Developmental Perspectives on Children With High-incidence Disabilities

Ronald Gallimore, Lucinda P. Bernheimer, Donald L. MacMillan, Deborah L. Speece, Sharon R. Vaughn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN:
  9780805828252
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135681395
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume has two purposes. The first is to summarize, substantiate, and extend current knowledge on the development of children with high incidence disabilities--most notably, learning disabilities, behavioral disorders, and mild mental retardation. The second is to honor the career of Professor Barbara K. Keogh and her contributions to the developmental study of children with high incidence disabilities. Internationally recognized for her accomplishments, Keogh is esteemed for her originality and clarity of thought. For nearly forty years, she has set an extraordinary model of analytic rigor combined with a kind and generous manner that inspires, supports, and sets an exacting standard of scholarship. The contributing authors to this volume represent only a fraction of the students and scholars touched by her distinguished career.

In conceiving this volume, the editors sought to represent the topics, problems, and issues to which Keogh has devoted herself. They invited chapters that summarize what is known about the high incidence handicapping conditions that her research has mainly addressed and sought to reflect the probing, questioning style that she brings to her own work. Researchers, policymakers, and graduate students in special education and associated disciplines who seek to stay current will find this volume crucial reading.

PART I
Developmental Foundations and Extensions

1 Three Parallels Between the Development of Special Education and the Career of Professor Keogh

Ronald Gallimore
University of California, Los Angeles

A long, distinguished research career relates to an investigator’s chosen field in three ways. First, there are discernible parallels between the development of fields themselves and the evolving interests and activities of distinguished investigators. The parallels are expectable because distinguished researchers are shaped by and, in turn, shape their fields of inquiry both during their work lives and into the future, defining the second and third ways careers and fields relate: The contributions of distinguished scholars guide and goad a field forward during their career, and their visions for the future define the questions and challenges for the next generation of researchers. Thus, it is for the field of special education research and the career of Professor Barbara K.Keogh (BKK).

PARALLELS BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION RESEARCH AND BARBARA K.KEOGH’S CAREER

One of Professor Keogh’s first professional positions was on the psychology staff of the juvenile court and probation office of Oakland, California. Her clients were incarcerated children and adolescents, some abandoned, many abused, and a few who had committed violent felonies. Common to both boys and girls, who otherwise had profoundly different problems, was a “history of early and continuing school problems and a deep antipathy toward school and teachers” (Keogh, in press, p. 6). These observations—the distinct developmental problems (and presumably histories) of boys and girls and their shared distaste for schooling—anticipate career-long interests that parallel evolution of special education research from Keogh’s early days in the court and probation office to her continuing and active research program at UCLA as the century comes to a close. She wrote in an autobiographical chapter:

I think my experience as a clinician was invaluable as it provided a solid “real world” base for interpreting psychological theory and for understanding problem behaviors. It also underscored the complexities and individual variations in the development and expression of problems and the seeming weakness of many therapeutic approaches. Over time I found that information collected in clinical protocols was often irrelevant to the problem being considered, and sometimes unnecessarily invaded areas of personal privacy. I also came to realize that many clinical practices were often inefficient and redundant, based on beliefs rather than on evidence of efficacy. These were discouraging observations which were reinforced when I became involved in special education, as there are many controversial and poorly tested interventions with exceptional children. I also found much of the practice of school psychology to be basically psychometric, limited by legalistic school district requirements and by school psychologists’ strong testing orientation. I recognized the importance of interventions, but I became increasingly skeptical that we were getting the results we sought, be it in clinical or school settings (Keogh, in press, pp. 7–8).

This skepticism, she noted, helped move her into an academic career of research and teaching. What clinicians were doing in the late 1950s and early 1960s had value, she believed, but it was necessary to develop a research base. As Keogh’s academic career began, research in special education began to emerge from numerous strands and in several disciplines. When she accepted a faculty position at UCLA in 1966, few faculty were formally trained in special education, per se, (e.g., Peabody, Illinois, Syracuse were among the few institutions). Into this context, BKK brought her training in developmental psychology, providing a perspective in which children with disabilities were viewed through “developmental lenses.” Regardless of their categorical designation, Keogh insisted that they be viewed first and foremost as children who, like nondisabled children, developed in presumably predictable ways.

