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About the Contributors

Katherine Ahlgren Bouchard, Ph.D., is currently a Content Specialist in Special Education at the Madison
Metropolitan School District. Dr. Bouchard received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in
Special Education. In addition to facilitating professional development experiences for educators seeking to
universally design instruction for all students, she also supports schools in developing infrastructure necessary to
support inclusive environments.

Rachel Brady, PT, DPT, M.S., is a physical therapist and research assistant professor at the Georgetown
University Center for Child and Human Development. She coordinates and provides professional development
for early childhood intervention and special education providers around best practices for program planning and
providing services.

Julie Causton, Ph.D., is Professor in the Inclusive and Special Education Program in the Department of
Teaching and Leadership at Syracuse University. Her teaching, research, and consulting are guided by a passion
for inclusive education. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses focused on including students with
disabilities, supporting behavior, differentiation, special education law, lesson design, and adaptation.

Deborah Chen, Ph.D., is a Professor of the Department of Special Education at California State University,
Northridge, where she coordinates the early childhood special education program. Her research and publications
focus on collaborating with families of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, supporting the learning and
development of young children with multiple disabilities and sensory impairments, and promoting caregiver–child
interactions.

Chigee J. Cloninger, Ph.D., has been a teacher of children and adults with and without disabilities for many
years. Even in leadership or research positions, teaching—in the sense of bringing about change—has been a key
component of her work. Her interests in creative problem-solving approaches, communication, and learning
processes are integral to her work in individualized education and leadership. Dr. Cloninger is Professor Emerita
from The University of Vermont, having been a faculty member and executive director of The Center on
Disability and Community Inclusion.

Julie A. Durando, Ed.D., directs the Virginia Project for Children and Young Adults with Deaf-Blindness at the
Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University. She served children with multiple
disabilities and sensory impairments, including deafblindness, for 8 years as both a classroom and itinerant teacher
in central Florida. She completed her doctorate in special education from the University of Northern Colorado as
a National Center for Leadership in Visual Impairment Fellow. Dr. Durando’s research and writing focus on early
braille literacy experiences and instruction for children with sensory impairments and multiple disabilities.

June E. Downing, Ph.D. (1950-2011), was named Professor Emerita of Special Education at California State
University, Northridge, and served as an Associate Professor in Special Education at the University of Arizona. Dr.
Downing was a national leader in the field of special education, a model advocate for individuals with severe and
multiple disabilities, and a champion of inclusive education. Having begun her special education career as a
teacher of students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities, including deafblindness, she focused on
ensuring that teachers could understand and implement best practice in the inclusive classroom, and that students
with severe and multiple disabilities experienced positive outcomes from social, communication, and academic
instruction. We made a conscious decision to carry her legacy forward by maintaining her presence in this edition,
and we thank Dr. Pat Mirenda for supporting us in this endeavor.

Kathleen Gee, Ph.D., is a professor in the Departments of Teacher Credentialing and Graduate and Professional
Studies in the College of Education at California State University, Sacramento. She has been a teacher and a
teacher educator. Dr. Gee also has directed numerous demonstration and research projects in authentic school
settings focused on the inclusion of students with the most intensive support needs. She is a frequent consultant

8
and inservice training provider related to quality services for children and youth with the most intensive support
needs.

Kiel Harell, Ph.D., is an instructor in elementary and secondary education at the University of Minnesota,
Morris. He teaches classes on foundations of education and inclusive teaching practice. He is currently a doctoral
candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Kathryn Wolff Heller, Ph.D., RN, is Professor Emerita at Georgia State University. Dr. Heller currently draws
from her nursing and special education careers to conduct research and provide instruction to teachers and nurses
on children and adults with physical and health impairments. One of her primary interests is on providing
effective educational instruction and health care for children with physical and health impairments.

Carole K. Ivey, Ph.D., OTR/L, is an assistant professor with the Department of Occupational Therapy, School
of Allied Health Professions, and is the LEND faculty advisor for occupational therapy (OT) at Virginia
Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in OT and her
Ph.D. in special education and disability policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has worked as an
occupational therapist in public and private schools, early intervention, outpatient therapy, and private practice.
Recognizing the collaborative care needed to work with children with developmental disabilities, much of her
teaching and research areas of interest centers on collaboration and teamwork.

Jacqueline F. Kearns, Ed.D., is Project Director/Principal Investigator at University of Kentucky. Dr. Kearns has
worked in the area of moderate, severe, and multiple disabilities for over 33 years. First as a teacher of middle and
high school age students and then as a technical consultant for inclusive education and neighborhood schools, she
pioneered alternate assessments. Most recently, she led the professional development team on the National
Centers and State Collaborative Alternate Assessment. Currently, she directs projects related to the
implementation of communication for students with complex needs.

Harold L. Kleinert, Ed.D., is formerly Executive Director of the Human Development Institute—University
Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research, and Service at the University of
Kentucky, and Professor Emeritus, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, College of Health Sciences.
In his 45 years in the field of developmental disabilities, he has taught students with moderate and severe
intellectual disabilities in settings ranging from state institutions to regular classrooms with typical peers. He was
lead author of the first text published in alternate assessment for students with significant cognitive disabilities:
Alternate Assessment: Measuring Outcomes and Supports for Students with Disabilities, as well as a second text on
alternate assessment and access to the general curriculum: Alternate Assessment for Students with Significant
Cognitive Disabilities: An Educator’s Guide.

Dianne Koontz Lowman, Ed.D., is Director of Counseling and Advocacy at Safe Harbor, a center that serves
survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence, and human trafficking. In addition to outpatient counseling, she
facilitates support groups for female survivors who are incarcerated, and equine assisted groups for male and
female survivors of sexual violence and groups for veterans with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder.

Toby M. Long, Ph.D., PT, FAPTA, is Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Georgetown University and
Director of Professional Development for the Center for Child and Human Development, a University Center for
Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Long is Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Early
Intervention offered by Georgetown University and teaches Children with Disabilities within the undergraduate
minor in education, inquiry and justice. Dr. Long is an internationally known speaker and consultant on service
delivery to children with disabilities and special health care needs. The recipient of a variety of awards, Dr. Long
was recently named a Catherine Worthingham Fellow from the American Physical Therapy Association.

Kate M. MacLeod, M.S.Ed., is a doctoral student in the special education and disability studies programs at
Syracuse University and works as an instructor and graduate assistant within the teaching and leadership
department. She is a former high school special education teacher and has focused her career on bringing inclusive
opportunities to all. She works with districts and schools to create inclusive special education practices and serves
as an educational consultant to families who wish to see their children included in general education settings. Her
research and professional interests include inclusive education reform, inclusive teacher training, and best practices
for the inclusion of students with extensive support needs.

Pat Mirenda, Ph.D., BCBA-D, is Professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology and

9
Special Education, and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration in Autism
(CIRCA) at the University of British Columbia. She teaches courses on augmentative and alternative
communication, autism spectrum disorder, inclusive education, instructional techniques for students with
significant learning challenges, and positive behavior support. The fourth edition of her co-authored book
Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Supporting Children and Adults and Complex Communication Needs
was published in 2013; and another co-edited book, Autism Spectrum Disorders and AAC, was published in
December, 2009. She has published numerous research articles and chapters and presents frequently at
international, national, and regional conferences.

Mary E. Morningstar, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Kansas.
She coordinates the teacher endorsement program for low incidence disabilities as well as the masters program in
secondary/transition. Her interests lie in the intersection of inclusive education in secondary schools and the
transition to inclusive adult lives for youth with severe disabilities.

Jerry G. Petroff, Ph.D., is Professor at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) School of Education in the
Department of Special Education, Language and Literacy. In addition, he is Executive Director of TCNJ’s Center
for Sensory & Complex Disabilities and the Faculty Director of the TCNJ Career and Community Studies
Program. Dr. Petroff has over 35 years of experience working on behalf of students, youth and adults with
developmental disabilities with a focus on those who are deafblind. Holding a doctorate in psychological studies in
special education, he is an expert in inclusive education, assistive technology (augmentative and alternative
communication), behavior support, and the transition of students with disabilities from school to adult life for
youth with intellectual/developmental disabilities.

Alice Udvari-Solner, Ph.D., is a national consultant in education and holds a faculty appointment at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. The graduate and
undergraduate courses she teaches on the topic of accommodating diverse learners in inclusive settings are integral
to the elementary, secondary, and special education teacher certification programs. Universal design,
differentiation, active learning strategies, collaborative teamwork among educators and paraprofessionals, and
systems change toward inclusive education are areas that are central to her research and teaching.

10
Foreword

It is not often that a textbook in special education causes us to eschew the usual response – commentary tied
closely to the text itself—and instead elicits a response that, while referencing the text, offers an entirely different
understanding of the book. This is such a book, for, as we argue below, it asks you to think of your role in
educating children with severe and multiple disabilities as a pursuit of three outcomes.

