Collaborative Endeavors.

Fletcher, Todd V. ; Bos, Candace S. ; Johnson, Lorri 等

ON BEHALF OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES AND THEIR FAMILIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO

This book is the result of a series of cooperative binational symposiums. conferences, and workshops designed to improve the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families in Mexico and the United States. These collaborative efforts, carried out in the spirit of the U.S./Mexico Memorandum of Understanding signed in 1990 and in the context of international educational reform, have increased our understanding of educational practices and policies in the United States and Mexico and other countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. The intent of the 1990 agreement was to enhance cooperation and collaboration between our two countries and improve the quality of education for all students. The accomplishments achieved to date are noteworthy, and this book is one of many that have resulted from these encuentros.

In addition to regional efforts of collaboration between countries, global educational reform initiatives have established a growing commitment to provide education for all. The world conference held in Jomptien, Thailand, in 1990, which was organized by various international educational agencies, emphasized the need to ensure access and equity for all children in developing countries. More recently, the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, signed in 1994, was directed at restructuring educational systems throughout the world to promote the integration and full participation of individuals with disabilities throughout their respective societies while combating exclusion. The Salamanca statement declares that "inclusion and participation are essential to human dignity and the enjoyment and exercise of human rights. Within the field of education, this is reflected in the development of strategies that seek to bring about a genuine equalization of opportunity."

These regional and international initiatives aimed at educational reform are the context in which the recent activities between Mexico and the United States took place and in which this book is written. Critical to the success of any long-term collaboration with the goal of promoting better lives for their peoples is the education of children and youth in the two countries. This volume brings together educators and policy makers from both countries who voice their support of the education of infants, children, and youths with disabilities and their families. The authors review and broaden our perspectives on current practice and newly implemented legislation and policy in the area of disabilities in Mexico and the United States. From the multiple perspectives presented in this book, three common themes emerge that warrant further discussion of the issues and implications for policy and practice. The first theme voiced throughout this book is the important role that cultural and linguistic diversity plays in the education of all students, particularly of those who are challenged with disabilities. The second theme running throughout this volume is the critical need for continued development of policy and practices that support children with disabilities and their families. The third theme that comes up repeatedly in this volume is the importance of collaboration in solving the issues and meeting the challenges within and across our two countries as we continue to work toward the goal of creating better educational and employment outcomes and an enhanced quality of life for persons with disabilities and their families.

Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

If we are to achieve success for individuals with disabilities and their families, then our efforts must be guided by an understanding of the richness of cultural and linguistic diversity of our respective countries. Furthermore, we must view this diversity as a resource that contributes richness to our societies and respective educational systems, challenging us to accommodate for diversity by providing greater flexibility in our education programs. Gare Fabila de Zaldo sets the stage for this issue. In chapter 1, she describes the scope of the issue, noting that by the year 2000 there will be 600 million individuals with disabilities in the world and that it will directly affect 2.4 billion people. She urges that our efforts should work toward developing strategies to prevent certain types of disabilities and minimize discriminatory conditions, abuses, social injustices, and the marginalization suffered by individuals with disabilities. If our common goals are to achieve educational, social, and economic in tegration of individuals with disabilities into the community, then understanding and being responsive to the specific sociocultural variables of that particular community is critical to ensuring success.

This premise is most strongly voiced by the authors who provide insights into the cultures of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and the indigenous people of Mexico. In chapter 6, Cruz Begay and her colleagues give us an important insight into how the indigenous and informal systems of support within the Navajo community intertwine and sometimes conflict with formal systems of support. Based on the premise that families and family involvement are the most important factors in supporting children with disabilities, the authors argue that we must understand and sustain the benefits of indigenous systems that provide support and relief to families even as we seek to engage families in the use of supports offered by private and public agencies. For example, they found in their ethnographic study of twenty-nine Navajo children with disabilities or delays and their families that many Navajo families felt that spiritual services helped their children improve, provided support in terms of gathering resources for the family, and relieved their misgivings and therefore increased their acceptance of more formalized systems of support. Martha Gorospe in chapter 7 entitled "Overcoming Obstacles and Improving Outcomes for American Indian Children with Special Needs" also highlights the importance of cultural diversity and suggests that a critical component for the education of service providers is learning about the children and their families' cultures. She notes that mutual respect and understanding between the service provider and the family is the foundation for effective programs. Becoming culturally responsive is a lifelong process.