Looking back now, we can see that her research career unfolded in parallel with the development of special education research. In fact, Keogh’s research career roughly spans the same period of time that the field of learning disabilities (LD) has been formally recognized. What Torgesen (chap. 8, this volume) writes with respect to gains in learning disabilities research can be said about the field of special education in general:

Over the past 2 decades, our general faith in a scientific approach to the study of learning disabilities has borne considerable fruit. During that time, Keogh’s voice (Keogh, 1993, 1994; Keogh & MacMillan, 1983) has been both strong and consistent in urging us to frame our questions about learning disabilities from a developmental perspective and answer them using the methods of science. (Torgesen, chap. 8, this volume, p. 157)

A principal example of the parallel development of the field and Keogh’s career is the growing appreciation of a developmental perspective. For example, in the past and too often in the present many studies of LD and other special education populations ignored developmental factors (Lyon, chap. 13, this volume). Many investigations examined only one point in time without accounting for developmental differences within a sample, even when they existed. A developmental perspective is required, because patterns of growth and change may vary widely among subgroups of children with high-incidence disabilities. Moreover, human development is seldom linear, and only longitudinal designs permit the investigator to capture the irregular course in developmental trajectories. Understanding how the many personal and social contributions to development and to the expression of disability interact and transact over time requires commitment to longitudinal, developmental research designs.

Because high-incidence disabilities are the intersection of mild mental retardation (MMR), learning disabilities (LD), and behavior disorders (BD) [a continuum ranging from socialized delinquency to mild BD to severely emotionally disturbed (SED)], longitudinal efforts should take into account the range of difficulties (comorbidities) manifested by each child. Forness, Kavale, and Walker (chap. 7, this volume) offer compelling evidence that ignoring comorbid conditions can be counterproductive. For instance, in some cases several years pass before a severe emotional or behavioral disorder is recognized as such, very possibly because most children with severe disorders had either premorbid or comorbid conduct or oppositional defiant disorders that masked the symptoms of more serious psychiatric disorders. Such differences can, and often are, easily obscured when categorical affiliation is the independent variable in an investigation. In many instances, parents or guardians may have been aware that something was seriously amiss in their child’s social or emotional development as early as preschool. Forness et al.’s discussion speaks eloquently to the idea, often expressed by Keogh, that the study of children with disabilities requires an appreciation of the individual differences among those grouped into disability categories. Forness et al.’s review suggests a rich avenue of research, and reinforces the importance of longitudinal developmental studies of what differential assessment, classification, early intervention, or remediation might be required, depending on the type and manifestations of problems, and the developmental status of the individual.

Werner (chap. 2, this volume) argues that longitudinal developmental research with at-risk children made us cognizant of the following: (a) predictions of future outcomes are more accurate for groups rather than for individuals within groups, (b) outcomes vary according to the time and content of assessment, and (c) at any time, risk conditions may be buffered by the presence of protective factors. Thus, the probability of adverse consequences is not fixed or the same across individuals with developmental disabilities. These caveats apply to all types of research undertaken with a developmental perspective: that is, research that focuses on predisposing risk factors (i.e., parental psychopathology); research that monitors the consequences of an adverse event in the pre-, peri-, and post-natal period (i.e., preterm birth); and research with infants and young children with identified problems (e.g., Down syndrome).

