Early Intervention

How will historical events and legislation inform the early intervention services you provide to diverse learners and their families?

In 1975 a historical landmark legislation was passed, changing the course of education for children with special needs. This legislation was called the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, Public Law 94-142 (Center for Parent Information and Resources, 2014). It has since been renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA. This law began to focus on ensuring that school-aged children received a free appropriate public education. At this time, early intervention services for children under three were not included in the legislation (Center for Parent Information and Resources, 2014).

In 1986 IDEA was changed to include early intervention that included children from birth to their third birthday. This section of IDEA was changed in 1997 and again in 2004. Each time was improving the legislation for children with special needs and families. It also acknowledges the significant brain development that occurs during the first three years of life (Center for Parent Information and Resources, 2014).

This landmark legislation creating the IDEA law and the reauthorization adding part C, will help educators be informed of the law in early intervention. They can provide young children with services earlier than they usually would with referrals, as soon as a problem is noticed, without having to wait until they begin school to start an IEP. Educators can partner with families and outside professionals to deliver services in the child's natural environment at home or in the child's daycare setting. As an educator, Part C of IDEA will give an understanding of the rights children and families now have, helping with services and resources that we can provide while bridging the IFSP and IEP process. Working together to help families feel safe and confident in the transition to public school.

How do professional standards and ethics influence the early intervention services you provide?

Ethical issues and dilemmas will always arise when working with children and their families. How one addresses and handles these issues will matter a great deal. Using the professional standards and ethical guidelines provided by the DEC for educators will ensure that teachers follow the law and remain honest and genuine in their daily decisions while working with diverse children and families. When used correctly, the DEC’s eight standards can also help prepare educators to accomplish positive outcomes for children and their families. They will have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to perform early intervention services (Council for Exceptional Children, 2022).

The following will discuss how each standard will individually influence the intervention services an educator is able to provide:

Child Development and Early Learning. This standard helps to emphasize an educator's knowledge by ensuring they understand early learning and development theories and philosophies and how it affects their curriculum, assessments, interventions, and even instructional decisions (DEC, 2020). This standard also requires that educators know a child's developmental milestones and unique developmental differences based on their biological and environmental conditions. This includes using knowledge of family differences to determine how it will support or hinder the child's early development and learning as early intervention and teaching are carried out (DEC, 2020). By understanding characteristics and individual differences among abilities, including developmental delays and disabilities, an educator can better serve the child and their families (Council for Exceptional Children, 2022).

Partnering with Families. Knowing family-centered practices and theories, educators can build partnerships and relationships with a child's family (Council for Exceptional Children, 2022). It is important to build trusting, respectful, and positive relationships with families, assuring them that they are important members of their child's development and learning. Advocating for the child while supporting families and including them in the decision-making process is a vital part of this standard and a vital role in an educator's practice (DEC, 2020). Communication plays another role in this standard; as an educator, when talking to families about their child, the information being shared needs to be clear, direct, and easy to understand, leaving out jargon or terms that families may not understand. This will help to ensure that families are well-informed and can set practical goals and priorities for their children.

Collaboration and Teaming. Through this standard, an educator will meet its requirements by working closely with families and other professionals as they relate to children with special needs. Educators will partner with families and professionals to create a child's individual plan with unique resources and supports to ensure they receive what they need to develop and learn. Educators will also support the various transitions the child needs when transitioning from one program to another as the child ages.

Assessment Processes. This standard is important in an educator's practice as it ensures that they understand the purposes of assessments, including ethical and legal considerations, and use the information to develop appropriate tools and methods that cater to the child, family, and program as a whole (DEC, 2020). This includes providing formal and informal assessments in a way that fits the needs of the individual child. Educators will also observe, document, and share assessment details with families and other professional team members to help determine the child's intervention plans, goals, and instruction (DEC, 2020).

