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Objective: The aim of this study is therefore twofold, first to accurately examine the ADHD-specific attitudes of New South Wales Government school in-service teachers using the Scale for ADHD-Specific Attitudes (Authors 2016), and second, to determine if any of their socio-demographic features could predict their attitudes Method: Exploratory factor analysis found a 5-factor structure, and multiple regression analysis was performed to establish the existence of groups of variables with respect to teacher attitudes towards ADHD-type behaviours and any demographic predictors of teacher attitudes. Results: The final regression model found significant predictors of each factor with R2 values ranging from .007 to .147. Conclusion: This study illustrated that teachers had generally positive attitudes towards students who display ADHD-type behaviours, however, they found the externalised behaviours of ADHD irritating in the classroom and found teaching students with ADHD-type behaviours difficult, and teachers want more information about ADHD and how to manage it in the classroom.

The aim of this systematic review was to map the peer-reviewed literature (2009–2019) relating to school involvement with wraparound models in the support of students with complex needs. Specific research questions addressed explored the evidence base of the efficacy of wraparound with these students and barriers and enablers in the provision of wraparound services. Database searches were conducted and a total of 50 articles were identified. The analysis revealed eight different aspects of wraparound efficacy, with mixed results. Nine factors were identified as having a positive enabling, or disabling, effect on the provision of effective wraparound services. The wraparound programs were varied in their nature and in their successful implementation, with time to allow the program to mature and adherence to the 10 principles of the wraparound process emerging as enabling factors for wraparound success.

The aim of this research project was to examine how wraparound supports are represented in the Australian national and NSW state polices and schools and to identify best practices and models of wraparound support. The grey literature from seven sectors, i.e., youth justice, out of home care, disability, mental health, drug and alcohol, homelessness and education was searched and analysed. There is no consensus on a definition or understanding of wraparound across the sectors, the effectiveness of wraparound models is rarely assessed, and schools are not typically included in the wraparound teams of the other sectors.

There is a call for today’s teachers to be globally literate as their student populations become more diverse. Immersive experiences in other countries with international colleagues and students can support the development of global literacy and culturally responsive practice. Preservice special education teachers do not often have opportunities to gain these experiences. The authors use examples of existing international collaborations in special education to illustrate a variety of ways that preservice and in-service teachers can experience international collaboration.

The number of students with disability enrolled in tertiary education has increased significantly in the last decade. This has prompted a move to make learning and teaching more accessible to all students. Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, can be used as a framework to guide tertiary educators in the planning and delivery of their courses. The effective implementation of UDL allows all students to access course materials, removing the need for some of them to actively seek support and disclose their disabilities. A rapid review was conducted to locate both theory and evidence to support the use of UDL at the tertiary level, as well as to seek guidance for its effective implementation. A total of 52 articles were included in the study and annotation was used for data extraction. Results indicated that UDL is well supported by theory, and studies revealed high satisfaction rates for UDL for both students and instructors. Implications for practice are suggested. As the current study was conducted at a university in Australia, the current research (which is largely from the United States) has been examined with the Australian university context in mind.

In recent decades, China has experienced rapid economic development, and the education system has significantly improved, especially in special education. However, there are still some issues directly influencing access to and quality of special education in remote and rural areas of China, although the Chinese government has enacted some policies to promote equity and quality of education for students with disabilities. This highlights the need for additional efforts by all levels of government authorities. This column presents a summary of current issues related to the educational provision for students with disabilities in remote or rural areas of China and brief descriptions of main policies in rural education and special education. Suggestions for how to improve the development of special education in rural areas are also provided.

BACKGROUND Mobile technology has the potential to assist adults with intellectual disabilities to initiate and maintain social connections in important areas of their lives, such as family, friends and work/volunteering. METHOD The present study investigated how specific aspects of mobile device/app use are associated with the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities. The study also examined what background attributes were associated with particular patterns of mobile device/app use and social inclusion. RESULTS The findings revealed that the use of mobile technology among adults with intellectual disabilities was positively associated with their social inclusion with family, friends and work/volunteering. There were also some key background attributes associated with participants' use of mobile technology and the extent to which mobile technology assisted their social inclusion. CONCLUSIONS Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

Dr. Sarup Mathur is the Ryan C. Harris Professor of Special Education in the Division of Educational Leadership at Arizona State University. She is nationally recognized as a leader in the fields of emotional and behavioral disorders and juvenile justice, particularly specializing in the areas of social skills and re-entry of adjudicated youth. She has been the co-editor of a yearly special issue of Education and Treatment of Children on severe behavior disorders of children and youth, is the former secretary and president of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division of Emotional and Behavioral Health, and has enabled teachers in juvenile justice to support adjudicated youth by developing transitioning planning processes. She has written numerous scholarly articles, published and edited books, and has secured extensive grant funding to support the training of doctoral students specializing in working with adjudicated youth.

