Exceptional Lives: Practice, Progress, & Dignity in Today's Schools

Citation

Turnbull, A., Turnbull, H. R., Wehmeyer, M. L., Shogren, K. A., & Burke, M. M. (2023). Exceptional Lives: Practice, Progress, & Dignity in Today's Schools (10th ed.). Pearson.

Chapter Summary

The tenth edition, published by Pearson in August 2023 (copyright 2024), has seventeen chapters in about 550 pages. Six foundational chapters come first, followed by eleven chapters on categories of disability and on giftedness. Meghan M. Burke joins the four authors of the previous edition, who are associated with the University of Kansas's Beach Center on Disability. Pearson describes the book as pairing real stories of children, their families and their educators with recent research on the benefits of less restrictive settings for students with disabilities. According to Pearson, the tenth edition highlights the ethical principle of dignity, and its new content, features and vignettes deal with educational progress and long-term outcomes, school-wide supports and cross-cutting instructional approaches. The publisher's summary of the opening frames special education first as a civil right, and then as specially designed instruction and supports that let students progress towards outcomes they can enjoy in the same places as people without disabilities.

The preface to the ninth edition (2020), which Pearson has published, explains the design the tenth edition continues. The authors present the book as resting on the ethical principle of dignity and on seven foundational principles: respect for diversity and cultural justice, education that enables progress, research-based practice, inclusion, self-determination, partnership with families, and high expectations. They link the emphasis on progress to the US Supreme Court's 2017 Endrew F. decision, which held that an appropriate education must enable a student to make progress. In that edition every chapter opened with a vignette about a real student, and features included "My Voice" accounts, "Inclusion Tips", "Guidelines for Teaching" and "Into Practice Across the Grade Levels".

Chapter 1: The Purposes, People, and Law of Special Education

The goals of special education, the students and professionals involved, and the law. In the ninth edition this covered the six principles of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): zero reject, nondiscriminatory evaluation, appropriate education, least restrictive environment, procedural due process, and parent and student participation. It also covered other federal laws and the principle of dignity, introduced through the Endrew F. case.

Chapter 2: Disability and Cultural Justice

The ninth-edition preface describes this chapter as covering the civil rights movement in education, research on cultural bias related to disability and race, and disproportionate classification. It traces how bias affects inclusion, bullying, restraint and seclusion, suspension and expulsion, and contact with the juvenile justice system, and responds with restorative practices and culturally responsive teaching.

Chapter 3: Today's Families and Their Partnerships with Professionals

Families of students with disabilities, family quality of life, and how educators build trusting partnerships, including in individualised education programme (IEP) meetings.

Chapter 4: Ensuring Educational Progress

Evaluation, the IEP, placement and inclusion as means of ensuring progress in the general curriculum. In the ninth edition this was a new chapter built around the Endrew F. standard.

Chapters 5–6: Multi-tiered Systems of Supports; Cross-cutting Instructional Approaches

School-wide, tiered systems, such as positive behaviour interventions and supports and response to intervention, followed by instructional approaches useful for all students. In the ninth edition these included high-leverage practices, universal design for learning, co-teaching, differentiated instruction, peer mediation, explicit instruction and embedded instruction. Pearson names both topics among the tenth edition's emphases.

Chapters 7–17: Students with Learning Disabilities; Communication Disorders; Emotional or Behavioral Disorders; Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; Intellectual Disability; Autism; Multiple Disabilities and Traumatic Brain Injury; Physical Disabilities and Other Health Impairments; Hearing Impairments; Visual Impairments; Students Who Are Gifted and Talented

The category chapters. In the ninth edition each followed the same pattern: it opened by meeting a particular student, then defined the category, described its characteristics and causes, explained evaluation, and discussed inclusion and education with specific research-based interventions. The ninth edition's learning disabilities chapter, for example, covered curriculum-based measurement in mathematics, the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading and self-regulated strategy development for writing. Some category chapters had specialist contributing authors.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4

• Dignity: the inherent worth of every person, which teachers respect and enlarge through how they teach.
• IDEA principles: zero reject, nondiscriminatory evaluation, appropriate education, least restrictive environment, due process and participation.
• Educational progress: the standard, set by the Endrew F. decision, that a student's programme must be appropriately ambitious.
• Cultural justice and disproportionality: fair treatment of students from diverse groups, and their over- or under-representation in special education.
• Family partnership: trusting collaboration between educators and families.

