Strengths-Based Approaches to Educating All Learners with Disabilities

Michael Wehmeyer, a leading scholar with over four decades of experience as a teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and advocate, provides a cogent but accessible account of the evolution of special education. Offering a compelling vision of where the field should be headed in the next decade, he notes how the digital revolution has made it possible for all learners to gain access to content and instruction. This text focuses on the need to consider how young people with (and without) disabilities learn and the importance of creating personalizable education as strengths-based approaches to disability move education away from diagnosis and remediation to schoolwide instruction for all students. This book is not written as a criticism of traditional special education models, but instead examines the big ideas for going beyond special education that can improve outcomes for learners with disabilities and prepare them for the 21st-century world.

Book Features:

• Provides a framework for reconceptualizing how students with disabilities are educated.
• Content aligns with changing contexts and innovations in education, including personalizable education and self-determined learning.
• Identifies current, well-established practices that can facilitate efforts to address 21st-century learning needs for learners with disabilities.
• Written in a conversational voice for a broad audience to stimulate consideration of future directions for special education.

Michael L. Wehmeyer is the Ross and Marianna Beach Distinguished Professor in Special Education, chair of the Department of Special Education, and senior scientist and director of the Beach Center on Disability, University of Kansas.

“I found Wehmeyer’s historical lens, commitment to elevating expectations for all learners, and focus on innovating with students’ strengths and interests in mind to be an important contribution to special education discourse. With optimism and specificity, he articulates a vision of the possibilities of inclusive educational practices by modeling what it means to think beyond special education.”

—Teachers College Record

"Too often, those with knowledge are committed to the world in which they gained their knowledge--the past. Instead, Wehmeyer takes his encyclopedic knowledge of how we educate students with disabilities and constructs powerful ideas that will help us build a new future. If you are part of the field, you must choose whether to look backward or forward. This book includes the tools you need for the latter."
―Sue Swenson, president, Inclusion International and acting assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, U.S. Department of Education, under the Obama administration

“This is a compelling read for anyone interested in improving education for all children, especially the many who are segregated and undereducated, but it is an absolute must for decisionmakers and teacher educators. Dr. Wehmeyer masterfully articulates the flaws in our current approach, accented by colorful personal stories from his extensive experience, and offers a roadmap to a more promising future for our nation’s children. Here is the guide for discussions relative to the next reauthorization of IDEA.”
—Melody Bruce Musgrove, associate professor of special education and codirector of the Graduate Center for Early Learning, The University of Mississippi

Contents

Introduction: Why Change?

Chapter 1. Beyond Disability: Strengths-Based Approaches to Educating All Learners
   Person–Environment Fit Models of Disability
   Strengths-Based Approaches to Disability
   Beyond Disability in the Education of All Learners

Chapter 2. Beyond Programs: Supports and Support Needs
   Programs and Services
   Deep Learning and a World-Class Education
   Supports and Support Needs
   Beyond Programs in the Education of All Learners

Chapter 3. Beyond Individualization: Personalizable Education
   A 21st-Century Education
   Going for Great
   Personalizable Education

Chapter 4. Beyond the Continuum: Whole-System Change
   Continuum of Alternative Placements
   Inclusion: False Dichotomies, Slippery Slopes, and Other Logical Fallacies
   Schoolwide Models in Special Education
   Response to Intervention, Positive Behavior Supports, and Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports
   Whole-System Change

Chapter 5. Beyond Textbooks: Technology and Universal Design for Learning
   Beyond De Minimis
   Universal Design for Learning
   To Infinity and Beyond
   The Digital Divide

Chapter 6. Beyond Testing: Assessment for Growth and Mastery
   Potential for Growth
   Measuring What Matters, Counting What Counts
   Dynamic Learning Maps
   Assessing Potential for Growth
   Determining What Matters Most

Chapter 7. Beyond Teaching: Autonomy-Supportive Classrooms and Motivating Students
   Beyond Life Jackets
   Autonomy-Supportive Teaching
   It's About Relationships

Chapter 8. Beyond Dependency: Self-Determination and Self-Determined Learning
   The Consequences of Dependency
   Career Construction and Life Designing
   Self-Determined Learning

Epilogue: Beyond Special Education: Educating All Learners in the 21st Century

References

Index

About the Author