The steady accumulation of research-based, developmentally sensitive knowledge is strong evidence that special education research has moved beyond where it was when Professor Keogh worked in a juvenile court. For example, the studies reviewed by Werner (chap. 2, this volume) alert us to a point that Professor Keogh has consistently argued for decades—there are large individual differences among high-risk children in their responses to both negative and positive circumstances in their environment. These variations can, in turn, be expected to show up in evaluation studies of the effects of intervention programs for children with developmental disabilities (Werner, chap. 2, this volume). Beyond what Professor Keogh imagined for special education in the early 1960s, there is now wide appreciation that “research and intervention programs seem to be most useful if they are based on a life-span perspective that goes beyond the narrow confines of the school or therapy setting and demonstrate how effectively individuals with childhood disabilities manage the developmental tasks of adulthood in a world of rapid technological advances and complexity” (Werner, chap. 2, this volume, see page ♠–☼). The individual differences that BKK observed in those days at the Oakland court and probation office have turned out to be fundamental scientific issues for special education researchers of today. As the field develops, we can expect developmentally sensitive research that can lead to more individually tailored and effective treatment and intervention efforts.

An understanding of children with high-incidence disabilities and the effective treatment of such children requires an appreciation of the contextual nature of disabilities. For years, Professor Keogh stressed that children develop in a multitude of different environments, but their disability is specifically linked to only one—the school or classroom—and even that context is analyzed inadequately for effects on development. The importance of school, home, peer group, and neighborhood as environments in which development occurs has implications for the study of these children as well as their treatment. Fuchs and Fuchs (chap. 10, this volume) alert us to the effects school-reform efforts, as reflected by the adoption of performance assessments, may have on children with high-incidence disabilities. They note the policy and research implications of this contextual issue, and warn:

It remains unknown whether schools, in light of constraints on available knowledge and resources, can deliver on promises associated with the implementation of performance assessments. The first order of business is to design technically defensible assessments that can satisfy internal as well as external testing purposes. The second obstacle is to develop methods for helping teachers use these assessments to improve their instructional planning. The third challenge is to identify fair, clear policies that permit students with high-incidence disabilities to participate in these assessment programs in ways that do not threaten their simultaneous, and sometimes competing, need to accomplish more fundamental skills—such as achieving literacy (Fuchs & Fuchs, chap. 10, this volume, see page).

Definitional problems troubled special education when Professor Keogh began her career, and they trouble it still. Lyon (chap. 13, this volume) notes, for example, that the ambiguity inherent in extant definitions of LD leaves the diagnostic and identification process open for wide interpretation and misinterpretation. Imprecise diagnostic decision-making criteria allow some children to be identified as having learning disabilities when they do not, when others with LD are overlooked. Keogh and her colleagues (Keogh, Major-Kingsley, Omori-Gordon, & Reid, 1982) pointed out over 15 years ago that children with LD may differ radically from one another across identifications and programmatic variables, depending on the setting or state from which the sample is collected. Because many research studies have been done with children identified as LD according to these varying and ambiguous criteria (i.e.,“school-identified subjects”), our knowledge of LD has reflected ambiguity as well.

Definitional reliability alone is not sufficient, however. MacMillan and Speece (chap. 6, this volume) remind us of Keogh’s (1987) view that “definition has meaning only when tied to purpose. Because there are multiple purposes in the LD field, there will continue to be multiple definitions” (Keogh, 1987, p. 97). However, because multiple definitions impede policy, research, and practice, it is folly to try to understand learning disabilities by studying children who are school-identified as LD (Keogh, 1987; Keogh & MacMillan, 1983). The reverse is also true: Studying groups identified by research criteria that bear no resemblance to school-identified children with LD produces findings that cannot possibly inform practitioners about the population they serve. The implications for future research and practice may be disconcerting for some. Because public schools are not in the business of providing pristine samples, researchers, if they are to achieve meaningful progress, must be prepared to bear greater research costs in order to increase the precision of sample selection. It is probably accurate to say that definitional issues are discussed in more sophisticated terms than they were 40 years ago, but definitive statements and consensus continue to elude the field, as MacMillan and Speece’s (chap. 6, this volume) discussion suggests.