Application of Curriculum Frameworks in the Planning of Meaningful Learning Experiences. As an educator working with children, it is important to ensure that the curriculum used is evidence-based and developmentally appropriate for the children. This includes culturally responsive learning experiences that support the unique differences of all children and families (DEC, 2020). Educators must also use their knowledge and wisdom of their selected educational field to ensure that state and national standards are followed and upheld. This standard will act as a guide to ensure that educators make decisions about what, when, and how they promote the child's learning. Focusing on creating learning experiences that cater to a child's unique developmental, language, social-emotional, cognitive, and physical needs (DEC, 2020).

Using Responsive and Reciprocal Interactions, Interventions, and Instruction. Through this standard, an educator will inform practice by addressing, planning, and implementing evidence-based practices that support a child's learning and development (Council for Exceptional Children, 2022). These practices promote social and emotional growth and learning through play while fostering responsive adult-child interactions. Educators will proactively provide predictable routines and engaging activities in an inclusive setting to help to prevent and deter challenging behaviors (DEC, 2020).

Professionalism and Ethical Practice. This standard helps educators to be reminded of the importance of participating in local, regional, national, or international professional organizations and trainings (DEC, 2020) to continue to develop and grow their knowledge and understanding of ethical and cultural changes and issues that may arise among their students and families. This knowledge and understanding will help to improve the outcomes for the children and families they serve (DEC, 2020). By continually growing and expanding their knowledge, they can address the areas that need improvement, helping to advocate for changes that need to be made. Educators maintain a high level of professional expertise and integrity, exercising informed professional judgment by practicing within ethical and legal guidelines (DEC, 2020).

EI/ECSE Field and Clinical Experience. This is the 8th and final standard that educators will use. When following these standards, educators will progress through various fields of experience as a child ages, changing their responsibilities to the child and their families. When working in a facility, it is important to know which early childhood age range they are licensed for and their roles in the early intervention process based on the child's age.

What do you see your role in developing and implementing IFSPs for children from diverse backgrounds?

As an educator, creating meaningful relationships is the most critical role in developing and implementing IFSPs for children from diverse backgrounds. To do this, an educator needs to stay in constant communication with the family, discussing and learning about their wishes and concerns for their child, activities, and routines they have at home and asking questions about things that work well at home that can be implemented into the classroom (USDA, 2021). Communicating with families creates a welcoming and safe environment that builds trust, so families are comfortable sharing about their children. Another reason it is essential to have a strong relationship with parents is that often children begin daycare or preschool without a diagnosis of a delay or disability. Often educators are the first ones to bring an issue to the family’s attention. Therefore, it is detrimental for educators to have a strong bond with families to make this news easier to hear and a willingness to accept help for their child. As educators, we will often act as a liaison with resources and support, connecting to other professionals and services to help the families reach their goals and outcomes for their children. An educator’s role will also include having relationships with these resources and services previous to connecting families to them, including up-to-date information on referrals and the resources available to the center we teach at (USDA, 2021). Another critical role of educators in the IFSP process is providing input about the child through assessments, questionnaires, and observation to help professionals be able to diagnose the child or see that there is a delay and need for IFSP services. Our role in providing input will also include the implementation of an IFSP, using the skills provided by professionals to help the child positively reach their outcomes. Lastly, as an educator working with diverse children in the IFSP process, it will be our duty to be a bridge in the transition from an IFSP to an IEP. Educators must be familiar with their role in this process, how they will help families, and be able to help ease the stress from a family-focused program to a child-focused program that goes from a natural environment to the least restrictive environment.

How will you use a variety of intervention strategies that provide equitable and inclusive learning opportunities for diverse children and their families?

As educators, we want to provide students with the best learning experience possible in our classroom. This includes diverse learners and children with special needs. It is essential to use various intervention strategies to provide children with the most equitable and inclusive learning opportunities. By using teacher-mediated strategies, educators can ensure that they provide an environmentally accessible classroom that promotes acceptance while using prompts and praise, accepting different levels of participation, and monitoring communicative input. Peer-mediated strategies will be used to expand on a child’s learning by pairing children with varying needs with typically developing children. Lastly, through routine-based strategies, educators can use a child’s familiar everyday routines to implement meaningful learning opportunities.