THE FIRST PURSUIT: JUSTICE IN EDUCATION

They are the minority of the minority. The least well understood, the least researched, the least well educated, the
most likely to be denied access to effective education, and the least valued. They are the most restricted inside and
outside of schools. Their quality of life is the most jeopardized among those with disabilities. They are the children
with severe and multiple disabilities.
For these very reasons, they are the most deserving. Their claim arises out of a simple matter of justice. Call it
distributive justice – the claim to a larger share of the nation’s huge investment in education and disability service.
Why is that so? The answer lies in an understanding of a theory of justice. Stay with us, dear reader, as we explain.
Now, close your eyes. Imagine yourself in your present adulthood. What do you most value now about your
life? Imagine that you have no idea what lies ahead of you, no ability at all to conjure the future. You are in a stage
of utterly not knowing your future.
Now, ask yourself another question: What as a child did I most want in my life? Then, you were more
ignorant of your future than you are now. But you remember the “then” of your life. So, ask and answer the
question.
Having considered yourself as you are now and were once, ask yourself: What do you most want for yourself
in the future?
What one or more elements of your life do you most value at all of life’s stages? What constitutes your quality
of life?
For children and adults with severe and multiple disabilities? Try standing in their shoes. Exercise your
empathetic imagination. How will they or their surrogates answer these three questions?
These are the questions that America’s pre-eminent political philosopher, John Rawls, asks us to consider in
his theory of justice (Rawls, 1971). They are especially appropriate for you to consider before reading this book,
for this book may provide a satisfying answer.
Do your answers include education and access to effective schools? Good health and access to appropriate
treatment? Being a person who is respected and valued – dignified – for who you are, not judged for what you are
not?
If your answers – yours and those from millions upon millions of other Americans – are that you value an
education and good health, and that you want to be valued, then these answers warrant a distribution of public
and private resources to ensure that education, health, and dignity are available to you, indeed to all, especially to
those who are the minority of a minority.
This is a book about the justice of educating children with severe and multiple disabilities, the children – later
to become adults – whose most valued elements of life include their education, their health, their dignity – in
short, their passports to quality of life while in school and thereafter.

THE SECOND PURSUIT: CORE CONCEPTS OF DISABILITY POLICY

It may be unseemly to reference one’s self in a Foreword to a book by one’s close friends and colleagues. But it is
warranted to do so in order to still more fully explain what this book teaches and why it is so essential to you as an
educator and, perhaps, as a member of a family or community in which a child or adult with a severe or multiple
disability lives. So, please indulge us.
By way of its vignettes, its emphases on curriculum and instruction and on families and transition from school
to adulthood, and its references to the seminal and current research on practice, this book surprisingly rests on the
core concepts of disability policy (Turnbull, Beegle, & Stowe, 2001). These include
• individualized and appropriate education (chapters 3 through 9);

11
 • capacity building and accountability for results (those chapters and also chapters 11 and 12);
• collaboration and cooperation within schools and across disciplines and sites (chapters 1, 10, and 13);
• inclusion and full participation in school and thereafter (chapters 10 and 13);
• liberty from physical restriction and the use of positive behavioral supports to secure that liberty (chapters
3 through 11);
• autonomy, self-determination, and supported decision-making (chapter 13); and
• parent and family participation (chapter 2).
More than that, this book responds to the findings of fact that Congress recited when it reauthorized the federal
special education law – Individuals with Disabilities Education Act – in 2004: the impediments to children’s
appropriate education are, first, educators’ low expectations for students and, second, their failure to apply
replicable research on teaching and learning (IDEA, Sec. 1400 (c)).
Likewise, this book shows how highly qualified teachers can support children to attain the nation’s policy goals
and outcomes: equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency (IDEA,
Sec. 1400 (c)).

THE THIRD PURSUIT: ETHICAL COMMUNITIES AND INDIVIDUAL DIGNITY

Let there be no doubt: by reason of their concern for their students’ education, educators affect the quality of the
lives of their students and their families. Quality of life is not an abstract; it is an element of justice; it is a
desideratum of the core concepts; and it occurs in the communities where the students go to school and they and
their families live.
Schools themselves can be ethical communities, places where children with severe and multiple disabilities are
valued intrinsically, for who they are, not judged for what they are not. To be valued is to be dignified. The
pursuit of dignity is a public policy (Turnbull & Stowe, 2001; Turnbull, 2013) and has been ever since President
Kennedy launched the nation’s first comprehensive effort to address the challenges facing those with severe and
multiple disabilities, especially intellectual disability (Kennedy, 1961).

SUMMATION
What a book! It is about education, of course. But it is about justice, policy, ethical communities and dignity.
Read it in those lights and you will appreciate it more deeply. It deserves that reading; you owe it to yourself to
read it thusly.

Rud and Ann Turnbull

Distinguished Professors Emeriti
Co-founders, Beach Center on Disability
The University of Kansas

REFERENCES
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004), 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1400 (c).
Kennedy, J.F. (1961). Accepting New York Liberal Party Nomination, September 14, 1960. Retrieved May 18, 2016 from
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/jfk-nyliberal
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University.
Turnbull, H.R., Beegle, G., & Stowe, M.J. (2001). Core concepts of disability affecting families who have children with disabilities. Journal of
Disability Policy Studies, (12), 3, 133–143.
Turnbull, H.R. (2013). Quality of Life: Four under-considered intersections. In Brown, R.J. & Faraghar, R. M. (eds). Challenges for quality of life:
Knowledge applications in other social and educational contexts. Haupaque, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers.
Turnbull, H.R. & Stowe, M. J. (2001). A taxonomy for organizing the core concepts of disability policy. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 12(3).
177–197.

12
Preface

The fifth edition of this book arrives nearly 30 years after it was first published in 1987. Children who received
mandated early intervention services back then have long transitioned out of their secondary schools, and an
entirely new generation has taken their place. We can safely say that there will be no shortage of children next
year, or the year after, in need of highly skilled professionals who, working collaboratively, can assess, teach, and
care for students with severe and multiple disabilities. The responsibilities of these professionals are great—they
must design and adapt curriculum, create and adapt materials, provide instruction, and work hard to include all
students in the general education classroom while attending to these students’ unique physical, sensory, emotional,
and health care needs. Will we have an educational workforce capable of understanding and responding to the
complex educational and support needs of learners who think, communicate, and learn quite differently from
typically developing children, and whose bodies often do not move in the same ways, or whose vision and hearing
may be far less acute, or who may experience significant health care challenges?
This book has always been geared toward cultivating this competent and compassionate workforce, including
teachers and other members of the educational team. For far too long, many school administrators have assigned
the least skilled teachers to the learners with the most complex needs. In an era where standardized test scores
often govern school accreditation and teacher retention decisions, children with the most severe disabilities may be
viewed as a liability of sorts. It is our belief that children with severe and multiple disabilities require and deserve
nothing short of the best educated, most creative, and most committed professionals a school can offer.
We continue to believe that the learners who are the focus of this book do need a team of professionals,
working collaboratively, sharing information and skills across a range of disciplines. We are proponents of
inclusive education, but we have seen evidence that many learners with the most severe disabilities often have
failed to receive the kinds of interdisciplinary supports necessary to receive maximum educational benefits.
This book adheres to a core set of values, consistent with effective practice and a philosophy of inclusion and
collaboration. These values include
• High expectations for all students
• Accountability for achievement based, in part, on each student’s personal potential and educational experience
• Thorough analysis of each student’s learning needs
• Emphasis on the importance of family involvement and home-school communication structures that are
culturally responsive and which empower families
• Collaboration with school and nonschool personnel to plan and provide services
• Provision of a broad range of personal support services that are closely coordinated with the general education
classroom’s goals and activities, and that are only as specialized as necessary
• Instructional and assistive technologies that foster self-determination, participation, and choice
• The use of positive behavioral supports that are based on functional assessment of challenging behavior and
that incorporate medical, educational, communicative, and environmental interventions
We also believe that it is important to blend research and theory into effective practices. In addition to citing
the literature on current research and practice, chapters open with a vignette, designed to personalize and make
real the information that follows. The vignettes are described in inclusive educational contexts, but also with an
eye towards fully understanding the complexity of the child’s educational, physical, sensory, health, and emotional
needs.
As with the previous edition, the fifth edition was written in a climate of welcome change and openness to
new possibilities. A glance at the short biographies of the contributors will reveal that we remain committed to
including authors who represent a broad range of professional disciplines. We are happy to welcome Donna Gilles
as a new editor. Her close association with many of the contributors and extensive collaboration in shaping the
overall tone and direction of the book were invaluable. We also acknowledge and give thanks to Rosanne K.
Silberman, our former co-editor on the fourth edition, for her previous contributions, which have continued to

13
inform and support this new edition.
Although the book has retained its overall purpose and approach, the fifth edition is, in essence, almost
entirely new. We have added new chapters and new contributors, incorporated the latest research and instructional
strategies, and reordered the chapters to reflect our values of collaboration and family. We have also added a
number of features designed to enhance this book’s usefulness as both a textbook and professional resource. Each
chapter begins with learning objectives, key terms, and an opening vignette introducing real challenges and
successes that come from working with students with severe and multiple disabilities. At the end of each chapter
are a set of reflection questions and an activity to promote critical thinking and enhance readers’ understanding of
their important work with students with severe and multiple disabilities. As a supplement to your course or
professional development program, PowerPoints also accompany each chapter, downloadable at
brookespublishing.com/orelove. This book is intended for both individuals studying to become professionals or
those already employed as educational team members. May this fifth edition serve as one small resource in your
quest to educate, support, and care for all children.

