Individual differences in general and special education

¶ … Adaptive Skills. Section 14.1

This section of the text, Chapter 14 entitled "Adaptive Skills" deals with the needs of teachers conveying and assessing adaptive skills when teaching students with special needs. Teachers cannot always assume that special needs students come to the classroom with basic skills of self-care and the ability to contain all of their impulses within the context of a school community. Teaching basic life skills is often a critical component of special needs education, particularly if these skills are not, or cannot be reinforced by the student's family at home.

The first sections of the chapter, sections 14.1 and 14.2 note that in conveying such skills, teachers also must respond to students of diverse cultural backgrounds and diverse needs. They must deal with informants in the classroom who observe the children outside of their classroom time, such as during leisure time at home and on the playground, to see how well students use what they have learned in class about such adaptive skills. Teachers must deal with maladaptive behaviors upon the parts of students, if students who perform well in class cannot take these skills into the world.

An effective use of tests and other standardized instruments when assessing such skills can be helpful, but this is not the only or even the most ideal route to understand what skills students need to work on, personally and within their culture.

Section 14.1 and 14.2 of the chapter defines adaptive skills not as a set of specifics, but as general competencies in a cultural and social context that are demanded of an individual in society when that individual communicating and engaged in basic tasks of self-care and care of the home. These skills extend to higher level skills such as social and community relations, the ability to direct one's self in daily life and to engage in productive endeavors to achieve individual and community goals relating health and safety, school, fun, and work. Thus, section 14.1 and section 14.2 relates to how teachers can help students coping with the everyday demands of the student's specific environment.

Reaction to Chapter 14 think that Libby G. Cohen and Lauren Spencier's text Assessment of Children With Special Needs. (Addison Wesley, 2003) contains some strong points relating to the need to help instill basic life skills in all students, and expanding the concept of basic life skills beyond the types of skills that can be conducted within the immediate context of the classroom, like grooming and toilet training. The authors' point that cultural diversity affects adaptive development is important as well, as some mothers and fathers may expect their children to be more or less dependant or independent upon the family unit, within particular cultural settings. For example, I have noticed that children from Hispanic and Mediterranean backgrounds often are more enmeshed within their families, regardless if they are special needs students or not.