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The purpose of this paper is to address the role of social robots in the education industry, specifically within special developmental schools, as a part of an innovation technology portfolio. It identifies critical success factors (CSFs) arising from the development, adoption and implementation of social robots to educate students with special needs and assist their teachers.

The study engaged in longitudinal research over 12 months, tracking the role of the Matilda robot in providing educational services to students with special needs.

The results propose a three-faceted framework for social robot application in special education: development, adoption and implementation.

The study has shown the willingness of students and teachers to embrace social robot technology, and the CSF that arise from this adoption. It has also found that social robots achieve the greatest success within the development, adoption and implementation framework when championed by executive management, and peer teacher support.

This paper aims to fill the gap in social sciences research on parents’ strategies in navigating preschool education in Russia. It focusses on the barriers that children with developmental disabilities and autism face in preschool education in Russia and highlights the emerging facilitators of inclusive education.

It uses a modified labelling approach analysing strategies of withdrawal and resistance. The research included semi-structured interviews with parents of children with Down syndrome, Rett syndrome and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in 2013–2014 and 2018–2019 and semi-structured interviews with professionals in Tatarstan, Russia. The data analysis was based on constructivist methods and grounded theory.

Although Russian law guarantees equal access to education for every child and requires the development of inclusive education, children with developmental disabilities, including autism, are often stigmatised at the preschool stage, both in special needs and mainstream institutions. Parents use various strategies to navigate access to preschool education and try more than one strategy from secrecy and withdrawal to resistance. Parents challenged the mainstream educational structures in Kazan and established groups for children with autism in some mainstream kindergartens and classes in mainstream schools.

There should be informational support for parents with different options for special needs education, providing integrative and inclusive education. It is necessary to increase the number of trained specialists in special needs and mainstream kindergartens in Russia for children with developmental disabilities and ASD. More study is required to overcome stigmatisation and increase tolerance towards persons with developmental disabilities in Russia both on a national and local level.

The research findings can be useful for countries which have recently recognised ASD and do not have inclusive preschool educational practices and where labelling towards children with developmental disabilities is still common. The study recommends that resources are required to provide free or affordable preschool education for children with developmental disabilities. It is also crucial to help parents navigate preschool education and select the best options for each child’s needs.

This study’s findings add value to the importance of addressing the stigma towards people with disabilities within professional groups and broader society, which form barriers for preschool education and in some cases result in withdrawal from preschool education. To overcome the stigmatisation of children with developmental disabilities in preschool education, it is necessary to establish modern targeted pedagogical approaches and training for professionals and informational campaigns for the broader audience.

The paper is novel as there was no sociological research into preschool education of children with developmental disabilities in Russia. It argues that the parents’ experiences are much broader than just interactions with special needs or mainstream education. Parents navigate across special needs institutions, specialised groups in mainstream and private kindergartens, mixed groups in mainstream kindergartens and home education with various strategies from secrecy and withdrawal to resistance and challenge. Preschool education for children with developmental disabilities in Russia is hindered by a lack of professional resources and the stigma embedded into professional and societal responses.

There is a sparsity of research that considers how to overcome implementation challenges for interventions in special school settings where specialist teaching methods are involved. Successful implementation has often relied on considerable researcher involvement, making them inaccessible and not sustainable for the majority of special schools. The purpose of this study was to implementa train-the-trainer approach to train teaching staff to use the Teaching Early Numeracy to Children with Developmental Disabilities (TEN-DD) programme in a large special school in the UK, thereby significantly reducing researcher involvement in its implementation.

One staff member was trained to become the school lead for TEN-DD and trained other teaching staff in the school on implementation. This study recruited 13 students aged between 12 and 16 years of age with developmental disabilities to receive TEN-DD. Pre- and post-intervention tests on a standardised numeracy measure were conducted.

A train-the-trainer model was developed and successfully delivered to train teaching staff in TEN-DD. A standardised outcome measure indicated that ten students made improvements to their numeracy skills after teachers trained using this approach delivered TEN-DD for between 3 and 10 months.

Very little research has been carried out to better understand methods for overcoming implementation challenges for delivering evidence-based teaching programmes at scale to students with developmental disabilities who attend special schools. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study reports the results of the first evaluation of using a train-the-trainer model for the delivery of a numeracy intervention (TEN-DD), whereby there was no involvement of researchers in implementation beyond the initial training of the school lead. This model of training for interventions may be more sustainable for special schools and help improve the uptake of evidence-based interventions.

