The last two decades have given rise to the development of a large range of Early Intervention programs catering for the needs of infants and young children who are environmentally disadvantaged, biologically ‘at risk’ or who have established disabilities. From the time programs of this type were first established, researchers have been struggling to demonstrate their efficacy. These attempts have been impeded by ethical concerns and methodological difficulties. This paper presents a review of the efficacy literature in Early Intervention. While questioning the value of the ‘quest’ to establish efficacy per se, it highlights the importance of identifying critical program components and of testing the impact of these components through carefully controlled short and long-term research.

The current sociopolitical context of special education is one of dangerous currents. I will give a brief overview of three of these currents and then discuss how we might proceed to avoid their taking us where we don’t want to go.

New Zealand has much of real quality to be proud of in special education. On numerous international surveys of education, New Zealand schools continue to rank highly - especially with respect to reading and written language, and were such surveys to focus on special educational matters, my guess is that the picture would be equally positive. There are very real difficulties in developing special educational provisions for a country with New Zealand’s geographical characteristics. New Zealand has a relatively small total population, which is scattered widely across a rather large and geographically well separated area, and these factors make for real problems in providing for children with difficulties which occur infrequently - as do most conditions associated with exceptionality and special education.

The move into the preschool represents the first of many transitions for children with developmental disabilities or delay and for their families. The present study examined the transition process for 111 children as reported by their parents. The data indicate that clear relationships exist between parental evaluations of the success of the integration and the four following factors: parental involvement in the transition process, continuing support from the early intervention service, the degree to which parents perceive themselves as equal members of the preschool group and the degree of congruence among the goals expressed by the parents, the preschool teachers and the early intervention workers. The implications of the findings for best practices are explored.

Clinic procedures are frequently justified on the basis of research studies, yet clients and procedures may be sufficiently different to make generalisation of findings a dubious proposition. For this reason the staff of a major children’s clinic chose to review both process and outcome in the diagnosis and treatment of children referred with suspected attention deficit disorder. Children were diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity. However, the diagnostic groups could be differentiated on too few pre-treatment variables to be considered different populations. In addition, the treatment offered did not differentiate between children with different diagnoses. Evaluation of treatment at 4 mths showed limited improvement in children who were treated with methylphenidate (Ritalin). At 12 mths no improvements were evident that could be directly attributed to treatment. The study points out the importance of individual clinics monitoring the processes of diagnosis and treatment of children referred with suspected attention deficit disorder and emphasises the need for referring agents and clinic personnel to maintain effective communication.

Families living in rural areas who have a young child with a developmental disability often face difficulties in accessing early intervention services due to geographical isolation and restricted options to specialist services. Lack of services has been reported in a number of surveys of early intervention programs across Australia (Watt, Elkins, Conrad, Andrews, Apelt, Hayes, Calder, Coulston, & Willis, 1982; Barrie & Tomlinson, 1985). Watt et al found only five programs operating in rural areas with populations of 10,000 or less across Australia with a further 15 in towns of 10,000 to 30,000. Hayes and Livingstone (1986) found only rudimentary services in country areas often necessitating the placement of child in an urban facility to receive services.

This paper reports a follow-up study of the educational progress of three cohorts of students who left an early intervention program operating at a Special Education Developmental Unit (SEDU) in a large provincial city, in Queensland, during 1989, 1990 or 1991. The purpose of the research was to evaluate some aspects of the short to mediumterm efficacy of the program. The study aimed to: (a) identify parents’ perceptions of the services offered at the SEDU, (b) track students’ educational placements since leaving the SEDU, (c) evaluate parents’ and current teachers’ perceptions of students’ current educational placements, and (d) identify areas where SEDU services and other educational services could be improved. The results indicate that the early intervention program facilitated the development of children, and that the majority of parents viewed the SEDU services favourably; however, they were not as positive about their child’s rate of progress in the subsequent placement. Half the parents and teachers also reported that children needed more help, or much more help, at school. They identified a clear need for additional support services, in particular therapy programs, in schools. Despite the reported need for additional support services to schools, the study showed that the majority of students who left the SEDU were placed in regular education settings and were maintained in these regular schools. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for policy, practice and research.

