Reforming Personnel Preparation In Early Intervention PDF Download

Through the passage of P.L. 99-457 (Amendments to the Education of the Handicapped Act, 1986), states have been provided assistance in order to establish comprehensive systems of service delivery for infants, toddlers with handicaps and their families. Two components required by the law address policy in the areas of personnel development for 10 specific disciplines (Audiology, Education, Medicine, Nursing, Nutrition, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Psychology, Social Work, and Speech and Language Pathology). The purpose of this research was to determine what infancy-related content was regarded as necessary in the training of early interventionists from multiple disciplines, and to distinguish those seen as unique to each discipline from those which are held in common across disciplines. A rating scale was rated and returned by 97% of the sample representing each of the 10 disciplines including practitioners in early intervention and higher education faculty preparing early intervention personnel. Data were then analyzed by frequencies, means, rankings, and standard deviations as well as by a two-way analysis of variance. Overall, the data indicated that a majority of the disciplines ranked particular content areas at a higher level. Those content areas that may be referred to as core areas included the following: (a) Professional Orientation; (b) Atypical Development; (c) Services to Families: Assessment and Intervention; (d) Early Development; and (e) Services to Infants: Assessment and Intervention. One of the most significant contributions of this study was the obtaining of data in support of training content focusing on Professional Orientation, Characteristics, and Development of Personnel in Early Intervention. A strong consensus was achieved across all respondents as to the importance of training in this area. Clear within discipline patterns were identified with regard to health issues by professionals from Medicine, Nursing, Nutrition, Occupational Therapy, and Physical Therapy. Furthermore, the results from this study indicated that certain disciplines were more similar in their scoring patterns. Education, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Psychology, and Speech and Language Pathology obtained the greatest similar scores. Very few statistically significant differences were obtained at the.05 level between practitioners and trainers. However, these data should not be interpreted as necessarily representing a consensus by respondents, since individual difference with and across disciplines per item were not addressed.