14
 To the many families, teachers, and team members who have worked hard over the past generation to provide love,
support, and exemplary educational services to children who have deserved nothing less. And especially to the children:
past, present, and future.

15
 1
Designing Collaborative Educational Services
CHIGEE JAN CLONINGER

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1. Describe the collaborative approach to educational programming
2. Name the essential components of collaborative teaming
3. Understand the benefits of a variety of disciplines
4. Recognize the challenges in implementing the collaborative model and know the approaches to success
5. Describe the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary models and understand the progression
to the collaborative team model
6. See an example of collaborative teaming in action for a student with severe and multiple disabilities

KEY TERMS
• Collaborative individualized education program (IEP)
• Collaborative team approach
• Discipline-free goals
• Valued life outcomes

Zach is 11 years old and rides to his neighborhood school on the bus with his brother and other children in
his neighborhood to attend a fifth-grade class. Zach likes being in places where there is a lot of activity, and
he enjoys music, books, and the outdoors. He presently does not have a formalized communication system—
he communicates through facial expressions, vocalizing, crying, and laughing, and he seems to understand
more than he is able to communicate. Zach does not have vision or hearing impairments; however, he does
have physical disabilities that affect the use of his extremities. He is beginning to learn to use a power
wheelchair for mobility and is beginning to use communication assistive technology (AT).
Zach’s educational team uses the collaborative approach to plan, implement, and evaluate his IEP, which
is supported by a special educator, classroom paraeducator, physical therapist (PT), occupational therapist
(OT), and speech-language pathologist (SLP). These team members, including his parents, use a systematic
process to determine Zach’s learning outcomes for the year, who was going to teach or support these learning
outcomes in the various school settings, and what skills needed to be taught to other team members so
everyone could assist Zach in achieving his goals and objectives. Each member of the team shares the same
vision—meeting Zach’s educational needs and goals and providing for his successful future.

Putting the student with severe and/or multiple disabilities at the core of all planning is the key to truly making a
difference in that student’s life. The most successful IEPs are created through the dynamic, synergistic
collaborations of team members who share a common focus and purpose and bring together diverse skills and
knowledge (McDonnell & Hunt, 2014; Reiter, 1999). Together, professionals across a wide variety of disciplines,
including special and general educators, SLPs, PTs and OTs, psychologists, and counselors, contribute to planning
and implementing a successful educational program for students with severe and multiple disabilities. Although
this chapter emphasizes supporting students with severe and multiple disabilities, all students can benefit from a
collaborative approach to educational planning and supports (Idol, Nevin, & Paolucci-Whitcomb, 2000; Rose &
Meyer, 2006).

16
WHY COLLABORATIVE TEAMS?
Students with severe and multiple disabilities are those “with concomitant impairments (e.g., cognitive
impairments/blindness, cognitive impairments/orthopedic impairments), the combination of which causes such
severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in the special education programs solely for one of
the impairments” (Code of Federal Regulations [C.F.R.] Chapter III, Section 300.8 [c][7], 1999). Students in this
disability category include those with the most severe and/or combinations of disabilities. Most have some level of
cognitive disability, but the nature and extent of cognitive impairments are often ambiguous and undetermined
because of the interactional effects of the multiple disabilities and the difficulty in precise diagnoses. Because of
their combination of physical, cognitive, medical, educational, and social-emotional challenges, these students
require a collaborative and concerted effort so their IEPs result in learning outcomes that make a difference in
their daily lives. Thus, they need the profound and foundational interconnectedness of a diverse group, including
family members, to see that learning does happen (Giangreco, Cloninger, Dennis, & Edelman, 2002; Selby,
2001). The many needs of students with intense, numerous educational challenges call for a collaborative
approach in the educational environment to ensure the following:
• Services are coordinated rather than isolated and fragmented. Team members who work together to
complement and support the student’s goals and each other provide connected and integrated educational
programming. Coordination of services takes place through the actions of team members who learn and
implement the principles of educational collaboration, such as sharing expertise, agreeing on ways of working
together, and putting the student first. Team members experience a sense of collegial belonging and
satisfaction through collaboration (King-Sears, Janney, & Snell, 2015).
• All team members share a framework for team functioning and the assessment, implementation, and
evaluation of the student’s educational program. Team members define their roles in relation to direct and
indirect supports that they provide to the student’s educational plan and to other team members. Within a
collaborative framework, the contributions of every team member are educationally relevant and necessary to
the student’s success. Gaps in services and overlapping functions (e.g., when the OT and SLP both work on
eating skills with the student) are avoided. Involvement in the development of a student’s total plan helps
ensure commitment and ongoing learning (Giangreco, Cloninger, & Iverson, 2011).
• The student’s goals belong to the student, and all team members collaborate to ensure that those goals are
met. Goals, objectives, and general supports are developed based on valued life outcomes for the student,
family, and team members. Valued life outcomes are those basic components that reflect quality-of-life issues,
such as being safe and healthy, having a home now and in the future, having meaningful relationships and
activities, having choice and control that matches one’s age and culture, and participating in meaningful
activities in various places. An individualized student plan, which includes goals and objectives, supports,
accommodations, and specialized instructional strategies, is based on these valued life outcomes. These plans
will be unique for each student and used as benchmarks for evaluating the success of the student’s program
(Giangreco et al., 2011).
• The student’s needs are addressed through a coordinated and comprehensive approach. Students with severe
and multiple disabilities face challenges in a number of areas, including 1) physical and medical conditions
(e.g., movement restrictions; skeletal abnormalities; vision and hearing loss; seizure, breathing, and urinary
disorders), susceptibility to infections and management of medications; 2) social-emotional needs, such as
maintaining friendships, expressing feelings, showing affection, giving to others rather than always being
passive recipients, and making decisions; and 3) educational challenges, such as how to appropriately position
and handle students at school and how to promote best use of the student’s vision, hearing, and movements
for gaining access to materials and people. Appropriate communication methods and modes to match
students’ cognitive, visual, hearing, and motor functioning are essential to ensure that students can make
choices, have some control over their lives, express basic needs, engage with others, and have access to
preacademics and academics. Although students with severe and multiple disabilities may have physical,
medical, and social-emotional challenges, any student’s IEP should be based on individually identified
educational needs, not on presumed disability characteristics (Giangreco et al., 2011).

THE COLLABORATIVE TEAM MODEL: EXEMPLARY PRACTICE

Collaborative teaming does not just happen; team members must practice skills in order to effectively work
together. Although all members enter the team at different levels, new learning occurs for all. Being part of a team
is a dynamic, ever-changing process, with most teams moving through stages of learning and ways of working
together, then continuously recycling through these stages as new people join the team or as conflict or new

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situations arise.
The variety of people involved in the students’ programs need to work well together in order to best serve
children in educational environments. Each team member brings a unique set of professional and personal skills
and experiences to the team relationship. The way teams are formed and how they operate influence both the
process and outcomes of children’s education. The collaborative team model has proven to be an exemplary model
for people working together to bring about differences in the lives of students with severe and multiple disabilities.
Team models have progressed to best meet the unique needs of students with severe and multiple disabilities
in educational environments by following the development of educational recommended practices, research, and
legal mandates. They also are based on the realization that educational teaming requires an educational model for
student assessment, program planning, and delivery—the collaborative approach rather than a medical (or single
expertise) model.
The collaborative model is exemplary practice in service delivery models for the education of students with
severe and multiple disabilities, incorporating the best qualities of other models (i.e., multidisciplinary,
interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary) while adding features to address their limitations (Doyle & Millard, 2013;
Giangreco, Cloninger, Dennis, & Edelman, 2000). These other models will be discussed later in this chapter. A
significant difference between the collaborative model and others is that individuals bring their own perspectives
to the team, but these are purposefully shaped and changed by working closely with other team members
(Edelman, 1997) and by new learning, such as universal design for learning (UDL). The practice of role release
(e.g., being able to share one’s disciplinary expertise with others) used in the transdisciplinary model is essential.
The transdisciplinary model provides a structure for interaction and communication among team members but
does not go further. The collaborative model goes beyond that concept to embrace influences on one’s own
practice. The collaborative model is multidirectional and dynamic. All team members acquire not only shared
understanding and knowledge of each other’s expertise, but also the ability to incorporate that expertise into
collaborative evaluation, planning, and implementation. New ideas are generated through group interaction that
would not be generated by working in isolation.
Another significant difference is that the collaborative model addresses the provision of services in meaningful
or functional contexts as well as who provides the services and how multiple team members can provide the same
service (Rainforth & York-Barr, 1997). The collaborative team model provides guidelines for who is on the team,
how each team member’s expertise will be used, and the contexts or situations in which team members will
provide their expertise.
A collaborative team is a group of professionals working together on the four major areas of educational
programming—assessment, development of instructional goals, intervention, and evaluation—with the shared
goal of supporting student and family valued life outcomes. Collaboration on these four major areas of educational
programming in the other models is an option rather than the basis of team expectations and operations.

