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School and Educational Settings
Natasha Strassfeld (Committee Member) moderated this workshop session, which focused on school and educational settings during the pandemic, and how lessons learned in this space could be leveraged to improve the well-being of children with disabilities.
SUPPORTING ONLINE LEARNING FOR CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES
Marcia Montague (Texas A&M University) began by reviewing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which requires that students with disabilities receive access to a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible. Instruction must provide more than de minimus educational benefits, and instruction must target challenging objectives, she said. During the pandemic, these legal mandates remained in place, said Montague; public schools were obligated to pivot and adapt how students were educated. However, despite this legal mandate, education for disabled students was interrupted during COVID-19, and delivery of services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, and counseling were also disrupted. These disruptions have resulted in learning loss, which Montague said is commonly referred to as the “COVID slide.” Some students with disabilities have lost previously acquired academic and behavioral skills, and the pandemic has affected students’ socialization and communication skills.
Students with disabilities were impacted by a number of different systems during the pandemic, said Montague, and it is important to
understand this context in order to address the issues that arose. Within the microsystem where learning took place, students dealt with a shift to remote learning, a lack of in-person interactions with friends and peers, increased parental involvement in learning, and different ways of communicating with teachers. On the macrosystem level, states made varying choices about the return to in-person school and whether masks would be required. Montague noted that because some students with disabilities are more at-risk of COVID-19 infection or complications, schools that did not require masks may have violated their rights to a free appropriate public education. There were additional ecological factors as well, such as wildfires in California intersecting with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moving Forward
Montague noted that despite the challenges and learning loss related to COVID-19, there were also unexpected benefits. For example, students developed skills in typing and interacting with peers online. Teachers developed skills in making online content and material accessible to students with varying abilities. These gains should be sustained and leveraged, she said. Teacher preparation should adequately prepare preservice teachers for teaching in online environments. This will ensure that all students with disabilities have access to quality, accessible education.
Montague shared the details of a program developed to address learning loss, a common consequences of the pandemic. The Aggie Homework Helpline connects Texas families and school districts with partners and tutors who are committed to improving learning outcomes for PreKindergarten through 12th grade students, she said. Online tutoring provided through this program supports academic achievement and is lower cost and logistically easier than in-person tutoring; it can reach students who may not be able to afford or access in-person tutoring. Quality tutoring is evidence-based, and can help students make up for the learning loss experienced during the pandemic, Montague said.
SELF-DETERMINED LEARNING
Transitions can be difficult for students with disabilities, explained Karrie Shogren (Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities; Schiefelbusch Life Span Institute; University of Kansas). Transitions occur throughout the educational experience and there is also a major transition from school to adult life. Shogren said that she refers to “transition cliffs” where there is a lack of effective bridges between roles or stages. This is the case for a number of reasons, including a lack of effective preparation, a lack of support, and a lack of focus on empowering students to play an
active role in navigating transitions. Research has shown that students with higher levels of self-determination are more likely to effectively transition from one step to another. Self-determined people, she said, have been supported to grow in the skills and abilities that enable them to act as they set and work towards goals. There are multiple skills and abilities that can be developed over the life-course, including decision-making, goal setting, management strategies, and building self-awareness. Increased access to growth in these skills leads to enhanced school outcomes, goal attainment, engagement in academic curriculum, and post-school outcomes related to employment and community participation, said Shogren. During the pandemic, self-determination skills were essential to coping with the rapid changes that were occurring. One student with a disability told Shogren and her colleagues that, although the pandemic was chaotic, they were able to navigate the storm by using the strategies they had learned to set and go after goals.
The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI), said Shogren, is an evidence-based teaching model that engages students in setting goals for learning and building self-determination. The SDLMI enables trained teachers to: teach students to make decisions about setting a goal; to develop action plans for academic and transition-related goals; to self-monitor and self-evaluate progress goals; and to adjust the goal or plan. Students with disabilities often lack instruction and support in these areas, Shogren said, particularly instruction that has been embedded into multiple aspects of their education and socialization. The SDLMI can help students develop critical skills and it can also help educators shift their focus from setting goals for their students, to supporting students in setting goals for themselves.
