Viewpoints on Interventions for Learners With Disabilities

Interventions in special education are results of advocacy, legislation, litigation, research, and trends. Since interventions come in many forms, they represent multidimensional viewpoints and perspectives and need to be handled with professional care, integrity, fidelity. This book highlights the fact there are skill-sets needed to work with divergent disability categories. The chapters begin with introducing readers to contextual bases of interventions for learners with disabilities and end with futuristic perspectives that go beyond tradition. Other chapters focus on students with learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, and intellectual disabilities. Additional chapters focus on students who are deaf and hard of hearing, and students with visual impairments, autism, severe disabilities, traumatic brain injury, speech and language impairments, and physical and other health impairments.

Festus E. Obiakor, Ph.D, is the Chief Executive Manager, Sunny Educational Consulting, Shorewood, Wisconsin. He has served as Department Head and Professor, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia and The City College of New York, New York. A teacher, scholar, leader, and consultant, he has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at a variety of universities. He is the author of more than 150 publications, including books, articles, and commentaries; and he has presented papers at many national and international conferences. Festus serves on the editorial boards of reputable nationally and internationally refereed journals, including Multicultural Learning and Teaching (MLT) in which he serves as Executive Editor. He is a leader who has been involved in many landmark scholarly works in the fields of general and special education, with particular focus on African American and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners and he continues to prescribe multidimensional methods of assessment, teaching, and intervention for these individuals. Based on this premise, Festus created the Comprehensive Support Model (CSM), an intervention model that values the collaborative, consultative, and cooperative energies of students, families, teachers/service providers, communities, and government agencies.