Students with autism and intellectual disabilities experience many transitions during their schooling, and a large body of literature is devoted to best practices in transition planning and support. The Taxonomy for Transition Programming 2.0 is a research-based model that provides best practice suggestions to guide the planning of various transitions and contexts. The researchers aimed to use the current qualitative study to discover the transition planning practices used to support students with autism and intellectual disabilities in inclusive school settings when transitioning from primary to secondary schools and from secondary school to postschool life in New South Wales (Australia). The practices that emerged were then examined for alignment with the Taxonomy for Transition Programming 2.0. The inductive content analysis of interviews with 8 parents and 13 teachers indicated that although most of the areas of the Taxonomy are represented in the planning processes, there is room for improvement, particularly in the areas of formal individual education program and transition planning, student involvement, information sharing, and program assessment. The results highlighted the importance of formal student- and family-centred planning processes to the success of both transitions. The results were used to make further recommendations for future research, policy, and practice.

With the rising use of service dogs to support students with disabilities, it is important that teachers are knowledgeable about how they can be incorporated into their classroom. A recent ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court has highlighted the legal responsibility of schools to allow access to the service dogs of students. However, information focusing on the preparation of teachers for this possibility is lacking. This article provides both general and special education teachers with guidelines for including service dogs in their classroom. Background information regarding service dogs is included in addition to practical considerations concerning students, the classroom, the service dog, and planning process.

Radical subject acceleration, or moving students through a subject area faster than is typical, including skipping grades, is a widely accepted approach to support students who are gifted and talented. This is done in order to match the student’s cognitive level and learning needs. This case study explored radical subject acceleration for gifted students by focusing on one school’s response to the learning needs of a ten year old mathematically gifted student. It provides insight into the challenges, accommodations and approach to radical subject acceleration in an Australian school. It explored the processes and decisions made to ensure that a gifted student’s learning needs were met and identified salient issues for radical subject acceleration. Lessons learned from this case study may be helpful for schools considering radical acceleration.

School connectedness is the extent to which a student feels that adults and peers at school care about his or her overall well-being. Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) may experience difficulty with developing high levels of school connectedness, which may lead to engagement in health-risk behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine the levels of school connectedness of students with EBD and compare them with their general education peers. A questionnaire was created for this study with participants attending elementary, middle, and high schools. The results of the analysis indicated that of the four factors of school connectedness (that is, school bonding, school attachment, school engagement, and school climate), the students with EBD reported significantly lower levels of school bonding than did their general education peers. The results indicate that students with EBD experience school differently than their general education peers, particularly in terms of school bonding.

The educational inclusion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be challenging, due to behavioural issues. Scant research has been conducted to investigate behavioural interventions for students with ASD in the Chinese context. Since special education in China varies greatly from that in western countries such as Australia, particularly in the area of the effective application of evidence-based practices, this must be a priority for researchers and teachers alike. The current study employed a literature review to identify effective practices to support the acquisition of appropriate behaviours of children with autism in different educational environments and contexts. These findings were then used in combination with an analysis of international, Australian, and Chinese policies to make suggestions and recommendations for special education reform in China. Results suggest that antecedent interventions, Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA), social stories, and teaching self-managemen...

Background Student well-being, though widely researched, continues to be a poorly defined concept. Few student well-being studies focus on students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who may have a poorer sense of well-being compared to typically developing students. Aims The current study aims to explore the conceptualisation, barriers, and ways to enhance the well-being of students with ASD from their perspectives. Methods and procedures Photovoice, a participatory research method was used to elicit the views of 16 high school students with ASD to explore the concept of well-being. Data analysis was conducted using a grounded theory approach. Outcomes and results Students conceptualised well-being as multidimensional, identified sensory barriers, social barriers, and barriers that were associated with learning, and several external and internal assets that could support their well-being. Conclusions and implications To promote well-being, barriers should be mitigated, while external and internal assets developed. Researchers should also consider the use of Photovoice to enable students’ meaningful participation in research studies.