SDLMI has been used by research groups, schools, and states across the U.S. to enhance student engagement and to implement evidence-based practices to support transitions, said Shogren. The skills taught go beyond simply setting goals, but include identifying ways to take steps towards goals, navigating around barriers, and adjusting and revising plans as necessary. These skills and the flexible mindset are essential to navigating experiences that young people will have as they move from one stage of life to another, she said. One powerful feature of SDLMI, said Shogren, is that it can be integrated into any existing curriculum, and students can set goals that are relevant and meaningful for them. There are implementation resources available for SDLMI, including content to make intervention more meaningful for students with a range of disability-related support needs. The program has been evaluated in transition planning for students with autism and other disabilities, and in classrooms with students with and without disabilities.
Moving Forward
Looking ahead, Shogren explained that in order to make progress on promoting self-determination for children with disabilities, there is a need for action and research in four areas. First, there is a need to build buy-in and identify champions—in school districts, state departments, research funders—that recognize the importance of self-determination for students and integrating planning for transitions with supports for self-determination so that young people have multiple repeated opportunities to be at the center. Second, there is a need to focus concerted effort on engaging stakeholders, including students, families, the disability community, school supports, and community supports. Shogren noted that the pandemic offered new opportunities to engage community members, to engage people with disabilities sharing lived experience, and to embed supports for self-determination within communities. Third, there is a need to support implementation and scaling up, including the development of blended and hybrid supports for students and teachers, and research and implementation science evaluation of self-determination programs. Finally, said Shogren, attention needs to be paid to promoting equity in access and outcomes by ensuring that culturally responsive teaching and supports are embedded throughout educational spaces, including in self-determination learning.
COMMUNITY-LEVEL SOLUTIONS
Ani Whitmore (Scott, Whitmore & Company) focused her presentation on community-level solutions to supporting children with disabilities in education-based programs. She began by noting that COVID-19 had a variable impact on school-based health programs; she also highlighted the importance of understanding intersectionality and differences in needs and capacity when making recommendations about education-based health programs. Whitmore emphasized the need to think about the appropriate level of accommodation required, rather than focusing on disability severity. Many programs, she said, are designed based on disability severity, developed either for children that are high-functioning or for children who are completely separated from general education population. Research shows that focusing on appropriate accommodations is more effective and more sustainable, she said. In addition, the needs of an individual child will change over time, and appropriate accommodations are more flexible.
Turning to the state of Georgia, Whitmore noted that each county has a local educational agency (LEA). Each LEA has the authority to make decisions about their school district’s programs to support children with disabilities. Whitmore noted the importance of policies and recommendations being based on local needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
This is particularly important given the wide variety of COVID-19 precautions and policies adopted by different schools. She recognized that this approach can seem impossible to scale; Georgia’s 159 counties each could have a unique plan for supporting children with disabilities. Instead, she recommended thinking in terms of building a general framework that every county can adapt to their unique needs.
Moving Forward
Whitmore identified a number of community-level best practices for supporting children with disabilities in education-based programs. First, peer-to-peer groups for special education teachers can support teachers, address issues of secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, and facilitate the sharing of teaching practices. Second, there is a need to develop a framework for implementing IEP protocols to ensure continuity if school closures happen again. Finally, said Whitmore, there is a need to develop district-wide plans that take into account the true needs of children with disabilities without forcing assimilation into the larger school population; she stressed the need to consider the individual needs and accommodations for each child.
