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This study evaluated the effects of a peer-delivered least prompts intervention and adapted read-alouds of a grade-level novel on correct listening comprehension responses for participants with moderate intellectual disability. Before the study began, participants were taught concepts for wh- words (i.e., who, what, why, when, and where), to request help, and to self-monitor correct responses in the special education classroom. Then, fifth-grade peer tutors without disabilities (peer tutors) provided opportunities for participants to apply these skills during literacy class using a system of least prompts intervention and read-alouds of an adapted novel being read by students without disabilities in the class. The least prompts intervention included wh- word rules and opportunities to hear text again. After the intervention, all participants increased the number of unmodeled prompted correct responses and one participant learned to make independent unprompted correct responses after the text was read initially. In addition, two participants learned to respond correctly when questions were asked by the general education teacher during literacy class.

Three adults with severe disabilities received instructional support to make purchases in fast food restaurants. During baseline and intervention, participants received discrete, systematic prompting and feedback to perform the steps of the purchasing task analysis. During intervention, participants were prompted to make five distinct choices during the community routine. This prompting resulted not only in increased choicemaking, but also in collateral increases in the performance of the purchasing task analysis.

This review addresses some of the more crucial teaching and learning issues that arise when community-referenced instruction is applied to persons with severe disabilities. These issues include environmental assessment, task analysis, trial sequencing, control, empirical and social validity, and measurement. A stimulus set of standards that emerged from the literature reviewed was presented to guide and evaluate future community-referenced research.

Self-management procedures involve an individual in implementing strategies which may enhance his or her behavior change. These strategies may be applied as antecedents or consequences to the target behavior. A review of selected self-management literature, with a focus on individuals with severe handicaps, is presented to identify potential replications and adaptations for practice and future research with this population.

Using a modified system of least prompts, two classroom teachers taught three participants with moderate intellectual disability to generate questions about United States history. After reading brief portions of the text aloud to the participants, the teachers taught participants to identify if the answer to the question was in the book or not in the book. Finally, participants were taught to answer the literal questions that could be answered from the book. Participants had a graphic organizer with WH question words, the text section heading, and a self-monitoring sheet. All participants improved the number of questions generated and answered from baseline to intervention. Additionally, probes collected in a general education setting indicated students improved their question generation and comprehension skills during lessons taught in a fifth grade classroom.

Educators have become increasingly aware of the need for a multicultural perspective in assessing students with special needs. This article extends this discussion to life skills assessment for students with severe disabilities. The importance of culture and the purpose of multicultural education are reviewed with consideration given to the needs of students with severe disabilities. Guidelines are given to make a life skills assessment process more multicultural.

A review of the literature on academic learning in general education settings for students with moderate and severe intellectual disability was conducted. A total of 17 experimental studies was identified and evaluated using quality indicators for single-case design research. Studies that met or met with reservation the criteria established for quality research were used to determine the evidence base of the instructional strategies described in the literature. The review found embedded instruction trials using constant time delay to be an evidence-based practice for teaching academic content to students with moderate and severe intellectual disability in general education. In addition, strategies that were not yet evidence-based but showed promise in the literature for teaching academic content to students with moderate and severe intellectual disability in general education were described. Last, implications for practice and directions for future research were discussed.

This investigation focused on the effects of a treatment package including multiple exemplar training, time delay, and a self-directed learning prompt (KWHL chart) on students' ability to complete an inquiry lesson independently and generalize to untrained materials. Three middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities learned to self-direct themselves through a 15-step task analysis to complete inquiry lessons in chemistry and physical science. All three students achieved mastery across materials, science concepts, and instructional settings, but unanticipated generalization weakened the demonstration of experimental control. The results provide a potential method for students with moderate intellectual disabilities to learn science concepts.

A comprehensive review of research was conducted on teaching science to students with significant cognitive disabilities. Guidelines from the National Science Education Standards were used to identify categories of studies based on the strands of science. A total of 11 studies were identified from the 20 years of literature searched. In general, work in the area of science is sparse for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Eight of the 11 studies fell in Content Standard F: Science in Personal and Social Perspectives. Single subject experimental designs were the methodology used in all of the studies and outcomes suggest that this population benefits from instruction in highly specific skills with modeling and errorless learning strategies like time delay. The interventions found in the 11 studies that linked to science incorporated systematic response prompting methods similar to those found in evidence-based reading and math research for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Additional research is needed to identify methods to teach science to this population that includes both broader content and additional skills that link to state standards.

Systematic preference assessment is the process of presenting sampling trials and observing the person's response. The response to those items is then interpreted as an indicator of preference. The empirical research on systematic preference assessment has greatly advanced the field's understanding of how to identify the preferences of individuals with nonsymbolic and limited symbolic communication skills. The purpose of this paper is to translate this research into guidelines for planning systematic preference assessments that strive to reduce the risk of missing or misinterpreting the person's preferences, as well as increase the social validity of the process and outcomes. We present four guiding questions for practitioners to plan preference assessments: (a) What will be offered? (b) When and where will sampling opportunities take place? (c) Who will present the sampling options? and (d) How will sampling options be presented?

Although educators of students who take alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards are charged with providing access to grade-level mathematics to help their students prepare for this requirement, almost no models exist to provide guidance for how to adapt mathematics content for this population of students. This study asked educators to evaluate resource materials for adapting grade-aligned mathematics. One hundred twenty-five participants completed a survey to appraise two resources developed specifically for teaching mathematics to students with significant cognitive disabilities. One of the resources was designed to build mathematics content knowledge and the second to provide guidance for designing mathematics instruction aligned to academic content standards. The resources received positive reviews from a large majority of respondents who agreed they provided educators with needed models for teaching specific mathematics content.