Assessment
Determining relevant educational goals is the main purpose of assessment in the collaborative approach. Planned
quality assessment of activities identified by the team (including the family and student) should be conducted in
priority educational environments (York, Rainforth, & Giangreco, 1990). Once assessment is complete, the team
establishes learning outcomes for the student across educational content areas, then writes educational goals and
objectives based on those learning outcomes identified as priorities for the year.

Development of Instructional Goals and Objectives

Goals and objectives should be selected based on criteria such as whether performing the activity will make a real
difference in the student’s quality of life (i.e., whether the activity will support the student’s valued life outcomes).
Consider Taylor, a sixth-grade student with cognitive, motor, and hearing disabilities. This goal is listed on his
IEP: “Taylor will reliably answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ symbolically to a variety of questions to indicate wants and needs.”
These are the questions the team needs to address: Will teaching Taylor to use a communication device to indicate
“yes” or “no” increase his quality of life? Will it provide him the capability to make choices or to participate in
more meaningful activities?
The goals and objectives on students’ IEPs dictate the supports and accommodations, schedule, instructional
materials and strategies, and the required involvement of specific team members. Thus, it is critical to develop
effective educational goals and objectives to successfully operate within a collaborative model. An IEP developed
by a collaborative team is not simply goals and objectives written from individual disciplines compiled into a
single document with the individual professionals responsible for implementing and evaluating progress on their
individual goals. An option is not provided for members to write separate goals in the collaborative model, as they
are allowed to do in other models. Rather, a collaborative IEP is based on goals and objectives that belong to the

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student and originate from priorities that the student and family select with input from other team members. It is
the responsibility of the team to provide forward-looking planning strategies such as Choosing Outcomes and
Accommodations for Children (COACH; Giangreco et al., 2011) and Making Action Plans (MAPs; Pearpoint,
Forest, & O’Brien, 1996) so that the student and family are truly part of the team and involved in making
educational decisions. The goals and objectives are based on what is best for the student educationally for a given
year from a family-centered perspective.
The student’s goals target educationally relevant learning outcomes that are not tied to any one discipline.
“Isabella will improve postural stability and increase antigravity of head, trunk, and extremities” is an example of a
discipline-specific and jargon-filled goal written by a PT (Giangreco et al., 2011). Another discipline-specific
example might read, “Moira will extend her dominant hand to an augmentative device for expressive
communication requesting salient items.” Instead, a goal should be stated so that 1) everyone can understand
clearly what is expected, 2) it can be carried out in natural environments, and 3) it provides an answer to the
question, “What difference will this make in the student’s life?” Restating a goal for Isabella in a discipline-free,
jargon-free manner results in, “During lunch, Isabella will walk in line, get her lunch tray, reach for two food
items, and carry her tray to the table,” whereas Moira’s goal might state, “Moira will point to pictures on her
communication board to make requests for preferred people, toys, and food.”

Delivery of Instruction, Intervention, and Related Services

The collaborative model incorporates integrated therapy and teaching in which team members provide at least
some services by consulting and teaching other team members, but all team members have the capability for
intervention. Skills and expertise of team members are integrated not only in the writing of the student’s goals but
also in deciding where and how the student’s goals and objectives are taught. The team works together to support
the student in all school and community environments and activities as indicated on the IEP, often through co-
teaching (Villa & Thousand, 2009, 2011; Villa, Thousand, & Nevin, 2013).
For example, one of Linda’s goals was to decrease transition time between activities in her sixth-grade class.
Strategies included teaching her placement and organization of materials for easy access and storage, giving her
pretransition signals, and providing points for decreasing transition time. Mr. Nawby, the sixth-grade teacher, was
working with all the students on this same task as part of a positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS)
approach. He used ClassDojo (www.classdojo.com), a tracking and reward program application, for many
appropriate class behaviors. Linda was added to the class roster so he and any team members could keep track of
Linda’s goal along with her peers’ goals.
Team members share their personal and professional expertise and skills so the team can determine how best
to address the student’s goals and objectives without gaps or unnecessary overlaps in services. “Teams clarify the
team’s vision for the student’s educational program” (Giangreco et al., 2011, p. 19) in the collaborative model.
They must have a shared understanding of who will provide services and supports, how and where the IEP will be
carried out, and ways team members will collaborate to meet the student’s set of relevant, individually determined
program components.

Evaluation of Program Effectiveness

Teams participate in ongoing evaluation processes by which they make necessary changes in response to the
student’s needs, priorities, and progress. Responsive evaluation addresses questions at various levels, including 1)
student-focused questions concerning progress, satisfaction, and needs; 2) program-focused questions concerning
methods, curriculum, and environments; and 3) team-focused questions concerning efficacy in implementing the
educational program and in working together collaboratively. Team-focused evaluation can be addressed through
two questions:
1. What was the effect of our collaboration on student outcomes? In other words, did team members work
together in such a manner to enable the student to be successful in his or her educational program?
2. Did we maintain positive relationships throughout the process?
It is important to understand the essential components of collaborative teaming, which are discussed in the
following section, to begin to answer these questions.

ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF COLLABORATIVE TEAMING

Collaborative teaming is defined as an approach to educational programming that exhibits all of the following five
components:
1. Appropriate team membership

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2. A shared framework of assumptions, beliefs, and values
3. Distribution and parity of functions and resources
4. Processes for working together
5. A set of shared student goals agreed to by the team (Giangreco et al., 2011; King-Sears et al., 2015; Thousand
& Villa, 2000)

Component 1: Appropriate Team Membership

How is team membership defined? With the potential for a large number of people on a student’s team, and the
recognition that weekly or biweekly team meetings with all of the team members is neither possible nor necessary,
a tiered team membership can be used that consists of core, extended, and situational levels. Giangreco explained
that educational teams can
Reduce the number of people involved in regular team meetings by designating a core team consisting of people who have the most ongoing
involvement with the student, an extended team that includes the core team plus those team members who have less frequent involvement with
the student, and situational teams consisting of individually determined combinations of team members to address specific issues or concerns.
(2011, p. 18)

Membership at each level is related to the student’s IEP and influenced by professional qualifications,
regulations, personal skills, and experiences of each member. A thoughtful process for making decisions regarding
who is to be involved at each level in each situation facilitates the best use of everyone’s expertise and avoids
unnecessary overlaps and gaps in delivery of services. Related services providers are involved at each level
depending on their function (i.e., direct, indirect, consultation) and frequency of contact with the student. As
Giangreco put it, “Everyone does not need to be involved in everything” (2011, p. 18). The levels of team
membership are further described as follows:
• Core level: Team membership consists of those members who have daily contact and interaction with the
child, usually the special and general education teachers, the paraeducator, the parents, and perhaps one or
more of the related services personnel, such as the SLP, nurse, or PT, as appropriate.
• Extended level: Team membership includes those who have weekly, biweekly, or some other regular contact
with the student, such as related services personnel and a school administrator.
• Situational level: It consists of those members such as a dietitian recruited for specific situations and questions
and other teachers or related services providers (e.g., psychologist, counselor, bus driver). Information is
shared and solicited from all, but attendance at meetings depends on function and relation to educational
planning and implementation and is determined by the agenda (Giangreco et al., 2011).

Component 2: Shared Framework of Assumptions, Beliefs, and Values

Teams need to agree on their beliefs about the purpose of the team, best ways to educate students with severe and
multiple disabilities, and involvement of families and professionals. Dialogue takes place in order for members to
share perspectives and come to a consensus on various educational programming concepts such as valued life
outcomes, collaborative relationships, integrated related services and instruction, inclusive education and UDL,
professional development, and team communication strategies.

Component 3: Distribution and Parity of Functions and Resources

Team members value each member’s input and alternately take on the roles of both teacher and learner and giver
and receiver of expertise. Expertise, perspectives, experiences, and resources are equitably shared in meetings; in
written communications; and in assessment, planning, and evaluation.

Component 4: Processes for Working Together

Team members develop processes for working together through attention to four critical factors: face-to-face
interaction, positive interdependence, interpersonal skills, and accountability.
Face-to-Face Interactions Ongoing, regularly planned times for face-to-face interactions provide members
with the opportunities to problem solve creatively, get to know each other, share and receive the expertise of
others, and most important, plan for the implementation of the student’s educational program. The core,
extended, and situational tiers of team membership are used to designate who needs to be at specific meetings.
When members are not at meetings, a system of sharing what happened and receiving input is set up for all to be
informed.

