Recommended Practices in Early Childhood Special Education

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process used for identifying recommended practices in the field of early intervention/early childhood special education (EI/ECSE). Work groups were established for 14 areas of EI/ECSE. Participants in these work groups followed a set of 6 criteria in identifying recommended practices in each area. To validate the practices identified by the work groups, a national sample of randomly selected DEC members, persons in higher education, and family members indicated their level of agreement with items representing recommended practices and indicated the frequency of their current use of the items. Ratings from the validation questionnaires indicated substantial agreement that practices identified by the initial work groups would be recommended practices. The discrepancy between recommended practices and current use of the practices was examined.