FAMILY-CENTERED PRACTICES
Angel Fettig (University of Washington, College of Education) highlighted the benefits of and prerequisites for effective family-centered practices in education. She explained that family-centered practices are broadly defined as practices that: treat families with dignity and respect; provide family members with information needed to make informed decisions and choices; actively involve families in obtaining resources and supports; and provide practitioner responsiveness and flexibility to family requests and desires (Dunst, 2011). In a family-centered practice model, she said, family is the center of the services provided for the child; services vary for each family based on differences and needs within family systems; the practices are designed to meet the strengths and needs of both the child and the family; and services and supports are derived through collaboration with and centering families as experts. There are several benefits of family-centered practice, she said, such as: they increase opportunity for children to learn skills throughout daily routines; they support parent competence and promote the parent-child relationship; and they improve family and child outcomes.
Despite these benefits, many parents and educators do not feel equipped to engage with family-centered care, said Fettig, and these challenges were highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents reported feeling
ill-equipped to serve as a teacher for their child and noted that they have not been trained in teaching children with disabilities. Practitioners were highly dependent on parents, and if the parents were unprepared for a session, the impact was on the child. Practitioners said that while they were educated and trained to work with children with disabilities, they lacked training on how to center services on the family and how to coach caregivers to work with their children.
Moving Forward
In order to address these challenges, Fettig made three recommendations in the areas of policy, funding, and training. First, there is a need to promote and support policies that orient services on family-centered care. Second, advocates need to argue for funding for family-centered service delivery and for identifying evidence-based practices that promote family-centered practices. Finally, practitioners need both preservice and in-service trainings on family-centered practices. Supporting family-center practices is critical in ensuring the provision of equitable services to children with disabilities and centering their strengths and their needs in the natural environment, said Fettig.
DISCUSSION
After the presentations, Strassfeld moderated a question and answer session with the panelists.
What stakeholders need to be brought into the conversation to carry pandemic innovations forward?
There is not an infinite supply of federal and state money, said Whitmore, so there is a need to work with community organizations who can provide the expertise and funding for community-level projects. These organizations understand the direct impact of supporting a program or a population, and can sustain the effort over time. Shogren added that there are multiple support systems for children—including schools, communities, informal networks, families, and advocacy groups—and there is a need to bring these systems together in order to leverage their expertise and identify sources of funding. Fettig emphasized the need to center families and their needs and strengths. Other stakeholders are important in the efforts to improve child outcomes, she said, but it is critical to focus on the priorities of the family and how we can best support them. Shogren built upon this idea, highlighting that young people with disabilities who are transitioning into adulthood have the right to be driving that process. Whitmore agreed and said that too often, programs are developed and then adapted to make
them fit the community, rather than starting with the community’s needs and developing a program based on their ideas. Whitmore encouraged people to flip this process around and begin by getting to know the community and what children and families need.
What types of policy change are needed to improve care for children with disabilities?
Policies need to be developed with the intentional inclusion of the voices and lived experiences of people in the community, said Whitmore. Shogren agreed that impacted people should be centered at the beginning of the policy process as well as throughout the process, further adding that people with lived experiences should also play a major role in research and program implementation. It is critical to support career pathways for people with disabilities to be co-teachers, and to be involved in implementation, policy development, and research, she said. All of these phases are essential to keeping the community at the center of the work.
What are the specific things that are needed to move the work forward, whether “pie in the sky” or incremental steps?
Montague noted that although students are guaranteed support in the classroom under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, they often do not receive the full support they need because of district budget constraints. A “pie in the sky” policy change, she said, would be to allocate federal dollars to guarantee full support to meet students’ needs. Montague also identified the need to ensure that all families, regardless of where they live, have access to broadband internet service. Fettig added that there is a need for research and work on how services can best be delivered in a virtual or hybrid format. She noted that not everything translates well into a virtual format, and that our approach cannot be to simply take existing services and deliver them as-is on the Internet. More careful thought and research is needed in this area.
What final thoughts would you like to leave with the audience?
- Whitmore: Don’t stop talking to families, students, and their communities. As we enter a new phase of the pandemic, let’s be thoughtful about the future.
- Fettig: Every family is unique, and we need to incorporate their strengths, values, and culture into our work; there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
- Shogren: Youth with disabilities have the right to go after the life that they want, and to have the supports that enable them to do that. Barriers that prevent them from doing so need to be broken down.
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