In recent years, student well-being is increasingly on the research agenda. Yet, little is known about the well-being of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study used semi-structured interviews and sought the views of 20 high school teachers of students with ASD to investigate the concept of well-being for this group of students. Grounded theory approaches were used to analyse the data. Teachers conceptualised well-being as consisting of three domains (i.e., peer relationships, sense of safety, engagement), identified three categories of barriers (i.e., teacher's ability to effectively teach students with ASD, impact of ASD, environment), and several external and internal assets of well-being. Discussion on recommended practices for schools to enhance the well-being of students with ASD are provided.

Students receiving behavioral supports in the third tier of the schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) framework are often identified as having emotional and behavior disabilities. Although educators implement evidence-based practices with fidelity, these practices are not always effective in supporting students with emotional and behavior disabilities to improve their behavior. This article provides an overview of the process of data-based individualization (DBI) to intensify behavioral interventions for students identified as having emotional and behavior disabilities receiving Tier 3 supports. The steps of the DBI process are explained, with a focus on using data to intensify interventions. These practices are examined as components of the broader SWPBIS Tier 3 framework.

This study explores South Korean pre-service primary teachers’ attitudes towards gifted students and gifted education. Qualitative focus group interviews were conducted with 13 South Korean undergraduates who were in their final year of a primary education. Analysis of the interviews revealed that culture was a major factor that had affected the pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards gifted education. Even though the participants agreed with the necessity of gifted education to meet gifted students’ distinctive intellectual and emotional needs, they tended to have negative attitudes towards the gifted education in South Korea because of the highly competitive educational atmosphere. The South Korean pre-service teachers admitted that taking a gifted education course could be somewhat helpful but not enough. They suggested that there should be more elective gifted education course offerings and that the current compulsory special education courses should devote more time and space to gifted education.

This chapter explores ways that tablet devices can be used to support the inclusion of students with disability in inclusive classrooms. A short description of the evidence of efficacy of using tablets to support students with disability is provided. Ways to use tablet devices to support students with disability in the areas of communication, academics, organisation and social emotional skills to support their inclusion in mainstream classrooms are addressed. Lastly, barriers to using tablets to support students with disability in inclusive classrooms are described and ways to remove these barriers are suggested.

The use of real-time technology has caused the world to “shrink,” with society becoming more global and information- and communication-based. The amount of information that people are exposed to continues to increase exponentially, requiring a new definition of literacy that includes digital literacy and other 21st-century skills. However, the implementation of technology in education has not kept up with how it is used in peoples’ lives. The main role of teachers is to prepare students to become literate, globally informed citizens. Generation Z, or the technology generation, are tech savvy and used to instant action and access to information due to their experiences with the Internet. Although students are proficient with and regularly use mobile devices and other information and communication technologies (ICTs), their teachers have difficulty integrating these technologies into their pedagogy beyond basic functional uses. The goals of educational technology are often not readily apparent in classrooms; this is problematic, as technology has the potential to be used for critical thinking, collaboration, and the dissemination of new knowledge. Therefore, teacher education programs have a responsibility to ensure that teachers of the future are globally aware, proficient with current innovative technology tools and information resources, and have the ability to adapt to tools and educational strategies of the future. Supporting preservice teachers in their acquisition of digital literacy can widen their views of the world and strengthen their skills in locating, assessing, organizing, analyzing, and presenting information. Teaching preservice teachers to use the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model and embedding new technologies throughout teacher education programs can support preservice teachers’ global understandings and information literacy, as well as develop their expertise in the use of the technology itself. Instruction in digital literacies can help preservice teachers to hone their teaching skills and minimize the isolation and anxieties that are often experienced during their field experiences.

Researchers note that the transitions of secondary students with disability in and out of the juvenile justice system are problematic for both the young person and leadership teams of their sending and receiving schools. Much of the literature focuses on barriers to successful transitions; however, there are some accounts of positive transition practices. In this article, we identify these positive practices and outline the steps school principals and executives involved in transitioning secondary school students with disability in and out of juvenile justice settings can take to smooth the way and improve student outcomes for this vulnerable population.

The aim of the study was to identify transition planning processes as reported by participants for school-aged youth serving custodial sentences in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, and to establish the extent to which these reflect current evidence or research-based transition practices reported in the literature. The authors used inductive content analysis methodology to analyse interviews with 44 staff members from the education and juvenile justice systems in NSW. The findings of the study indicate that although a number of evidence/research-based practices are being used, there are some that still need to be implemented. Specifically, there is a need for more involvement of the families of incarcerated youth and support for the self-determination of the young people in custody.

