CHAPTER 1: CHILDREN AND YOUTH WITH

EXCEPTIONALITIES AND THEIR FAMILIES

What is an exceptional child?

-students are not considered exceptional unless, typical educational system must be modified
to help them be successful

3 Educational modifications:
1- Additional support to read is needed
2- If a child is so far ahead that they are bored with the content
3- Child is unable to adjust to the social needs of the classroom

(pg.5-6 lists disability categories under IDEA (2004))

Strength-based educational approaches:

-every student has the right to reach their potential (ex: gifted kids need to be challenged)

Interindividual and Intraindividual Differences:

-Interindividual differences: differences between children with exceptionalities and children
of the same age
-Inter: between
-Intraindividual differences: variances that occur within a single child, and understanding
each child’s unique pattern of strengths and challenges can help us develop individualized
approaches to their instruction
-IEP (individualized education program)
-Intra: within

Information Processing model (IPM):

-helps us think about the complexities of how people learn, exploring the various components
of learning that can be impacted by an educational exceptionality
-explains how students interact with and respond to the world around them
-describes how they learn through this engagement

What happens when students are learning?

1- They receive info from their senses
2- They process this info using classification reasoning, and evaluation
-processing info involves memory (short-term long-term)
3- They respond to info through output (doing something with the info)
4- Executive function: decision-making ability
-allows them to choose what info to focus on (input)
-the model consists of:
1- Input
2- Processing
3-Output

6 types of input:
1- Vision
2- Hearing
3- Kinesthetic (movement)
4- Haptic (touch)
5- Gustatory (taste)
6- Olfactory (smell)

Major Causes of Exceptionalities:

Major Belief about heredity up until the 1960s:
-believed that heredity alone drove and determined conditions related to intelligence
-concluded that it was basically impossible to change a child’s trajectory
Educator role: helping individuals adapt as well as possible to their hereditary roll of the dice

-Starting 1960s, there was a major movement to stress the important role “played by the
environment” in human development
Educator role: encouraged to try to find ways to reverse unfavorable impacts of
environmental effects and to encourage favorable outcomes through education

-Around 1990, Gotlieb proposed what we believe today

 He proposed that by changing the environmental conditions of early childhood, we
could activate different patterns of genes, which then would influence behavioral
changes.
 We now know that:
a) genes do not control behaviour directly
b) Almost all behavioral traits emerge from complex interactions between multiple
genes and environments
c) causes of personality and ability found across around complex neural networks

Prevalence:
-how many students with exceptionalities there are
-the is a- cut-off point to identifying children with exceptionalities (determined by
professionals)
-approx. 1 out of 10 children are exceptional
High-incidence disabilities:
-includes the categories of disability that are most prevalent
-composing of at least 1% of all students within the school pop
6 Categories:
1- Specific learning disability (3.6%)
2- Speech or language impairment (1.6%)
3- Other health impairment
4- Autism
5- Intellectual disability
6- Emotional disturbance
Low-incidence disabilities:
-make up less than 1% of the total school pop
6 Categories:
1- Deaf-Blindness
2- Traumatic Brain Injury
3- Visual impairment including blindness
4- Orthopedic impairment
5- Hearing impairment
6- Deafness
7- Multiple Disabilities (0.19%)

Cultural Differences:
Significant disproportionality:
-problem faced in appropriate identification of students with exceptionalities
-it is the disproportionate demographic distribution of students with exceptionalities
3 Areas where we find disproportionality:
1- Identification for special education
2- Educational placement once identified
3- Disciplinary actions taken with students