JSET ejournal
Core Curriculum in Assistive
Technology:
In-Service for Special Educators and Therapists
Frankie K. Dissinger
University of Missouri-Kansas City
When Congress amended the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act (IDEA) in 1990, the definitions of Assistive Technology Devices
and Services, which first appeared in the Technology Related
Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988, were
applied to the needs of children. In 1997, the Amendments of
IDEA added a requirement for Individualized Education Program
(IEP) teams to consider students' needs for assistive technology
devices and services as a part of the process of developing an
IEP (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Amendments
of 1997, 2000).
The legal mandate for IEP teams to consider assistive technology
(AT) needs offered no direction in how to document whether AT
was considered. The majority of school districts in one mid-western
state simply added yes and no boxes to this section
of the IEP. Others required that IEP teams write a narrative
of their discussion about students' needs for AT. Irrespective
of the district's documentation procedure, IEP teams struggled
in their efforts to make decisions about AT for students with
disabilities.
Special educators and therapists contacted a state wide technology
center for guidance to meet the legal mandate to consider AT
in students' IEPs. They wanted to know (a) how to fund the equipment,
(b) what AT devices were available, (c) how to decide what device
would work for a child, (d) how they could make decisions for
children when they had very little or no training in AT themselves,
or (e) where they could send children for an AT evaluation. The
technology center staff initiated a fact-finding process to determine
how they could provide training to respond to the concerns expressed
by special educators and therapists. This process led to the
development of a course sequence offered across the state at
several sites. This article describes how the course was developed,
the in-service training sequence, the AT decisions that course
participants made, and follow-up consumer satisfaction information.
The following questions guided the decisions involved in the
development and refinement of the course during the four years
it was offered:
1. What are the elements of inservice training that educators
need in order to make good decisions about AT for students with
disabilities?
2. Does the inservice training sequence provide sufficient information
and practice for educators to make appropriate decisions about
AT for students with disabilities?
What categories of AT devices are selected for children and youth
with disabilities?
Background
Technology Center and Staff
The technology center, funded for fifteen years by the state's
division of special education, was housed in an urban university
in the school of education. The focus of services included training,
information, and technical assistance in technology and assistive
technology. Teachers, therapists, and administrators in K-12
school districts accessed the services most often; however, parents
of children with disabilities and individuals from state agencies
or colleges and universities also contacted the technology center
on a regular basis.
