Overview

Special Education in Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Exceptionality is designed for use by preservice and inservice teachers who will teach students with special needs in the general classroom. The text provides a rare glimpse into the lives of persons with exceptionalities, including their families and teachers. Focusing on human exceptionalities across the life span, the text employs a traditional organization beginning with four foundations chapters that introduce teachers to special education, followed by ten ""categorical"" chapters each on a different ""disability."" Each categorical chapter features sections on transition, cultural diversity, technology, instructional strategies, and family considerations. In the Fourth Edition Media Update of Special Education in Contemporary Society, author Richard Gargiulo provides a highly readable and research-based introduction to special education. This book is based on the author's belief that teachers need more than just academic knowledge about exceptionality-they need an awareness and understanding of the human side of students with special needs and their families. The Fourth Edition Media Update can be packaged with an Interactive eBook that offers new video clips of educators, parents, and individuals with special needs talking about their experiences. Icons appear throughout the Media Update linking the book to the interactive eBook features.

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9781412996952

Table of Contents

Reviews

I have reviewed several other texts in this area and continue to find the Gargiulo text to be the best suited for my purposes. The depth and breadth of coverage as well as the treatment of teaching and instructional issues as only a part of the overall content makes this text perfect for a course which enrolls students from majors both in education and without. -- Jennifer Lancaster I plan on using the book as long as it is available...I am enjoying teaching this class for the first time in 5 years because of this book! -- Teresa Gardner I chose this book, as I liked the focus of not only the disability itself, but good person-first narratives, and good teaching ideas of how to support students with disabilities. -- Julie Alexandrin

Author Information

I have always desired to be an educator. I guess I am a rarity in that I never changed my undergraduate major or left the field of education. My undergraduate education began at Hiram Scott College in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Three years later, I was teaching fourth graders in the Milwaukee public schools while working toward my master’s degree in intellectual disability at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. At the conclusion of my first year of teaching, I was asked to teach a class of young children with intellectual disability. I jumped at the opportunity and for the next three years essentially became an early childhood special educator. It was at this point in my career that I decided to earn my doctorate. I resigned my teaching position and moved to Madison, where I pursued a PhD in the areas of human learning, child development, and behavioral disabilities. Upon receiving my degree, I accepted a faculty position in the Department of Special Education at Bowling Green State University (Ohio), where for the next eight years I was a teacher educator. In 1982, I moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where, until my retirement, I served as a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. In November 2014, I was awarded professor emeritus status by the board of trustees of the University of Alabama system. I have enjoyed a rich and rewarding professional career spanning more than four decades. During the course of this journey, I have had the privilege of twice serving as president of the Alabama Federation, Council for Exceptional Children (CEC); serving as president of the Division of International Special Education and Services (DISES), CEC; and serving as president of the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD), CEC. I mostly served as the Southeast representative to the board of directors of DADD. I have lectured abroad extensively and was a Fulbright Scholar to the Czech Republic in 1991. In 2007, I was invited to serve as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Teaching has always been my passion. In 1999, I was fortunate to receive UAB’s President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2007, I received the Jasper Harvey Award from the Alabama Federation of CEC in recognition of being named the outstanding special education teacher educator in the state. With a background in both educational psychology and special education, my research has appeared in a wide variety of professional journals including Child Development, Journal of Educational Research, Journal of Learning Disabilities, American Journal of Mental Deficiency, Childhood Education, Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Journal of Special Education, Early Childhood Education Journal, International Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology, and International Journal of Special Education, among a host of others. In addition to the present text, I have authored or coauthored more than ten books, several enjoying multiple editions, ranging in topics from counseling parents of children with disabilities to child abuse, early childhood education, teaching in inclusive classrooms, and, most recently, instructional strategies for students with intellectual disability.  

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