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 Positive Interdependence Positive interdependence is “the perception that one is linked with others in a way
so that one cannot succeed unless they do (and vice versa), and that their work benefits you and your work
benefits them” (Johnson & Johnson, 1997, p. 399). Team members agree to provide educational services from a
shared operational framework and set of values that not only greatly benefits the student but also benefits each
member of the team. Positive interdependence can be fostered in a variety of ways:
• Stating group and individual goals publicly and in writing
• Sharing team functions, roles, and resources equitably by defining team roles and responsibilities (e.g.,
recording minutes, facilitating meetings, keeping time, communicating with absent members, using jargon-
free language, completing paperwork) and taking turns fulfilling these roles
• Identifying norms or ways team members want to work together (e.g., take turns, listen respectfully, be nice,
give compliments, celebrate successes)
• Sharing accomplishments and rewards by scheduling time at meetings to present positive achievements of the
student and team members, attending workshops together, presenting at workshops together, having a team
party, and participating in other wellness activities
Interpersonal Skills Interpersonal skills are essential to effective team functioning. Adults often need to learn,
use, and reflect on the small-group interpersonal skills necessary for collaboration. These skills include trust-
building, communication, leadership for managing and organizing team activities, creative problem solving,
decision making, and conflict management. Improving interpersonal skills and relationships also includes learning
about each other’s cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds and experiences (Webb-Johnson, 2002). The
team chooses interpersonal skills and values that are most reflective of how the team desires to behave and work
together, which then become team norms that are ideally used and evaluated at each team meeting. Attention to
these norms is enhanced when they are displayed and identified as part of the team agenda. These written norms
and agendas also can be used as benchmarks for monitoring, discussion, and reflection as team members learn
together and practice teaming skills.
Accountability Individual and group accountability is necessary for members to inform each other of the
need for assistance or encouragement, identify positive progress toward individual and group goals, and recognize
fulfillment of individual responsibilities. The agenda at each meeting should include a brief time for processing
(i.e., sharing observations, suggesting changes in team process as needed). The responsibility for processing is best
rotated among members, as are other team roles. The content of the agenda also provides opportunities for
accountability reporting (e.g., “Report from PT on co-teaching activity with physical education teacher—5
minutes”). A team may take more time one or two times per year to evaluate team operations, celebrate, and make
adjustments for the next semester or year.

Component 5: Shared Student Goals Agreed to by the Team

The IEP goals and objectives are derived from the needs of the student and indicate what the student will be able
to do as a result of instruction. Teams establish common student goals to avoid the problem of each member
having his or her own separate, discipline-specific goals. All team members agree to collaboratively supply their
expertise and resources so that the student can achieve his or her goals and objectives. All team members pull in
the same direction for the student.
Reasons for a collaborative team approach to the education of students with severe and multiple disabilities
stem from the educational difference this approach can make for students. Team members work in a collegial
culture, within a community of caring and supportive adults, not in isolation. They share diverse perspectives and
experiences integrated in creative ways to address the many ongoing learning challenges of students with severe
and multiple disabilities. Team members provide context-specific, embedded instruction in meaningful activities
that promote learning and generalization. They are able to address the learning characteristics of students with
severe and multiple disabilities by designing and implementing coordinated, integrated services.
Team members must learn from and teach one another in order for collaborative teaming to occur. Team
members must take the time to learn, practice, and evaluate teaming skills and take the time to work on challenges
and celebrate successes. In doing so, they can provide effective, efficient, creative, and truly individualized
programs for students.
Refer to works by Downey (2010), Thousand and Villa (2000), Villa and Thousand (2011), Villa et al.
(2013), King-Sears et al. (2015), and Idol and colleagues (2000) for other helpful resources on collaborative
teamwork.

IMPORTANCE OF A VARIETY OF PERSONNEL DISCIPLINES

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“None of us is as smart as all of us” (Blanchard & Johnson, 2007, p. 22). To develop IEPs for students with severe
and multiple disabilities, it is necessary to call on individuals from diverse disciplines such as special education,
general education, nursing, social work, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language therapy, as
well as from fields less traditionally associated with education, such as rehabilitation engineering, nutrition, and
respiratory therapy. Whitehouse (1951) recognized that one or two people from different disciplines could not
meet all of the needs or deliver all of the services for these students. Many others in the field of special education
have stressed the importance of multiple services (Giangreco, Cloninger et al., 2000; King-Sears et al., 2015;
Thousand & Villa, 2000). According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments (IDEA) of
1997 (PL 105-17), whether a professional’s services and skills are deemed necessary for a student to benefit from
his or her IEP is key to determining the involvement of any of these professionals in a particular student’s IEP.
The contributions of every team member are educationally relevant and necessary to the student’s success within a
collaborative framework, and gaps in services and unnecessary and contradictory overlapping functions are
eliminated.
Although they are called on to work collaboratively, family members and professionals have distinct training
backgrounds, philosophical and theoretical approaches, experiences, and/or specialized skills. The success of an
educational team depends in part on the competence of the individual team members and on a mutual
understanding and respect for the skills and knowledge of other team members.

Roles and Responsibilities of Various Team Members

All members of a student’s collaborative team share in carrying out their roles so the team can function
successfully and address goals intended to increase the student’s quality of life. Some roles and responsibilities are
generic and shared by all members; some are carried out individually or together; and some are specialized to a
specific professional, although shared as necessary and appropriate. Team members include those who provide
specialized education services as well as those who provide related services. Related services defined in IDEA include
Transportation, and such developmental, corrective, and other supportive services (including speech-language pathology and audiology services,
psychological services, physical and occupational therapy, recreation, including therapeutic recreation, social work, counseling services, including
rehabilitation counseling, orientation and mobility services, and medical services, except that such medical services shall be for diagnostic and
evaluation purposes only) as are required to assist a child with a disability to benefit from special education, and includes the early identification
and assessment of disabling conditions in children. (20 U.S.C. § 1401 [Sec. 602][22])

Team members provide specialized education services and/or related services to enable the student to reach his
or her IEP goals and objectives. Special education can be provided without related services, but for the most part,
related services cannot be provided without special education services. In a few states, speech-language pathology
services can be provided as special education services if the only identified goals and objectives for the student
relate to speech-language skills.
Related services providers, as well as other team members, engage in a variety of functions. Research by
Giangreco and colleagues (Giangreco, 1990; Giangreco, Prelock, Reid, Dennis, & Edelman, 2000) found that the
four most important functions of related services providers for serving students with severe and multiple
disabilities were 1) developing adaptations, equipment, or both to allow for active participation or to prevent
negative outcomes (e.g., regression, deformity, discomfort, pain); 2) transferring information and skills to others
on the team; 3) serving as a resource, support, or both to the family; and 4) applying discipline-specific methods
or techniques to promote active participation, to prevent negative outcomes, or both.
Team membership is configured differently for each student depending on the array of services required to
support his or her educational program and can include the following people, whose discipline-specific roles are
outlined in the following subsections.
Student The student is the core of the team; the reason the team exists is to address his or her educational
needs. The student should be present at all team functions, either in person or through representation by family
members, peers or advocates, and other team members. Team members are responsible for educating the student
to participate as a team member and teaching self-advocacy skills and ways to have choice and control over
decisions affecting him or her.
Family Member or Legal Guardian Although not always present in the school on a daily basis, a family
member or legal guardian or caregiver is an important member of the educational team. Apart from the fact that
parents have the right to participate in assessment and planning, it simply makes good sense for them to
participate in all team meetings as the individuals with the most knowledge of their children and the greatest stake
in their children’s future (Gallagher, 1997; Giangreco et al., 2011). (See Chapter 2 for more on working with
families.)
Special Educator The special educator is primarily responsible for the development and implementation of

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the student’s IEP (IDEA 1997). The special educator sees that the student with severe and multiple disabilities
learns through direct instruction, through UDL, and by sharing expertise and skills with the student’s peers and
others (e.g., paraprofessional, general education teacher, OT, nurse, bus driver) who interact with the student. The
special educator may also serve in roles shared by other team members, such as liaison between the parents and
school personnel, supervisor of paraprofessionals, member and coordinator of the team, and advocate for the
student.
General Educator The general education teacher provides services for and represents students on his or her
class roster, as well as those who spend time in a general education class most of the day. The general educator’s
role on the team is to contribute expertise and experience about the general education curriculum and standards;
weekly, monthly, and yearly curricular plans; class schedule; class routines; class rules and expectations; the general
culture of his or her class; and UDL. This professional also ensures that students with severe and multiple
disabilities have opportunities to participate in class lessons and activities and to interact with other students. He
or she shares responsibility for designing or delivering the general education components of the student’s program,
such as evaluating student progress. IDEA 1997 requires that at least one of the student’s general education
teachers be on the IEP team. In particular, the general educator contributes to discussions and decisions about the
student’s access to and participation in the general education curriculum.
Paraeducator Paraeducators, also called paraprofessionals, classroom assistants, or aides, are vital to the daily
operation of the classroom. Although their duties may vary from team to team, their core functions include
Providing academic instruction; teaching functional life and vocational skills; collecting and managing data; supporting students with
challenging behaviors; facilitating interactions with peers who do not have disabilities; providing personal care (e.g., feeding, bathroom
assistance); and engaging in clerical tasks. (Giangreco, Edelman, Broer, & Doyle, 2001, p. 53)