Chapters 5–6

• Multi-tiered systems of support: school-wide tiers of support for all students.
• Universal design for learning: designing curriculum flexible enough for all learners.
• High-leverage practices: research-based practices that benefit all students.

Chapters 7–17

• Categories of disability and giftedness: each defined, evaluated and taught.
• Self-determination: students' ability to direct their own lives, one of the foundational principles.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear value framework. Dignity and seven named principles give the book an explicit ethical stance that runs through every chapter, as the authors state in the ninth-edition preface.
• Real students and families. Each chapter is built around true vignettes, and Pearson describes the book as pairing real stories with research. This makes it engaging for readers who have not yet worked with students with disabilities.
• Foundations before categories. Six chapters on law, justice, families, progress, tiered supports and cross-cutting instruction come before any category. The teaching approaches that apply to all students are therefore established first.
• Concrete interventions. The category chapters name specific research-based methods and give step-by-step guidelines, at least in the ninth edition, so the book is practical as well as descriptive.

Limitations

• United States law throughout. IDEA, Supreme Court decisions and federal civil rights law are central. Readers outside the US must translate these to their own legal framework.
• An advocacy position. The book argues for inclusion as a matter of dignity. Readers wanting a more neutral or critical treatment of when inclusion works should read it alongside a book that examines the dilemmas.
• Length and digital features. At about 550 pages and seventeen chapters, it contains more than one course can cover, and many videos and quizzes sit in the eText and MyLab.
• Edition differences. The features and section contents described here for the ninth edition may have changed in the tenth, which retitled Chapter 5 ("Multi-tiered Systems of Supports") and Chapter 8 ("Communication Disorders"). Check the current edition before assigning particular sections.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is one of two introductory special education textbooks in the special and inclusive education course. Hallahan, Kauffman and Pullen's Exceptional Learners is also organised by category, but gives more weight to characteristics, causes and identification and less to an explicit ethical framework. Turnbull and colleagues put dignity, families and inclusion at the centre and place tiered supports and universal design before the categories. A course will usually adopt one. Choose Turnbull for a values-led, inclusion-oriented course and Hallahan for depth on each category. Friend and Bursuck's Including Students with Special Needs is the more practice-oriented book for general education teachers and can stand in for the category chapters in a short course.

For further study, Mitchell and Sutherland's What Really Works in Inclusive Education synthesises research on strategies and complements Chapters 5–6. Brahm Norwich's Addressing Tensions and Dilemmas in Inclusive Education examines the genuine dilemmas of inclusion. It is a useful counterpoint to this book's advocacy and is best read afterwards.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduate and postgraduate students in teacher education, both general and special education, as well as related professionals. No previous special education coursework is needed; some classroom experience or an introductory education course helps.

• Core: Chapters 1–6 in order. They set out the principles, law, justice, family partnership, progress and the instructional approaches that the category chapters assume.
• Categories: read closely the chapters most relevant to the students you will teach. Learning disabilities, emotional or behavioural disorders and ADHD (Chapters 7, 9 and 10) are a common core for general educators. Use the rest for reference.
• Giftedness: Chapter 17 completes the book's picture of exceptional learners.

Use the opening vignette of each chapter as a case: before reading, list what the student needs, then check your list against the chapter. Keep a running note of how each chapter applies the seven principles. Read Chapter 1 alongside the special education law of your own system, and compare the IEP process in Chapter 4 with the planning documents used where you will teach.