If we define culture as a set of cultural norms that determine beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, values, roles, perceptions, and what is valued as good and desirable, then, as suggested by Martha Gorospe, over time it will become easier to accept that there are no right or wrong ways of doing things, just different approaches. Sherry Allison and Christine Begay Vining in chapter 14 on Native American culture and language suggest that the prevailing issues that Native American families with children with disabilities face are the same issues as those of other families who have children with disabilities, that is, costly treatment, too few providers, lack of education, and family involvement in their child's education and development. However, Native American families must also contend with jurisdictional issues and cultural and linguistic diversity.

The importance of dealing with linguistic diversity was voiced by many of the authors. The limited access to assessments in the children's first language and the need for programs that support the development of the children's first language and culture in conjunction with other languages and cultures were cited as examples of the need to attend to linguistic and cultural diversity. Richard Figueroa in his discussion of what is wrong with special education for Latino students in the United States (chap. 11) cautions us against using an additive model, in which special-education programs are simply added to bilingual education/English as a Second Language programs without careful thought of the children's linguistic and cultural diversity. Nadeen Ruiz encourages educators and policy makers to situate learning so that it builds on the students' linguistic and cultural roots (chap. 12). Pamela Rossi, in chapter 13, provides an excellent example of how this can be accomplished within the context of visual, drama tic, and language arts in her description of an opera project. Similarly, Henriette Langdon in her discussion of strategies for supporting preschool children from Mexican backgrounds gives suggestions for intervention that tie the two languages and cultures and integrate themes that are being used in the home and preschool/day care (chap. 5). These strategies also incorporate the parents and family as key players in supporting the child's language development.

Development of Policy and Practice to Support Children with Disabilities and Their Families

During the last twenty-five years several major international and regional educational reform initiatives have advanced educational practices and policy to support children with disabilities and their families. Beginning with chapter 1, Gare Fabila de Zaldo provides a history of the social integration of individuals with disabilities from a global perspective as she traces the human rights work of the United Nations and key world agreements. She notes that historically we have begun the transition from social isolation and persecution to social, educational, and economic recognition and integration into the community. Gare Fabila de Zaldo makes strong recommendations that can assist us in developing a more positive, respectful community for individuals with disabilities and their families. These include technical cooperation among countries to learn from each other's experiences, always keeping in mind sociocultural and economic differences; the inclusion of children with disabilities in general-education pro grams, coupled with extensive professional training for teachers and administrators; and educational programs designed to raise awareness and teach society about the rights and worth of individuals with disabilities.

While Elba Reyes (chap. 4) and Richard Figueroa (chap. 11) trace the legislative and political developments of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and bilingual special education in the United States, Berta Watkins (chap. 2), Sofialetica Morales (chap. 8), Eliseo Guajardo Ramos and Todd Fletcher (chap. 9), and Georgina Reich-Erdmann (chap. 10) focus on the development of recent education reform issues in Mexico for infants, children, and adults with disabilities. We learn that Mexico, much like the United States, has legislated support for preschool and school-age children with disabilities to be integrated into general education in the New General Law of Education. Based on the 1992 National Agreement for the Modernization of Basic Education, a sweeping educational reform was begun, and there has been a massive decentralization of education, returning sovereignty to the states and allowing them to operate basic educational services according to the diverse conditions that exist in their particul ar population. Based on this new legislation, service delivery models known as Units of Support Services for Regular Education are being established to assist general-education teachers and support professionals so that students with mild to moderate disabilities have access to the core curriculum. These teams provide support to a cohort of schools and their teachers by modifying and adapting methodological approaches, objectives, content, assignments, and materials. The other model of service delivery in Mexico, Multiple Attention Centers, is replacing institutions that previously served students with severe disabilities. The goal of these centers is to provide the core curriculum and quality education to students with disabilities who are unable to be successfully integrated into public schools. For infants and preschool children, Centers for Infant Development serve children in more populous areas, and community-based programs serve rural and indigenous populations and urban populations with low socioecono mic status (see Watkins, chap. 2).

