Special education placement decisions made by teams and individuals: A cross-cultural perspective
✍ Scribed by Steven I. Pfeiffer
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1982
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 399 KB
- Volume
- 19
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0033-3085
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The present study looked at whether special education placement decisions made by teams are superior to those made by individuals. The investigation was conducted in Puerto Rico to determine whether the benefits of the cooperative group process exist in another culture. Results indicated that teams in Puerto Rico generated significantly less variability (i.e., errors) in their placement decisions than did the same specialists acting independently.
Two Public Law 94-142 standards related to the classification and individual program development of special education students specify that evaluation and placement decisions be made by a multidisciplinary team. It is apparent that the architects of PL 94-142 felt that the team concept should become an important structural feature of the special education system, Although not explicitly stated in the document, one can surmise that the rationale for the inclusion of a multidisciplinary team was to insure against possible errors that any individual acting alone might make, while recognizing that only a group of specialists from different disciplines could effectively deal with the increasingly complex set of problems presently facing educators.
A number of writers have advocated the team approach, including Buktenica (1970); Falik, Grimm, Preston, and Konno (1971);Hogenson (1973); Pfeiffer (1981); and
Trachtman (Note 1). However, an equally vocal group have criticized the school-based assessment team, pointing out that it increases role confusion, is duplicative of effort, is