Some paraeducators have specialized skills, such as serving as an intervener for students with deafblindness.
Interveners usually receive specialized training and may be certified depending on the state (National Center on
Deaf-Blindness, 2012).
Physical Therapist The PT focuses on physical functions including gross motor skills; handling, positioning,
and transfer techniques; range of motion; muscle strength and endurance; flexibility; mobility; relaxation and
stimulation; postural drainage; and other physical manipulation and exercise procedures.
Occupational Therapist The OT focuses on the development and maintenance of an individual’s functional
skills for participating in instruction and activities of daily living (ADL), which include using the upper
extremities, fine motor skills, sensory perception, range of motion, muscle tone, sensorimotor skills, posture, and
oral-motor skills.
Speech-Language Pathologist The SLP focuses on all aspects of communication in all environments,
including receptive and expressive levels, modes, and intent; articulation and fluency; voice quality and respiration;
and the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). He or she also may be trained in assessing and
facilitating mealtime skills.
Assistive Technology Specialist The AT specialist focuses on the use of high- and low-technology devices and
adaptations to facilitate participation in instruction and ADL. Areas addressed through AT include
communication, environmental management, instruction, social relationships, mobility, and recreation.
School Psychologist The school psychologist focuses on social-emotional issues and is responsible for
assessment and evaluation, interpretation of testing information, counseling of students and families, behavior and
environmental analysis, and program planning.
Social Worker The school social worker helps the student gain access to community and other services and
resources; advocates for the child and family; and acts as a liaison among school, home, and community.
Administrator Administrators may include the school principal, special education supervisor or coordinator,
and program coordinator. One of these or another designated person acts as the local education agency (LEA)
representative at the IEP meetings. All of these administrators work together to ensure compliance with local,
state, and federal regulations in areas such as placement, transition, curriculum development, transportation,
related services, equipment, scheduling, and time for planning as a team. The school and district administrators
are important in promoting a school culture of success, openness, collaboration, ongoing professional
development, and inclusion for all students (Causton & Theoharis, 2014).
Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments and Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist The teacher
of students with visual impairments (TVI) provides instruction to meet the unique needs of students with vision
impairments and other multiple disabilities. The TVI is responsible for providing direct instruction, adaptations,

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and accommodations. He or she assists with tactile communication, use of optical devices, and ADL skills and is
responsible for adapting general education classroom materials and consulting with the general education teachers.
The certified orientation and mobility specialist provides instruction in helping students with visual impairments
learn how to maneuver safely and efficiently in the environment and may provide adapted equipment and
strategies for those with significant challenges.
Audiologist The audiologist identifies different types and degrees of hearing loss using traditional and
alternative assessment techniques and equipment. The audiologist also provides consultation on equipment (e.g.,
hearing aids, FM devices) and their use, as well as environmental modifications.
School Nurse The school nurse focuses on health-related issues and needs, and his or her responsibilities may
include administration of medications and other treatments (e.g., catheterization, suctioning, tube feeding),
development of safety and emergency procedures, and consultation with other medical personnel.
Nutritionist and Dietitian The nutritionist and dietitian focus on students’ diet and nutrition.
Responsibilities include adjusting students’ caloric intake, minimizing the side effects and maximizing the
effectiveness of medications, designing special diets for individuals with specific food allergies or health care needs,
and consulting with medical personnel.
Physician The physician’s focus is on the total health and well-being of the student. His or her
responsibilities include screening for and treating common medical problems and those associated with a specific
disability, prescribing and monitoring medications and other treatments, and consulting with other medical
personnel. Physicians may include specialists such as a pediatrician, ophthalmologist, neurologist, otolaryngologist,
orthopedist, and cardiologist. As related services providers, medical personnel provide services “for diagnostic and
evaluation purposes only” (20 U.S.C. § 1401 [Sec. 602][22]).
Other Specialists Other specialists may be needed to address specific needs and concerns. They function as
consulting team members, usually providing time-limited services in response to a specific question by the
educational team. Occupations in the field of severe and multiple disabilities may include dentist, optometrist,
respiratory therapist, pharmacist, and rehabilitation engineer.

CHALLENGES TO IMPLEMENTING A COLLABORATIVE MODEL

Collaborative teams inevitably encounter a variety of challenges along the way regardless of how useful the
collaborative approach is in meeting the educational needs of students with severe and multiple disabilities.
Anticipation and team preparation can alleviate difficulties that often result from lack of understanding, lack of
personal experience with the model, and logistics. As Casey Stengel said, “Getting good players is easy. Getting
‘em to play together is the hard part” (Alvy & Robbins, 2010, p. 709). Challenges in implementing the model are
discussed from three perspectives: 1) philosophical and professional, 2) personal and interpersonal, and 3)
logistical.

Philosophical and Professional Challenges

Philosophical and professional challenges arise from differences in professional training and philosophy (Edelman,
1997). Team members from different disciplines often approach instruction and therapy differently. Many related
services providers, such as OTs and PTs, psychologists, nutritionists, and SLPs, receive their professional
preparation in a medical model in which one looks for the underlying cause of a behavior and then directs therapy
toward fixing the presumed cause. Special educators, especially those who work with children with severe and
multiple disabilities, receive their professional preparation in an educational model in which one administers
functional or authentic assessment with the goal of teaching functional learning outcomes for the student, not to
fix the student (Giangreco, Prelock, et al., 2000).
Preparation occurs in isolation from other disciplines in too many professions; thus, teachers and related
services providers neither learn about each other’s disciplines and jargon nor have opportunities to work together
as members of an educational team. When serving as a member of an IEP team, they are unprepared for the
change in roles necessary to be part of a collaborative team (King-Sears et al., 2015).
Releasing part of one’s professional role may threaten some professionals’ perceived status. Collaborative teams
that operate smoothly, however, can actually enhance the status of team members by fostering greater respect and
interdependence, providing opportunities to share expertise with others, and allowing for a creative team process
(Edelman, 1997; Idol et al., 2000).
In an integrated related services and teaching approach, there may be a few highly specialized procedures for
evaluation or intervention that only specifically designated, trained individuals should perform based on their
professional judgment or as designated by a physician. For example, only nurses can perform catheterization or

24
dispense medication at school in some states. In other instances, only a PT can appropriately deliver range of
motion to a student returning to school after surgery. Other team members should learn and perform only those
procedures appropriate for them, with the assurance that legally required supervision by licensed or certified
professionals is planned for and regularly occurs.
Team members may have difficulty deciding who should provide what services, which is not as clear in the
collaborative model as it is in other service delivery models. The paraeducator and special educator may be
carrying out feeding techniques daily at snack time after being taught by the SLP, who provides his or her support
to the student via indirect consultation and biweekly direct consultation. Parents or other team members may feel
that the child is not receiving adequate related services when the process for integrating related services and
instruction is not clear. To alleviate this concern, it can be helpful to track the number of professionals or peers
beyond the related services providers who are providing a service and also track the number of opportunities the
student has to use the skill.
An important step in enhancing team functioning is for all members to understand the collaborative model
and the ways in which a specific array of instruction and related services can ensure the best educational results for
the student (Rainforth, 2002). Team members recognize their numerous opportunities for involvement in
educational planning, implementation, and evaluation when they understand their changing roles, and they can
better appreciate how their expertise and resources benefit the student and other team members.

Personal and Interpersonal Challenges

Team members also encounter personal and interpersonal challenges when implementing a collaborative team
model. One of the tenets of the collaborative model is that team members must share information and skills with
others and accept advice and learn from other team members. Some may find this process threatening because it
places a team member’s skills under scrutiny, necessitates the release of expertise, and requires training on how to
teach other adults. Thus, sharing one’s expertise with others is a matter of trust and a challenge for some team
members. Team members can use strategies such as modeling, practice, feedback, and coaching to share their
expertise (Heron & Harris, 2001; Villa & Thousand, 2011; Villa et al. 2013). For example, the OT has expertise
in designing a feeding program and shows other team members, especially the special educator and paraeducator,
how to conduct the program. He or she may also make a recording of the feeding procedures for others to view,
then provide feedback through direct observation or via a recording. Teaching others and being taught becomes
easier, more effective, and enjoyable as team members learn new skills, practice sharing expertise, and develop
trust.
A lack of clear differentiation of responsibilities among team members is another source of interpersonal
problems. Functions within a collaborative approach are shared and purposefully melded, which makes it even
more essential to clarify roles and responsibilities. Members identify who does what (e.g., contact parents, take
minutes, repair equipment) at team meetings. As roles and responsibilities change over time, team members must
be involved in and informed about these changes. The collaborative model advocates strategies to promote shared
responsibilities; it does not advocate that related services or accommodations be reduced or that one person
provides all of the services needed by the student.
Implementing a new service delivery model takes time and concerted effort as well as administrative support
and technical assistance. It is important to understand that people respond to change in various ways, from total
resistance to exuberance. Fostering dialogue, resolving conflicts, solving problems, and demonstrating the benefits
to the student are strategies that can help address resistance to change and interpersonal challenges in
implementing a collaborative service delivery model.