New legislation has brought about widespread change both in the United States and Mexico. Sofialeticia Morales notes that new legislation in Mexico that favors the inclusion of children with disabilities into general education is a great educational challenge but does not reduce the controversy imbedded in the decision. Georgina Reich-Erdmann (chap. 10) highlights four issues related to this new Mexican legislation that parallel issues in the United States (see chap. 4): (a) a greater demand for education in relation to nationwide availability, (b) the uneven quality of education among the different regions in Mexico, (c) the number of children who fail to learn appropriately and who are retained, and (d) the number of children who drop out of school before finishing their education. In Mexico, this frequently occurs in the elementary school, frequently by the third grade. Parallels can be drawn between Mexico and the United States. For example, both countries give students with disabilities the right to an appropriate education, namely, Mexico's New General Education Law and the United States' Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, in least restrictive environments.

Collaboration and Dialogue: Keys to Success

Throughout this book the educators, policy makers, and parents who voice their views make collaboration the foundation for the successful education and wellbeing of children with disabilities and their families. This collaboration exists on every level. Those authors who focus on early intervention (see Watkins, Jackson-Maldonado, Reyes, Langdon, and Begay, Roberts, Weisner, and Matheson) stress the importance of collaborating with the family and making the family a key element in the development of the child. They speak of the need for educators and service providers to work closely with families to deal with stresses on the family that are created when a child with a disability is brought into the family. Likewise, at the center of the inclusion movement in both countries is the development of collaborative networks that integrate and support students in the least restrictive environments and provide access to the general-education curriculum. With the decentralization of the educational system in Mexico, t here are many opportunities for increased collaboration among general and special-education professionals, the students, and their families. With the focus on quality education, these networks are crucial pathways for the success of the children and their families. Finally, an ongoing dialogue between countries is critical in educational reform and the development of policy. This affords us opportunities to learn from each other's research policies, and practices. As Judith Heumann and Sofialeticia Morales (the leading officials for special education in the United States and Mexico, respectively) suggest, it is through sharing our unique approaches to overcoming barriers to equal education that we renew each other's commitment to progress for children with disabilities and their families.

As we move into the third millennium, the possibilities for greater collaboration and dialogue between our two countries in advancing the issues of access and equity for individuals with disabilities are numerous. However, great care must be taken to ensure that models and practices developed in one country or region within a country not be transplanted to another area without consideration of the specific context variables and unique characteristics of each community. The exchanges that have taken place over the past few years have provided us with innumerable examples of our similarities and differences and, most importantly, have generated a profound respect for the uniqueness of our respective societies and educational systems.

These activities were guided by a common conceptual framework designed to improve the human condition of individuals with disabilities. Based on the goals and expected outcomes, key issues and ideas were identified and formulated by putting four questions: first, how can we begin to develop collaborative working relationships and educational networks between the United States and Mexico to create greater opportunities for the education of individuals with disabilities; second, how can we create avenues to share resources; third, how can resources that already exist be utilized more effectively to solve problems and meet the needs of individuals with disabilities; and fourth, how can we use the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a tool for creating greater educational opportunities for persons with disabilities.

This book is only one outcome of this shared agenda of collaboration. What we can accomplish in the future is limited only by our imagination, hard work, and perseverance. Paraphrasing the words of one Mexican educator, the blending of two cultures engaged in a common purpose to change government agendas is a revolution. Our task is to continue to discover, adapt, and implement efficient educational approaches and policies by means of collaboration and dialogue in the social, economical, and political contexts of our two countries.