The relationship between learning and mental health, as well as a growing body of literature, underscores the need for art therapy in educational settings. This is particularly true for learners with special needs. Shostak et al. (1985) affirmed that “for children with special needs, art therapy in a school setting can offer opportunities to work through obstacles that impede educational success” (p. 19). School art therapy facilitates improved social interaction, increased learning behaviors, appropriate affective development, and increased empathy and personal well-being. It can be adapted to meet the specific developmental needs of individual students and to parallel students’ developmental, learning, and behavioral objectives. This chapter introduces the reader to the history and basic constructs of art therapy as a psychoeducational therapeutic intervention in schools. Model programs are identified, as well as the role of the art therapist within the context of K-12 education settings. Additionally, examples of special populations who benefit from art therapy intervention within school systems are provided, along with considerations for school-wide art therapy.

This chapter provides a framework for ethical decision making related to inclusive educational opportunities for secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) based on policies and practices in the United States. Relevant research findings are utilized to explore ethical principles involved in educational decision making for secondary students with I/DD, with discussions on how these are intertwined with U.S. policy. I/DD and inclusion, as described in the research literature and U.S. policy, are defined and the current status of inclusive practices are described. Next, an exploration of the rationale, as supported by empirical evidence, for educating students at the secondary level with I/DD, primarily with their peers who do not have identified disabilities, is shared along with the counter-narrative. Connections of inclusion to post-school outcomes and the lived educational experiences of students with and without disabilities and educators are considered, including ethical dilemmas and conflicts. Finally, factors influencing the application of inclusionary practices are provided.

In 2014, Japan ratified the CRPD, which spurred to the development of domestic laws; however, the education section of the Convention does not clarify how to educate children with disabilities in inclusive education. Thus, while the global inclusive education goal advocated by UNESCO and other bodies concerns education for all, inclusive education in Japan is seen as education for children with disabilities, and the philosophies and practices are very different. Therefore, this chapter introduces the policies and current practices of inclusive education in Japan and discusses the possibilities for school education reform from the perspective of real inclusive education.

Assessment and identification of children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) is complex and involves multiple techniques, levels, and participants. While federal law sets the general parameters for identification in school settings, these criteria are vague and may lead to inconsistencies in selection and interpretation of assessment measures. Assessment practice across school settings is greatly influenced by clinical guidelines such as the DSM-IV, which more specifically defines emotional and behavioral disorders and highlights the issue of co-morbidity. Before a student is assessed for special education eligibility under the IDEIA category of emotional disturbance, screening techniques and pre-referral interventions are needed. Positive Behavioral Supports and Response to Intervention models provide empirically supported frameworks for establishing the need for formal psychological assessment. Collaboration among members of the multidisciplinary team, including parents, helps to ensure that identification and intervention efforts have ecological validity. Tests and techniques vary considerably, but developmental histories, interviews, observations across settings, and behavioral checklists and rating scales are recommended, along with cognitive and achievement testing. While problems exist in the reliability and validity of projective techniques, they continue to be used in school-based assessment for EBD. Multitrait, multisetting, and multimethod approaches are essential for culturally fair assessment and reduction of bias in identification and placement.