Logistical Challenges
Some of the most difficult challenges are ones that often seem out of the team’s control, including finding the
time for meetings and on-the-fly communication, running efficient meetings, and ensuring consistency in
following the team norms and implementing the educational program. Addressing these challenges often requires
the involvement of administrators and others in the school and may include strategies such as training and
adapting the collaborative approach for everyone in a school or agency, such as providing an in-service on
collaborative teaming; scheduling team planning time for everyone; training in and use of problem-solving
processes for school or agency challenges; and providing e-mail access for all team members (Causton &
Theoharis, 2014; King-Sears et al., 2015; Thousand & Villa, 2000).

PROGRESSION TO THE COLLABORATIVE TEAM MODEL AS EXEMPLARY

This section describes a progression of team models representing a hierarchy of increasingly more coordinated and
connected approaches (Giangreco, York, & Rainforth, 1989), with the focus on three organizational structures—

25
multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. Although each of these models may be appropriate in a
given environment or situation, many of the models first adopted by special education originated in medical
environments in which people may not have even thought of themselves as belonging to a team (Fox, Hanline,
Woods, & Mickelson, 2014). The terms transdisciplinary, integrated therapy, and collaborative teamwork are often
used interchangeably, but there are differences, first identified by Rainforth and others in the early 1990s. To
emphasize the need for collaboration, Rainforth and colleagues noted, “‘collaborative teamwork’ is now used to
refer to service provision that combines the essential elements of the transdisciplinary and integrated therapy
models” (Rainforth, Giangreco, Smith, & York, 1995, p. 137).

Multidisciplinary Model
In the multidisciplinary model, professionals with expertise in different disciplines work with the child
individually, in isolation from other professionals. Evaluation, planning, priority setting, and implementation are
not formally coordinated with other professionals, although each discipline acknowledges the other disciplines,
and information may be shared through reports or informally. They carry out isolated, separate assessment
activities, write separate assessment reports, and generate and apply separate interventions specific to their area of
expertise. The overlaps, gaps, inconsistencies, and conflicts in services are addressed only minimally, if at all.
Parents, special educators, and case managers are left with the task of implementing different or incompatible
strategies to address various goals. This model originated in the medical profession in which various disciplines
coexist to meet the needs of patients whose problems are typically isolated within one particular domain (Heron &
Harris, 2001).
Consider an example of how a student might be served under the multidisciplinary model. Lindsey, a fourth
grader with motor (cerebral palsy) and cognitive disabilities, is served by an SLP who has skills in oral-motor
eating issues and by an OT who also has skills in feeding issues. The SLP and OT separately evaluated Lindsey on
her eating skills and are both working with her on intervention techniques. Although these techniques could be
supportive and provide Lindsey more practice with her eating skills, these professionals’ intervention techniques
are not complementary and have not been taught to other team members who work with her daily.

Interdisciplinary Model
The interdisciplinary model is further along the continuum of how closely professionals work together and
provides a structure for interaction and communication among team members that encourages them to share
information and skills (Heron & Harris, 2001). Programming decisions are made by group consensus, usually
under the guidance of a services coordinator, whereas assessment and implementation remain tied to each
discipline. Team members are informed of and agree to the intervention goals of each discipline; however, team
members do not participate in selecting a single set of goals that belong to the student (i.e., reflect the student’s
needs and supported by all team members).
Both the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary models are discipline-referenced models, which means that
decisions about assessment, program priorities, planning, intervention, evaluation, and team interactions are based
on the orientations of each discipline. Such structures “are more likely to promote competitive and individualistic
professional interactions resulting in disjointed programmatic outcomes” (Giangreco et al., 1989, p. 57). Consider
if Lindsey, the fourth grader working on eating skills, was served under an interdisciplinary model. The separate
disciplines of SLP and OT may refuse to acknowledge the other’s expertise, promoting his or her approach as the
right approach. Others serving Lindsey will be confused and eventually take sides. This is not collaboration!

Transdisciplinary Model
The transdisciplinary model was originally designed for the assessment of infants at high risk for disabilities
(Hutchison, 1978; United Cerebral Palsy Association National Organized Collaborative Project to Provide
Comprehensive Services for Atypical Infants and Their Families, 1976) and is next along the continuum of
collaboration. The purpose of the transdisciplinary model is to minimize the number of people with whom the
young child or family has to interact in an assessment situation, although each professional continues to write
goals related to his or her discipline.
In contrast to the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, the transdisciplinary model incorporates
an indirect model of services whereby one or two people and parents are the primary facilitators of services,
implementing goals written separately by each professional, and other team members act as consultants (Heron &
Harris, 2001; Hutchison, 1978; King-Sears et al., 2015). Planned role release occurs when one team member
releases some functions of his or her primary discipline to other team members and is open to being taught by
other team members (Giangreco, Prelock et al., 2000; Lyon & Lyon, 1980; King-Sears et al., 2015; Woodruff &
McGonigel, 1988). Confusion can occur with the transdisciplinary model, however. Let us return to Lindsey. In

