Exceptionality in School and Society: A Guide for Future Educators

Exceptionality in School and Society: A Guide for Future Educators is written for a unique audience and may appear a bit different than some other popular and excellent textbooks on special education. We have tailored the design, content, and writing style for an audience of aspiring educators who need a text to give them a solid foundation rather than a comprehensive summary. Further, the text has been written to convey important concepts in a manner that is more practical and accessible to future educators with an emerging understanding of the processes that occur to support learners experiencing difficulty in school. We would expect that there will be future special education teachers reading this book, but it is not intended for those individuals alone. In fact, the book is designed to highlight the fundamental issues relevant to all educators in American public schools. The text highlights the big ideas and critical content of special education, as it currently exists, answering the essential questions:

• Who are the children in special education?
• How did they become eligible for special education services?
• What are my responsibilities for meeting the needs of children in special education?
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    This text has been designed with the intent of applying principles of explicit instruction to a textbook. Throughout the text, you will find graphic organizers, summaries of key points, support in developing background knowledge of key concepts and new terms, explanations of terminology in accessible language, and an ongoing emphasis of the big ideas of special education. We would hope that future educators reading this book would be able to develop appropriate background knowledge to understand the historical and contextual issues associated with special education and find the chapters on disability categories useful as primers on vast and complicated topics. We hope that this text will be a positive first step in your development as highly effective teachers for all students in your future classes.

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