BARBARA K.KEOGH’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO SPECIAL EDUCATION RESEARCH

The second parallel between the development of a field of research and an individual’s career is the contributions of the latter to the former. Distinguished researchers leave their marks, which can be seen in major dimensions of work in the field. Another mark of the most prominent marks BKK left was her introduction of developmental psychology constructs and measures to the study of problems exhibited by children in high incidence categories. One was her interest in some of Jerome Kagan’s work on cognitive styles, particularly on impulsivity-reflection studied with the matching familiar figures test. In some ways, this interest was prophetic, given the current interest in the role of impulsivity as a contributing factor in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

A third of BKK’s marks concerned the study of temperament. Rothbart and Jones (chap. 3, this volume) note that Professor Keogh has been one of the leaders in research on childhood temperament. Although her work has been particularly focused on the individual child and teacher in the classroom, her contributions to the field extend beyond that setting. She was instrumental in the extension of Thomas and Chess’ concept of “goodness of fit” into the classroom. Keogh (1986) argued that “goodness of fit” of the child to the classroom can refer to both curriculum (the tasks presented to the child) and social interactions (peer and teacher).

Keogh’s influence on research in social development of children with highincidence handicaps is apparent in several respects. Rather than looking for convergence on social outcomes across all students with learning disabilities, Keogh has guided us to look for subtypes of students with particular patterns of difficulty and to examine social, cultural, and environmental explanations for these differences. If we are truly going to provide the most effective services for students and their families with special needs, it will only occur when we understand individual differences.

Students with and without learning disabilities overlap considerably on many measures of social functioning, including domains of self-perception, peer acceptance, and friendships. This overlap provides support for Keogh’s suggestion that we study children along common dimensions rather than based on school-identified categories. Torgesen (chap. 8, this volume) writes that Professor Keogh helped us think about ways to deal with the problem of heterogeneity among children and adults who are categorized as “learning disabled.” Because of the variety of learning disabilities manifested by children and adults, it is not possible to make coherent theoretical or empirical statements about the class as a whole (Keogh et al., 1982; Torgesen, 1993), but rather we should narrow our focus to specific types of learning disabilities (such as disabilities in learning to read,) rather than the larger category of learning disabilities in general.

Finally, in the late 1970s, Professor Keogh began a strand of research that is still in place—the study of children with early developmental delays of uncertain etiology, whose diagnoses and prognoses were ambiguous. In Project REACH (Keogh & Kopp, 1982) children between the ages of 25 and 42 months and their families were recruited; in the most recent follow-up (Bernheimer & Keogh, 1996) they were between 17 and 19 years of age. Project CHILD, begun a decade later (Gallimore, Weisner, Nihira, Keogh, & Bernheimer, 1983), replicated the REACH sampling strategy and enrolled 103 children, who are currently 14 and 15 years of age. In this research, Keogh and her colleagues have addressed a number of issues with which her career is identified: the application of a developmental perspective to children with high-incidence disabilities; the individual differences in patterns of development over time and their predictors (Keogh, Bernheimer, & Guthrie, 1997); and the range in educational and personal-social outcomes for children with nonspecific developmental delays (Keogh, Coots, & Bernheimer, 1995). Keogh’s work in Project CHILD extended to family outcomes as well as child outcomes (Keogh, Bernheimer, Weisner, & Gallimore, 1998), with recent work examining the goodness of fit of main effect and transactional models for testing the influences of family accommodations on child status over time (Keogh, Bernheimer, Gamier, & Gallimore, 1997). Since the passage of Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA), the states are increasingly identifying children for services under the developmental delay criteria. Thus, in addition to contributing to research in special education, this body of work has important policy implications. Keogh’s research provides compelling evidence that the majority of these children do not “outgrow” their delays and will continue to need services as they get older.

Perhaps Keogh’s most indelible contribution to the field of special education research is not widely recognized, because it is seen only in personal contact—her skill in mentoring graduate students and younger colleagues. Her legacy includes a generation of scholars who have been touched by her kind words, encouragement, and tough questions. For example, Sharon Vaughn (personal communication, December 9, 1997) noted:

As a young researcher who was just beginning my career, I heard a speech by Keogh in which she urged the research community to consider issues regarding the conduct of research from a developmental, longitu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Part I: Developmental Foundations and Extensions
• Part II: Diagnosis, Classification, and Intervention
• Part III: Policy
• Part IV: Biographical