Barbara M. Altman, a Sociologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, is currently a Special Assistant on Disability Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her previous position was Senior Research Fellow with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She is a past president of the Society for Disability Studies and served on the founding Board of Directors of that organization. Her disability research interests focus in three areas: operationalization of disability definitions/measures in survey data; access to, financing and utilization of health care services by persons with disabilities, particularly working age persons and women with disabilities; and disability among minority groups. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on disability topics, and has served as editor of special issues of Disability Studies Quarterly and Journal of Disability Policy Studies. She is co-editor of this series Research in Social Science and Disability.Deborah J. Anderson, Ph.D., has conducted policy research in the area of Aging and Developmental Disabilities at the University of Minnesota since 1985. Her studies have included analyses of the health status, health conditions and health-related limitations and needs of older adults with mental retardation living in a variety of residential settings as well as in their own homes. These studies have included a longitudinal study of a 10% sample of older adults living in residential facilities licensed by developmental disabilities agencies, the National Nursing Home Survey of 1985, the National Medical Expenditure Survey of 1987, and the National Health Interview Disability Supplement (NHIS-D) of 1994–1995. She has also studied careproviders of older adults with mental retardation, innovative programs serving aging adults with developmental disabilities/mental retardation, and state agencies’ preparation for serving adults with mental retardation as they aged. Most of this research has been conducted as part of the NIDRR-funded RRTC on Aging and Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Anderson is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN.Lynda L. Anderson, M.A., M.P.H., is a Resource Manager at No Place like Home in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Ms. Anderson earned a Master of Arts degree in Human Service Administration and a Master of Public Health degree in Community Health. Ms. Anderson is a doctoral candidate in Work, Community and Family Education at the University of Minnesota. She has more than eighteen years of experience working with people with disabilities as a Direct Support Professional, Program Director, and Researcher. She has participated in NHIS-D analysis activities for the last five years.Sharon N. Barnartt, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Gallaudet University. She has co-authored two books: Deaf President Now: The 1988 Revolution at Gallaudet University (1995) and Contentious Politics in the Disability and Deaf Communities (2001). She has also presented papers and published widely in the areas of socio-economic status and disability/deafness, legal and disability policy issues, and social movements in the deaf and disability communities. She is a former president of the Society for Disability Studies, co-editor of Research in Social Science and Disability and on the editorial board of Journal of Disability Policy Studies.Phillip W. Beatty, M.A., is a Senior Research Associate at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Center for Health & Disability Research in Washington, DC. His recent research focuses on predictors of access to health services among adults with disabilities. Mr. Beatty is also conducting research to determine the ways in which functional outcomes information is being used by stakeholders in the medical rehabilitation industry.Edward Brann, M.D., M.P.H., is Acting Director of the Division of Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The division conducts a number of research and program activities for people with disabilities.Hong Chen, M.S., is an Economist in RTI International’s Division of Health Economics Research. His work focuses primarily on the analysis of large claims and survey databases, with an emphasis on diabetes prevention, substance abuse, and competitive bidding for durable medical equipment.Lisa J. Colpe, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a Clinical Epidemiologist Specializing in Survey Design and Research. At the time the work on this chapter was done, she was an Epidemiology Training Program Fellow in the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics.Roger B. Davis, Sc.D., is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Davis has overseen the statistical design of numerous clinical trials, especially involving cancer and AIDS therapies. An expert in survival analysis, he also participates in health services research and clinical epidemiology studies with colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he serves as Biostatistician in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care.John Drabek, is an Economist in Office of Disability, Aging, and Long-Term Care Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He received his B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the federal government, he performed research at the University of Southern California, and at the University of California, Los Angeles.Laura J. Dunlap, M.A., is a Health Economist in RTI International’s Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research. Since joining RTI in 1994, she has worked on studies analyzing the costs and benefits of substance abuse treatment, the effect of treatment services on post-treatment outcomes, and the costs and cost-effectiveness of public health and treatment interventions aimed at special populations such as drug users and low-income women.Holly J. Fedeyko is a former employee of the Disability and Health Branch, CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. While at the CDC she focused her efforts on Research in disability issues as related to questions from the National Health Interview Survey. She received her M.P.H. in Epidemiology and Environmental Health from Emory and her B.S. in Biology from McGill. She is currently employed as an analytical consultant for a private company and now resides in the San Francisco Bay area.Frances K. Goldscheider, University Professor and Professor of Sociology, began her Brown career in 1974. Since obtaining her Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, Goldscheider has focused her research on census and survey data to address questions related to family structure and coresidential relationships, examining causes and consequences of change. Goldscheider pioneered research on the single-person household, and on home leaving and return to the nest of young adults, and has examined issues of labor force and family decisions of 20th century American women. She is an expert on family structure and relationships, fertility, parenthood, household economy, and marriage. Her intergenerational focus (on the living arrangements of young adults and the elderly) has expanded to include gender issues, particularly marriage and divorce, with a strong concern with the consequences of family structure for investments in childhood and young adulthood. Recent research interests include men’s roles in parenting and in the family.Scott D. Grosse, Ph.D., is a Health Economist at the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He conducts applied research on the costs associated with various childhood conditions and economic evaluations of screening programs and interventions intended to improve health and developmental outcomes in children.Gerry E. Hendershot, Ph.D., is a Consultant on Disability and Health Statistics. From 1985 to 2001, he held various positions on the staff of the National Health Interview Survey, including Assistant to the Director for Data Analysis and Dissemination. He had a lead role in promoting, designing, and analyzing the National Health Interview Survey on Disability. He is the author of many published statistical reports on disability and other health-related topics.Dennis P. Hogan, Professor of Sociology, joined the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University in 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. He has taught at both the University of Chicago, where he acted as associate director of the Population Research Center, and Pennsylvania State University, where he served as director of the Population Research Institute. In 1997, Hogan was named to an endowed professorship as the Robert E. Turner Distinguished Professor of Population Studies. Some of his research interests include the interrelationships of the family lives of individuals and their social environments, the measurement of disability, family consequences of disability, and the transition to adulthood. Hogan’s current research focuses on child disability. He is the principal investigator on grants supporting this program from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics Subcommittee on Disability and the Spencer Foundation.Ghada al Homsi, M.S., is an Economist in RTI International’s Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research. Her work focuses on the analysis of large surveys and the design and maintenance of databases of program costs.Amanda A. Honeycutt, Ph.D., is an Economist in RTI International’s Division of Health Economics Research. Since joining RTI in 1998, she has led a number of studies on the cost-of-illness, the cost of intervention programs, and the cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment interventions that focus primarily on diabetes, HIV/AIDS prevention, and children’s health, disability, and development.Peter C. Hunt, M.P.H., was an Association of Schools of Public Health Fellow in the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, at the time work on this chapter was done. He subsequently served as a Special Assistant to the Director of the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. He is currently a Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh Model Center on Spinal Cord Injury.Lisa I. Iezzoni, M.D., M.Sc., is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of Research in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Her primary research interest is risk adjustment for assessing health care quality and improving the fairness of payments. A 1996 recipient of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, she also studies health policy issues relating to mobility impairments. Dr. Iezzoni is a member of the Institute of Medicine.Gwyn C. Jones, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.Ed., is a Senior Research Associate at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Center for Health & Disability Research in Washington, DC. She is a former ATPM/CDC Fellow and current grantee. Her research and publications have focused on health risks, chronic conditions, and use of preventive services among working-age adults with disabilities, prescription drug use among non-elderly adults with disabilities, and rural Medicaid managed care for adults with disabilities.Judith D. Kasper, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Health Services Research, at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include health policy in long-term care, aging and disability, access to health care for vulnerable populations, and the development and application of data sources for health policy and health services research. Dr. Kasper holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.K. Charlie Lakin, Ph.D., is the Director of the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Lakin has had extensive experience in gathering, analyzing, and using statistics from many primary and secondary data sources with the products of this work included in more than 200 publications in developmental disabilities and related services. Mr. Lakin was a member of the six-person external technical advisory panel on the instrumentation for the Disability Supplement. Mr. Lakin serves as Associate Editor of Mental Retardation, and consulting editor of The Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps (JASH), the Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disability and Social Science and Disability.Sheryl A. Larson, Ph.D., is a Research Associate at the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She has 20 years of experience in services to persons with DD as a residential counselor, behavior analyst, social worker, and program evaluator and has worked for the RTC for the last 14 years. Ms. Larson was the Co-Principal Investigator for a two-year NIDRR Field Initiated Project which used the National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement to examine the characteristics and service needs of persons with intellectual or developmental disabilities. She directed a supplement to the Research and Training Center on Community Living’s core grant that funded an international user’s conference in June 2000 for researchers analyzing NHIS-D topics. She has co-authored several papers using NHIS-D data. Dr. Larson has also co-authored several books, book chapters, journal articles and technical reports on workforce development issues, residential services, and community integration for persons with developmental disabilities and is a consulting editor of Mental Retardation.Donald J. Lollar, Ed.D., Senior Research Scientist, Division for Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His advanced degrees are from Indiana University, and his most recent writings include co-editing an Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation supplement on the Science of Disability Outcomes, and articles for the 2003 Annual Review of Public Health and 2002 Public Health Reports outlining public health strategies to improve the health and well-being of people with disabilities. He has spent the past seven years developing public health science and programs to improve the health of people with disabilities, prevent secondary conditions, and increase participation in society. He currently serves as the co-lead of the Healthy People 2010 workgroup on Disability and Secondary Conditions (Chap. 6 of HP 2010). Dr. Lollar began involvement with the WHO classification ICIDH in 1994 while still in private practice, assessing potential utility of ICIDH-2 for clinical records. He is currently a part of the team to adapt the ICF to improve its utility for children and youth.Pamela Loprest is a Labor Economist and Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on low-wage labor markets and how government policies can help to reduce and remove barriers to work among disadvantaged populations. Dr. Loprest has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been at the Urban Institute since 1991.Elaine Maag is a Research Associate in the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. Her research focuses on policies affecting youth with disabilities and employment opportunities for adults. She also conducts research on how tax policy affects low-income families. Ms. Maag holds an M.S. in Public Policy from the University of Rochester.Jennifer M. Park is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current research is funded by a grant she holds from the American Education Research Association to examine cognitive development among first grade youth with and without emotional impairment. Her dissertation explored cognitive growth among kindergarteners with and without perceptual impairment. Dr. Park holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University, where her research examined the diverse effects of child disability on family outcomes.Elizabeth K. Rasch, M.S., P.T., is an Associate Service Fellow at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, working in the area of disability statistics. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, with a concentration in Epidemiology. Her research interests include the health of persons with disabilities, factors that contribute to disability, as well as the use of and access to healthcare services by persons with disabilities. She has been actively involved in research since 1985 and has published articles and book chapters on topics related to disability and rehabilitation.Anne W. Riley, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, in the division of Health Services Research, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Riley has expertise in the assessment of mental health and health, especially of children and adolescents, methods development, and evaluation systems for monitoring the outcomes of care for youth.Diana E. Schendel, Ph.D., is a Lead Health Scientist at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She directs both intramural and extramural epidemiologic studies of reproductive and developmental outcomes, with a primary focus on cerebral palsy, autism, and other neurodevelopmental problems.Hilary Siebens, M.D., is Lecturer in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director, PMR Service, at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She received clinical training in internal medicine, geriatrics, and PMR. Her publications address exercise among older adults, models of rehabilitation, and quality improvement initiatives.Lois M. Verbrugge, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Distinguished Senior Research Scientist in the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan. She has contributed to disability theory and has conducted analyses of arthritis disability, gender differences in morbidity and mortality, and co-morbidity, using large-scale data sets. Her recent publications have emphasized the relative benefits of equipment and personal assistance for disability, the interleaving of aging and disability, and global indicators of disability. She was awarded the American Psychological Association Distinguished Contribution to Women’s Health Award in 1994.Whitney P. Witt, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Center for Healthcare Studies at the Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Witt’s prior work focuses predominately on people living with HIV/AIDS, including children and their families. Over the last five years, she has applied her experience in advocacy, policy, and research on vulnerable and high-cost, chronically ill populations to the field of maternal and child health services research. Dr. Witt’s research emphasizes the importance of family adaptation in ensuring the mental health of children with disabilities and for helping these children obtain access to mental health services. Most recently, her work has focused on the impact of maternal depression on familial health and mental health, preventive care practices, and use of health and mental healthcare services. She holds a Ph.D. in health services research and a M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a B.A. in women’s studies and law from Hampshire College.Li-shou Yang, Ph.D., is Research Investigator in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Trained in social demography, her research focuses on the family, the life course, and social change.