The following will dive deeper into each strategy helping map out how they will be used to provide equitable and inclusive learning opportunities.

Teacher Mediated Strategy

Teacher-mediated strategies are used to provide equitable and inclusive learning opportunities by following five key components that are each equally important and should be followed. The first is environmental arrangement, which includes how the physical classroom is arranged, the materials available, and structured learning activities (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). As an educator following the DEC Recommended Practices (2014) of Environment E2, “Practitioners consider Universal Design for learning principles to create accessible environments” (Division for Early Childhood, 2014, p. 9), will ensure that the environment provided to students is appropriate for all their developmental and academic needs. When arranging the classroom, the most popular areas are close to each other and away from the quiet areas, all materials are accessible to the children and safe and stimulating, and there is enough space to easily maneuver through the classroom (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). As educators, we must also ensure that we have structured play activities embedded into the classroom routines and curriculum; this will encourage deeper thought processing, expand communication skills, and increase a child’s social interactions.

The second essential component of teacher-mediated strategies is promoting acceptance. Educators use this teacher-mediated strategy to create and prepare the environment to be more accepting of a child with special needs (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). This requires an educator to be sensitive to every child’s needs and to encourage social interaction among one another. One way to achieve this is through interactive small group activities, pairing children with special needs and those without. Encourage children to have empathy and understanding toward their peers, communicate with them how to be helpful and kind, using social stories and discussions about children different than themselves. “Promoting acceptance of children with delays or disabilities may be one of the essential elements for achieving authentic inclusion in later years beyond the preschool setting” (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020, p. 264).

The third component of teacher-mediated strategies that educators need to consider when promoting an equitable and inclusive learning experience is the provision of prompts and praise. DEC Recommended Practices (2014) under Instruction (INS4) states, “Practitioners plan for and provide the level of support, accommodations, and adaptations needed for the child to access, participate and learn within and across activities and routines” (Division for Early Childhood, 2014, p. 11). Therefore, the educator must decide what they are teaching, how they plan to present it, and what they expect the child to gain from it. When providing the lesson, educators often need to provide assistance or “prompts” to children in order to help them give the desired response, action, or behavior (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). There are many ways to prompt a student when performing teacher-mediated strategies successfully. A few that are the most beneficial in personal experience are modeling, visual, physical, and verbal. When the desired response, action, or behavior is performed, praise is needed to reinforce their actions and promote continued engagement in the activity.

The fourth component of teacher-mediated strategies is accepting different levels and types of participation. When an educator accepts the amount of participation a child with special needs can provide (even if some days they can provide more), we allow them to become more engaged in group activities on their terms and abilities. Adapting participation can look different for each child. For example, a child who is non-verbal might point to a picture board instead of verbalizing their answer. Adapting participation based on an individual child’s ability also reinforces acceptance and understanding of peers as they are still included in group activities.

The fifth and final teacher-mediated strategy is monitoring communicative input. This is another essential component, as it allows children with diverse needs and abilities to participate in group settings (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). When verbalizing with the class, being aware of how we communicate is essential, as it can significantly impact a child’s ability to participate. A child with language or comprehension delays will not understand a task as quickly as the rest of the class. Therefore, instruction and prompts need to be in a simple form, with clear pronunciation and easy to understand. An educator’s tone, volume, and speed of speech might also need to be adjusted. Being aware and able to adjust communication techniques will make all the difference when ensuring that a teacher is meeting all the needs of children.

Peer-Mediated Strategy

“Peer-mediated strategies involve carefully selecting peers who are typically developing, teaching selected peers specific ways to engage their classmates with disabilities, encouraging the peers to persist in their attempts with children with delays or disabilities, providing structured opportunities for the children to interact with one another to use the skills taught, and providing support (reinforcement and prompts by adults) during the structured opportunities” (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020, p. 268). Using Peer-mediated strategies such as peer initiation and cooperative learning, an educator promotes engagement and learning while teaching new skills to the children. Using peer initiation, an educator can assist children who are typically developing in initiating play with children with special needs. To help teach this concept and create a comfortable exchange, teachers can use social stories and discussions about how to help and play with peers who look and learn differently. Encourage and prompt the children during group activities and play on varying concepts such as sharing, initiating, responding, and persistence (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). Another good strategy for peer-mediated interactions is cooperative learning, which like peer initiation, involves children with special needs working closely with typical children. The difference is that cooperative learning requires the children to work together for the same goal. This may not be appropriate for early childhood children without close teacher supervision and assistance. This is mainly because young children, even typically developing, are still working on developing critical social-emotional skills.

