Sourcebook

By federal law, students with physical disabilities must be be allowed to participate fully in laboratory science courses. This is easy enough to say, but hard to do. Science teachers are wary of the extra time and effort required of them. There are safety and equipment issues. Can the student operate a bunsen burner or other special equipment? How will he or she handle dissection? Will the entire curriculum have to be "dumbed down" to accomodate a single student with physical limitations? What about the endless meetings with special education people and demanding parents? Wouldn't it be simpler to just put the student in a study hall? Not to diminish the complexities of teaching science to a physically disabled student, but many so-called obstacles are simply misperceptions, easily overcome with creativity or minor accommodation. We invite your comments, ideas, and suggestions, and as they arrive this website will be continuously updated. An expanded version of this site will be available in book form, but is not yet in print. To navigate this Sourcebook, simply pick from the choices below or scroll down through this webpage for more information.

General Information on Physical Disabilities

Cerebral Palsy

• Cerebral Palsy - Hope Through Research
  http://www.ninds.nih.gov/patients/disorder/co/cphtr.htm
  An excellent overview of cerebral palsy, including description, and history, associated problems, treatments, research, and a glossary. Assembled by the National Institute of Neurological
• NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 2
  http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/factshe/fs2txt.htm
  Definition of cerebral palsy, incidence, characteristics, educational implications, resource materials, and supporting organizations.

Deafness and Hearing Loss

• NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 3
  http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/factshe/fs3txt.htm
  Definitions of deafness and hearing loss, impairments, incidence, characteristics, educational implications, resource materials, and supporting organizations.

Epilepsy

• NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 6
  http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/factshe/fs6txt.htm
  Definition of epilepsy, incidence, characteristics, educational implications, resource materials, and supporting organizations.

Speech and language disorders

• NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 11
  http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/factshe/fs11txt.htm
  Definitions of speech and language disorders, incidence, characteristics, educational implications, resource materials, and supporting organizations.

Traumatic brain injury

• NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 18
  http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/factshe/fs18txt.htm
  Definition of trumatic brain injury impairments, incidence, characteristics, educational implications, resource materials, and supporting organizations.

Visual impairment

• NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 13
  http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/factshe/fs13txt.htm
  Definition of visual impairments, incidence, characteristics, educational implications, resource materials, and supporting organizations.

Inclusive Education: Making it Work in the High School

• Inclusion Press
  http://inclusion.com
  Inclusion Press is a small independent press that provides readable, authoritative, accessible, user-friendly books and resources about full inclusion in school, work, and community. Includes the following:
• http://www.inclusion.com/page_9.html
  This site includes general information on inclusion and from the Inclusion Press that offers books and videos for sale.
• http://www.inclusion.com/what_is.html
  Essays on inclusion, what changes are needed to make it work, ethics of inclusion.

Family Village School

• http://www.familyvillage.wisc.education/inclusion.htm
  Includes listing of inclusion oriented organizations, on-line newsletters, conferences, other web sites, books, who to contact. Good resource for other web sites.

National Downs Syndrome Society

• http://www.ndss.org
  General information on inclusion and inclusion philosophy; names, address, summaries of organizations, newsletter/bulletins, videos, books.

The Electronic Journal of Inclusive Education

• http://www.ed.wright.edu/fac_staff/prenick/ejie/ejie.htm
  From Wright State University, publishes research, reviews,scholarly writings and poetry concerning the inclusion of students with special learning needs in regular classrooms .The Electronic Journal is concerned with inclusion issues at all levels of educational endeavors: research, administrative issues, classroom teaching and exemplary university student work.