Recently, the interaction of mass education and the education of people with disabilities has been widely discussed in Russia. This is positive aspect because for a long time these systems were isolated from the other. There are a lot of reasons for such isolation including the political processes in Russia, the peculiarities of the educational system, and the education and training of general and special education staff.

Lately, some positive tendencies in the development of special education have developed; however, it still needs to be accelerated. For example, recently, a series of legal documents defining the fundamental rights of people with disabilities have occurred as well as the adoption of a state regulatory policy in relation to them. The new law on education, which clearly defines the concepts that had not been fixed in any normative act earlier, has come into force and has improved the opportunities for people with disabilities not only to provide secondary education but also to expand the opportunities for vocational education for them. However, there is still a lot of work to be done.

This chapter will present the system of special education in Russia as it has been shaped throughout the years and will describe the prospects for continued development and existing problems. It should be noted that the Russia’s disability system involves persons with physical and mental impairments for which it has been difficult or impossible to provide education in general education classes.

Historically, the condition we now refer to as intellectual disability has been conceptualized using models that were extension of the medical model. Recent advances, however, have emphasized person-environment fit models of disability that view disability, intellectual, and other cognitive disabilities, as the lack of fit between a person’s capacities and the demands of the context. This chapter examines these shifts in conceptualization and the ways in which this changes how interventions are designed to provide support to enable people with intellectual disability to live, learn, work, and play in their communities. Such interventions and supports include issues pertaining to Universal Design for Learning, multi-tiered systems of supports, and the primacy of promoting the self-determination of people with disabilities. The importance of efforts to promote social inclusion is also discussed, as well as strategies to promote transition to adulthood. Authors from several countries provide examples of how these new intervention paradigms are being implemented across the world.