Teachers College Press Strengths-Based Approaches to Educating All Learners with Disabilities: Beyond Special Education

Michael Wehmeyer, a leading scholar with over four decades of experience as a teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and advocate, provides a cogent but accessible account of the evolution of special education. Offering a compelling vision of where the field should be headed in the next decade, he notes how the digital revolution has made it possible for all learners to gain access to content and instruction. This text focuses on the need to consider how young people with (and without) disabilities learn and the importance of creating personalizable education as strengths-based approaches to disability move education away from diagnosis and remediation to schoolwide instruction for all students. This book is not written as a criticism of traditional special education models, but instead examines the big ideas for going beyond special education that can improve outcomes for learners with disabilities and prepare them for the 21st-century world.Book Features:Provides a framework for reconceptualizing how students with disabilities are educated.Content aligns with changing contexts and innovations in education, including personalizable education and self-determined learning.Identifies current, well-established practices that can facilitate efforts to address 21st-century learning needs for learners with disabilities.Written in a conversational voice for a broad audience to stimulate consideration of future directions for special education. Review "I found Wehmeyer's historical lens, commitment to elevating expectations for all learners, and focus on innovating with students' strengths and interests in mind to be an important contribution to special education discourse. With optimism and specificity, he articulates a vision of the possibilities of inclusive educational practices by modeling what it means to think beyond special education."--Teachers College Record About the Author Michael L. Wehmeyer is the Ross and Marianna Beach Distinguished Professor in Special Education, chair of the Department of Special Education, and senior scientist and director of the Beach Center on Disability, University of Kansas.