Instructional Strategies for Special Education Consultants

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Abstract
In a consulting model, general and special educators collaboratively determine and implement interventions to facilitate the appropriate education of handicapped students. This article presents a model for examining and selecting assessment and instructional strategies for use by the consulting team. Variables affecting the success of mainstreamed handicapped students, including the attitudes and skills of the teacher, student, and student's peers are discussed and effective strategies for assessing and intervening in these variables are proposed. In addition, several general principles are elaborated for use in selecting among possible interventions. These principles include how effectively the skill will generalize to other settings, whether the strategy will benefit other low performing students, the ease of data collection and evaluation, and the ease of implementation. It is suggested that educational plans will have a greater likelihood of successful adoption if their selection is based upon these principles.