Routine-Based Strategy

Using routine-based strategies, educators will provide equitable and inclusive learning opportunities for diverse learners and children with special needs by taking advantage of the use of predictable schedules and routines that already occur during the day, such as mealtimes, toileting, circle time, centers, and transitions (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). This also aligns with the DEC’s Recommended Practices of Instruction (INS5) “Practitioners embedded instruction within and across routines, activities, and environments to provide contextually relevant learning opportunities” (Division for Early Childhood, 2014, p. 12). Therefore, by following the DEC’s Recommended Practices and using routine-based strategies, educators will promote learning in an environment and routine that children are already familiar with and comfortable with. Children with special needs require consistency. Children can learn new skills without disrupting the flow of their day by providing functional and meaningful learning opportunities during regular routines and activities (Jennings et al., 2012). Performing this can be as simple as promoting fine motor skills during snack time by using their pincer fingers to pick up the snack. Or encouraging language skills by noticing the child wants more, stating what they want in a complete sentence, then shortening it and/or signing to suit their need (Gargiulo & Kilgo, 2020). By implanting learning through a child’s routine, we are creating the core feature of a child’s IFSP: providing services in the child’s natural environment (Jennings et al., 2012).

What is your plan for collaborating with families and other professionals?

Educators can collaborate with families and other professionals using the DEC Recommended Practices as a guide to ensure they are ethical, logical, and professional in their role working with diverse children. And to help implement strategies to better serve the children and families they encounter. Educators must use excellent communication skills to interact and partner with colleagues and other professionals to create and implement IFSPs to serve the children they teach and create positive outcomes. They must build strong relationships with both families and other professionals. Building relationships with professionals and outside resources is essential for serving families with up to date information. Empowering families with a voice will help them understand that they are their child's first teacher, advocate, and IFSP team member. Educators will listen closely to their concerns, help them with the needed resources and support to help their children, and set family-focused goals and priorities. Educators must have the knowledge and professional development training to educate families and colleagues about the IFSP process, the signs to look for in children with suspected disabilities and delays, and their center's available resources. Every educator must be knowledgeable about the IFSP process and the rights children and families have to ensure that the children receive the resources and support needed for the best possible outcome. Above all, educators must provide a safe, welcoming, and comforting environment for successful collaboration, with a willingness to have an open mind, leaving personal bias behind.

References:

Center for Parent Information & Resources. (2014, March). Early intervention, then and now. https://www.parentcenterhub.org/ei-history/#now
Council for Exceptional Children. (2022, April). Initial practice-based professional standards for early interventionists/early childhood special educators 2020.https://www.dec-sped.org/ei-ecse-standards
Division for Early Childhood. (2014, April 14). DEC recommended practices Links to an external site.. https://divisionearlychildhood.egnyte.com/dl/7urLPWCt5U
Division of Early Childhood (2020). Initial Practice-Based Professional Standards for Early Interventionists/Early Childhood Special Educators 2020. https://www.dec-sped.org/ei-ecse-standards.
Gargiulo, R. M., & Kilgo, J. L. (2020). An introduction to young children with special needs: Birth through age eight (5th ed.). SAGE Publishing.
Jennings, D., Hanline, M. F., Woods, J. (2012). Using routines-based interventions in early childhood special education. Retrieved November 13, 2022, from https://www.wvsha.org/wp-content/uploads/events-manager-uploads/session-handouts/Handout%20Preschool%20Language%202.pdf
USDA. (2021). Working with Families of Children with Special Needs. Virtual Lab School. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://www.virtuallabschool.org/preschool/family-engagement/lesson-4