interpret assessment results in order to develop appropriate, individualized postsecondary goals. Candidates will develop strategies to report results to students, families, and other team members and work collaboratively to plan for students' self-determination, skill development, and identification of supports and services. 

This course provides strategies for teaching students with moderate, severe, and multiple disabilities. To ensure the best outcomes for students with moderate and severe disabilities, K-12 educators need to understand what constitutes good instructional practices and how to apply them in any classroom, with any curriculum. This course addresses systematic instruction, a highly effective teaching approach rooted in applied behavior analysis.

This course provides a framework for understanding and designing effective social interaction/communication and behavior interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. The course focuses on the application of empirically validated social interaction/communication and behavioral interventions that are consistent with principles of ABA in designing the interventions. Students will participate in lectures, demonstrations, presentations, and application activities.

This course provides an in-depth study of responsive teaching strategies to meet diverse learning needs while emphasizing the need for strong homeschool collaboration between schools and families of students with high incidence disabilities. Candidates collaborate to form professional teams with staff, administrators, and others for professional development, instruction, and problem solving. Candidates examine characteristics of students with high incidence disabilities, including learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disabilities and mild or moderate intellectual disabilities (focusing on how to apply various strategies of accommodations and curricular modifications to meet individualized learning needs.) This course emphasizes a culturally responsive, inclusive philosophy that promotes self-determination. Candidates explore the best of inclusion practices, the most effective general teaching practices, and ways to differentiate instruction for specific content areas with an emphasis on effective literacy and mathematics instruction for learners with complex support needs. Candidates apply principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and the latest strategies relating to academic success as a means to improve outcomes and prevent failure of all students, including students with disabilities, ELL students, and other at-risk students.