Since the early 1970s special education courses at graduate and post-graduate levels have become standard offerings at many Australian universities. As these courses continue to be the main avenue of professional development for special educators in this country, it is pertinent to wonder how often the objectives and content of the courses are examined and revised to ensure contemporary relevance. It must be recognized that the field of special education appears to be in what Tomlinson (1982, p.24) has described as a ‘permanently dynamic state’, with frequent changes in policy, service delivery, roles and responsibilities. The roles and responsibilities of special educators have certainly changed significantly during the past decade (Watts, 1990; Dyson, 1991), and the earlier studies of essential competencies required by special education teachers (e.g. Whitmore,1982; Scott, 1983; Davis, 1983) may not provide reliable data on which to design current courses. There has been renewed interest overseas in the issue of what constitutes essential knowledge and skills for teachers working in special education (Best, 1988; Ramsey & Algozzine, 1991; Ramsey, Algozzine & Smith, 1990; Glomb & Morgan, 1991; Folio, 1990; Cannon, Idol & West, 1992; Reynolds, Wang & Walberg, 1992; Swan & Sirvis, 1992), and it is worth analysing some of this material to determine its relevance for the Australian context. The information could well prove useful as a basis for evaluating special education courses here.

The Hungarian educational system of Conductive Education has been adapted in Australia for 20 years. Despite the ad hoc nature of its development, many positive outcomes have resulted. In this paper, these outcomes including those from an increasing number of scientific studies are examined. Eight studies are examined which have addressed three important aspects i.e. the nature of Australian adaptations, the efficacy or (validity) of the adapted programs and the role of parents in the early intervention process. The limitations of the methodologies and findings used in the eight studies are identified, yet this paper concludes that the findings of these studies though inconclusive demand further investigation. Three recommendations for future study are included.

This paper reviews the findings from a controlled experimental study of the effectiveness of the Reading Recovery Program undertaken in ten primary schools in Sydney, during the second year of its implementation. Children, selected by their teachers as low progress readers after one year at school, were randomly allocated to either Reading Recovery or to a control condition in which they received only the resource support typically provided to at-risk children. Low progress children from five schools of similar socio-economic level, but without a Reading Recovery Program, also took part in the study. All children were pre-tested on a number of norm and criterion referenced reading related literacy measures, post-tested on the same measures fifteen weeks after the Program commenced, and once again after a further fifteen weeks to assess maintenance effects. Results indicated that Reading Recovery students clearly outperformed students in the control group condition on most measures but, at this early stage of Reading Recovery implementation, there appeared to be no spill-over effects to other low progress students and their teachers in Reading Recovery schools. Furthermore, the practice of matching children to appropriate book level in the regular classroom, which is necessary to ensure maintenance of the Reading Recovery intervention, was not being adopted in most schools. Finally, because of the extremely low book level scores found among all Year 1 children in the ten Reading Recovery schools at the commencement of the study, serious implications arise about the selection of students for Reading Recovery in metropolitan New South Wales, their most appropriate point of entry into the Program, and the maintenance of their skills at discontinuation when they return to regular classes where average book levels continue to be low.

The recent development of special education courses within teacher education degrees has focussed attention on the content of these courses. Although several policy documents recommending content for these courses have been published in recent years, very little empirical work has been conducted to determine the relevance of such proposals. This study examined the misconceptions of teacher trainees about intellectual disability as a means of identifying particular aspects of special education content that may need to be addressed in special education courses. The sample held several misconceptions which suggest that many teacher trainees may have a poor understanding of intellectual disability.

This paper examines choice-making in work and community access programs by people perceived to have a severe intellectual disability. The results indicate that the quality and quantity of choice-making are restricted in these settings. The impact of factors such as type of work setting, gender, perceived attractiveness and level of ability are investigated. The implications of this study for research, personnel preparation and workplace interactions are explored.