Special Education : Books

The SAGE Handbook of Special Education brings together the most up to date knowledge of this area and will serve as the major source book of authoritative information and ideas about current and future directions for special education. It aims to examine the intricate relations between theory, research, and practice, and places a particular emphasis on international policies such as Education for All, and inclusive education as a strategy for achieving it. This comprehensive, research-based work, assembles scholarship on an international level, and covers topics that transcend national boundaries.

This study examines the facts, characters and events that shaped special education in Western Europe, Canada and the United States. It assesses the discipline from the first efforts to teach disabled people in early-Christian and medieval eras to such current mandates as Public Law 94-142.

Special educators are facing new challenges at the beginning of the 21st century as public education is being reformed by a vision focusing on measurable student outcomes. The future course of the field will be shaped by the policy and programmatic responses to several issues, including demographic changes in student populations, a lack of certified special education teachers, criticism in the public media for the rising costs of services, and debates about the preferred philosophy of service delivery for students with disabilities. Additional chapters discuss university-school collaboration, charter schools, disability studies, school violence, disproportionality in placement, male African-American teachers, and ethics.

This volume will examine the history of special education by categorical areas (e.g., Learning Disabilities, Mental Retardation, and Autistic Spectrum Disorders). Each categorical area chapter will include an examination of: changing definitions, early pioneers in the field, major contributors and their theoretical ideas, changing educational and treatment practices, working with families, the use of technology, assessment practices and legislative acts specific to that categorical area. The volume will also include chapters on the changing philosophy related to educating students with exceptionalities as well as a detailed history of legal and legislation content concerned with special education. The volume will provide readers with a unique perspective on why special education is what it is today.