•17 articles were reviewed that included organizational barriers.•Intra and inter-organizational barriers were identified.•Intra-organizational barriers were found in most organizations.•Poor collaboration, lack of supports and vertical service provision gaps were found.•Recommendations for policy and practice change are offered.

This study investigated the collaborative transition process for youth incarcerated for three or more months in New South Wales (‘NSW’) juvenile justice facilities. Qualitative methodology was empl...

Mobile technology has become ubiquitous in the education and support of individuals with disabilities. While this practice is supported under the Universal Design for Learning framework, research in the area has yet to establish a solid evidence base. The majority of the studies in existence are single-subject design studies with a dearth of replication to support their results, and many do not meet the Council for Exceptional Children’s Standards for Evidence-Based Practices in Special Education guidelines. The following is a meta-analysis of studies that have been conducted in the area of using mobile technology to support individuals with disabilities. Types of mobile technology, how technology is used, and the effectiveness of its use with this population are explored. The results indicated although there is some evidence of effectiveness to support the use of mobile technology, more research in the area is needed.

This article examines the planning processes involved for students with developmental disabilities (i.e., intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorders) as they transition through different stages of schooling in the United States. In order to obtain an understanding of current practices in this area, 167 teachers from three states (California, Texas and North Carolina) were surveyed about transition practices for students with developmental disabilities. The transitions from primary to middle school, middle to high school, and high school to post-school life, as well as home-school collaboration, were the focus. The teachers responded to demographic and open-ended survey questions. Findings indicated that the lack of active student involvement in transition planning remains a serious concern across all three transitions.

Incarcerated youth often have complex needs. Past researchers have reported that these young people have high drop-out rates and early disengagement from school. This study adds to the limited research on the ways both education and juvenile justice personnel support the engagement of incarcerated youth in education ‘behind the fence’. The authors analysed the educational provisions for incarcerated youth in juvenile justice centres in New South Wales, Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 44 employees of juvenile justice and education sectors. The interview transcriptions were analysed using an inductive content analysis. Findings suggest that the education units were employing practices that promote student engagement, and recommendations include formal self-advocacy skills development and supporting students in developing intrinsic motivation.

The implementation of a transition model, the flexible integration model, was investigated in a school in Sydney, Australia, using an exploratory single case study design (Rowley, 2002). It is a person-centred model designed to assist students in transitioning from a special school for students with emotional and behavioural disabilities to mainstream settings. Students enrol in mainstream classes in areas that interest them academically and vocationally, while receiving support in developing the necessary social and behavioural skills to successfully fully transition to mainstream and post-school settings. The model, based on the person-centred planning framework, was implemented with 1 student during the last 2 terms of a school year. The outcomes and effectiveness of adopting the model were evaluated by analysing the student's behaviour and attendance, and interviews with principals, teachers, and paraprofessionals. Results indicated improvement in the student's behaviour, attendance, and interpersonal skills.

Conducting classroom-based research can be difficult, often fraught with challenges, analogous to riding a canoe down the rapids. The dynamics of classroom-based research often require flexibility on the parts of both the researcher and school personnel. Classroom-based research is viewed here through a framework of problem-based methodology as developed by Robinson and adapted to real-world research in the classroom. A simple and adaptable model of the nature of schools as organisations is discussed, and problem-based methodology is used to explore how such complex and dynamic institutions maintain the ability to function effectively. Problem-based methodology is then applied to the development of a theoretical framework to clarify the processes of recruiting participant schools and of conducting the research. The framework is operationalised through a brief account of one researcher’s experiences.

High quality research has established an evidence base for a number of practices that produce positive outcomes for students with disabilities. However, teachers’ beliefs may hinder their use of these evidence-based practices. This literature review comprises a systematic search locating research at the intersection of teachers’ beliefs and evidence-based practices for students with disabilities, published in peer-reviewed journals between 2001 and 2018. Ten articles met the inclusion criteria. Results were synthesised to an a priori model depicting factors that influence teachers’ beliefs. Five new factors specific to practices for students with disabilities emerged: (i) co-teaching, (ii) itinerant teachers in a supporting role, (iii) different practices of special education and general education teacher, (iv) insufficient professional development, and (v) insufficient time.