26
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and hope and fortitude flow from his page into thy heart? Has he led
thee to nature because his own soul was too happy in beholding her
power and love? Or is his passion for the wilderness only the
sensibility of the sick, the exhibition of a talent which only shines
whilst you praise it; which has no root in the character, and can thus
minister to the vanity but not to the happiness of the possessor; and
which derives all its éclat from our conventional education, but would
not make itself intelligible to the wise man of another age or country?
The water we wash with never speaks of itself, nor does fire or wind
or tree. Neither does the noble natural man: he yields himself to your
occasion and use, but his act expresses a reference to universal
good.
Another element of the modern poetry akin to this subjective
tendency, or rather the direction of that same on the question of
resources, is the Feeling of the Infinite. Of the perception now fast
becoming a conscious fact,—that there is One Mind, and that all the
powers and privileges which lie in any, lie in all; that I as a man may
claim and appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or strong has
anywhere been exhibited; that Moses and Confucius, Montaigne and
Leibnitz are not so much individuals as they are parts of man and
parts of me, and my intelligence proves them my own,—literature is
far the best expression. It is true, this is not the only nor the obvious
lesson it teaches. A selfish commerce and government have caught
the eye and usurped the hand of the masses. It is not to be
contested that selfishness and the senses write the laws under
which we live, and that the street seems to be built and the men and
women in it moving, not in reference to pure and grand ends, but
rather to very short and sordid ones. Perhaps no considerable
minority, no one man, leads a quite clean and lofty life. What then?
We concede in sadness the fact. But we say that these low
customary ways are not all that survives in human beings. There is
that in us which mutters, and that which groans, and that which
triumphs, and that which aspires. There are facts on which men of
the world superciliously smile, which are worth all their trade and
politics; which drive young men into gardens and solitary places, and
cause extravagant gestures, starts, distortions of the countenance,
and passionate exclamations; sentiments, which find no aliment or
language for themselves on the wharves, in court, or market, but
which are soothed by silence, by darkness, by the pale stars, and
the presence of nature. All over the modern world the educated and
susceptible have betrayed their discontent with the limits of our
municipal life, and with the poverty of our dogmas of religion and
philosophy. They betray this impatience by fleeing for resource to a
conversation with nature, which is courted in a certain moody and
exploring spirit, as if they anticipated a more intimate union of man
with the world than has been known in recent ages. Those who
cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with
indefinite thoughts and vast wishes. The very child in the nursery
prattles mysticism, and doubts and philosophizes. A wild striving to
express a more inward and infinite sense characterizes the works of
every art. The music of Beethoven is said, by those who understand
it, to labor with vaster conceptions and aspirations than music has
attempted before. This feeling of the Infinite has deeply colored the
poetry of the period. This new love of the vast, always native in
Germany, was imported into France by De Staël, appeared in
England in Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Felicia Hemans,
and finds a most genial climate in the American mind. Scott and
Crabbe, who formed themselves on the past, had none of this
tendency; their poetry is objective. In Byron, on the other hand, it
predominates; but in Byron it is blind, it sees not its true end—an
infinite good, alive and beautiful, a life nourished on absolute
beatitudes, descending into nature to behold itself reflected there.
His will is perverted, he worships the accidents of society, and his
praise of nature is thieving and selfish.
Nothing certifies the prevalence of this taste in the people more
than the circulation of the poems,—one would say most
incongruously united by some bookseller,—of Coleridge, Shelley and
Keats. The only unity is in the subjectiveness and the aspiration
common to the three writers. Shelley, though a poetic mind, is never
a poet. His muse is uniformly imitative; all his poems composite. A
good English scholar he is, with ear, taste, and memory; much more,
he is a character full of noble and prophetic traits; but imagination,
the original, authentic fire of the bard, he has not. He is clearly
modern, and shares with Richter, Chateaubriand, Manzoni and
Wordsworth, the feeling of the infinite, which so labors for expression
in their different genius. But all his lines are arbitrary, not necessary.
When we read poetry, the mind asks,—Was this verse one of twenty
which the author might have written as well; or is this what that man
was created to say? But, whilst every line of the true poet will be
genuine, he is in a boundless power and freedom to say a million
things. And the reason why he can say one thing well, is because his
vision extends to the sight of all things, and so he describes each as
one who knows many and all.
The fame of Wordsworth is a leading fact in modern literature,
when it is considered how hostile his genius at first seemed to the
reigning taste, and with what limited poetic talents his great and
steadily growing dominion has been established. More than any poet
his success has been not his own but that of the idea which he
shared with his coevals, and which he has rarely succeeded in
adequately expressing. The Excursion awakened in every lover of
Nature the right feeling. We saw stars shine, we felt the awe of
mountains, we heard the rustle of the wind in the grass, and knew
again the ineffable secret of solitude. It was a great joy. It was nearer
to Nature than anything we had before. But the interest of the poem
ended almost with the narrative of the influences of Nature on the
mind of the Boy, in the First Book. Obviously for that passage the
poem was written, and with the exception of this and of a few strains
of the like character in the sequel, the whole poem was dull. Here
was no poem, but here was poetry, and a sure index where the
subtle muse was about to pitch her tent and find the argument of her
song. It was the human soul in these last ages striving for a just
publication of itself. Add to this, however, the great praise of
Wordsworth, that more than any other contemporary bard he is
pervaded with a reverence of somewhat higher than (conscious)
thought. There is in him that property common to all great poets, a
wisdom of humanity, which is superior to any talents which they
exert. It is the wisest part of Shakspeare and of Milton. For they are
poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul,
which through their eyes beholdeth again and blesseth the things
which it hath made. The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than
any of its works.
 With the name of Wordsworth rises to our recollection the name of
his contemporary and friend, Walter Savage Landor—a man working
in a very different and peculiar spirit, yet one whose genius and
accomplishments deserve a wiser criticism than we have yet seen
applied to them, and the rather that his name does not readily
associate itself with any school of writers. Of Thomas Carlyle, also,
we shall say nothing at this time, since the quality and energy of his
influence on the youth of this country will require at our hands,
erelong, a distinct and faithful acknowledgment.
But of all men he who has united in himself, and that in the most
extraordinary degree, the tendencies of the era, is the German poet,
naturalist and philosopher, Goethe. Whatever the age inherited or
invented, he made his own. He has owed to Commerce and to the
victories of the Understanding, all their spoils. Such was his capacity,
that the magazines of the world’s ancient or modern wealth, which
arts and intercourse and skepticism could command,—he wanted
them all. Had there been twice so much, he could have used it as
well. Geologist, mechanic, merchant, chemist, king, radical, painter,
composer,—all worked for him, and a thousand men seemed to look
through his eyes. He learned as readily as other men breathe. Of all
the men of this time, not one has seemed so much at home in it as
he. He was not afraid to live. And in him this encyclopædia of facts,
which it has been the boast of the age to compile, wrought an equal
effect. He was knowing; he was brave; he was clean from all
narrowness; he has a perfect propriety and taste,—a quality by no
means common to the German writers. Nay, since the earth as we
said had become a reading-room, the new opportunities seem to
have aided him to be that resolute realist he is, and seconded his
sturdy determination to see things for what they are. To look at him
one would say there was never an observer before. What sagacity,
what industry of observation. To read his record is a frugality of time,
for you shall find no word that does not stand for a thing, and he is of
that comprehension which can see the value of truth. His love of
Nature has seemed to give a new meaning to that word. There was
never man more domesticated in this world than he. And he is an
apology for the analytic spirit of the period, because, of his analysis,
always wholes were the result. All conventions, all traditions he
rejected. And yet he felt his entire right and duty to stand before and
try and judge every fact in nature. He thought it necessary to dot
round with his own pen the entire sphere of knowables; and for many
of his stories, this seems the only reason: Here is a piece of
humanity I had hitherto omitted to sketch;—take this. He does not
say so in syllables,—yet a sort of conscientious feeling he had to be
up to the universe, is the best account and apology for many of
them. He shared also the subjectiveness of the age, and that too in
both the senses I have discriminated. With the sharpest eye for form,
color, botany, engraving, medals, persons and manners, he never
stopped at surface, but pierced the purpose of a thing and studied to
reconcile that purpose with his own being. What he could so
reconcile was good; what he could not, was false. Hence a certain
greatness encircles every fact he treats; for to him it has a soul, an
eternal reason why it was so, and not otherwise. This is the secret of
that deep realism, which went about among all objects he beheld, to
find the cause why they must be what they are. It was with him a
favorite task to find a theory of every institution, custom, art, work of
art, which he observed. Witness his explanation of the Italian mode
of reckoning the hours of the day, as growing out of the Italian
climate; of the obelisk of Egypt, as growing out of a common natural
fracture in the granite parallelopiped in Upper Egypt; of the Doric
architecture, and the Gothic; of the Venetian music of the gondolier,
originating in the habit of the fishers’ wives of the Lido singing on
shore to their husbands on the sea; of the amphitheatre, which is the
enclosure of the natural cup of heads that arranges itself round every
spectacle in the street; of the coloring of Titian and Paul Veronese,
which one may verify in common daylight in Venice every afternoon;
of the Carnival at Rome; of the domestic rural architecture in Italy;
and many the like examples.
But also that other vicious subjectiveness, that vice of the time,
infected him also. We are provoked with his Olympian self-
complacency, the patronizing air with which he vouchsafes to
tolerate the genius and performances of other mortals, “the good
Hiller,” “our excellent Kant,” “the friendly Wieland,” &c. &c. There is a
good letter from Wieland to Merck, in which Wieland relates that
Goethe read to a select party his journal of a tour in Switzerland with
the Grand Duke, and their passage through the Vallais and over the
St. Gothard. “It was,” says Wieland, “as good as Xenophon’s
Anabasis. The piece is one of his most masterly productions, and is
thought and written with the greatness peculiar to him. The fair
hearers were enthusiastic at the nature in this piece; I liked the sly
art in the composition, whereof they saw nothing, still better. It is a
true poem, so concealed is the art too. But what most remarkably in
this, as in all his other works, distinguishes him from Homer and
Shakspeare, is, that the Me, the Ille ego, everywhere glimmers
through, although without any boasting and with an infinite fineness.”
This subtle element of egotism in Goethe certainly does not seem to
deform his compositions, but to lower the moral influence of the man.
He differs from all the great in the total want of frankness. Who saw
Milton, who saw Shakspeare, saw them do their best, and utter their
whole heart manlike among their brethren. No man was permitted to
call Goethe brother. He hid himself, and worked always to astonish,
which is egotism, and therefore little.
If we try Goethe by the ordinary canons of criticism, we should say
that his thinking is of great altitude, and all level; not a succession of
summits, but a high Asiatic table-land. Dramatic power, the rarest
talent in literature, he has very little. He has an eye constant to the
fact of life and that never pauses in its advance. But the great
felicities, the miracles of poetry, he has never. It is all design with
him, just thought and instructed expression, analogies, allusion,
illustration, which knowledge and correct thinking supply; but of
Shakspeare and the transcendent muse, no syllable. Yet in the court
and law to which we ordinarily speak, and without adverting to
absolute standards, we claim for him the praise of truth, of fidelity to
his intellectual nature. He is the king of all scholars. In these days
and in this country, where the scholars are few and idle, where men
read easy books and sleep after dinner, it seems as if no book could
so safely be put in the hands of young men as the letters of Goethe,
which attest the incessant activity of this man, to eighty years, in an
endless variety of studies, with uniform cheerfulness and greatness
of mind. They cannot be read without shaming us into an emulating
industry. Let him have the praise of the love of truth. We think, when
we contemplate the stupendous glory of the world, that it were life
enough for one man merely to lift his hands and cry with St.
Augustine, “Wrangle who pleases, I will wonder.” Well, this he did.
Here was a man who, in the feeling that the thing itself was so
admirable as to leave all comment behind, went up and down, from
object to object, lifting the veil from every one, and did no more.
What he said of Lavater, may trulier be said of him, that “it was
fearful to stand in the presence of one before whom all the
boundaries within which Nature has circumscribed our being were
laid flat.” His are the bright and terrible eyes which meet the modern
student in every sacred chapel of thought, in every public enclosure.
But now, that we may not seem to dodge the question which all
men ask, nor pay a great man so ill a compliment as to praise him
only in the conventional and comparative speech, let us honestly
record our thought upon the total worth and influence of this genius.
Does he represent, not only the achievement of that age in which he
lived, but that which it would be and is now becoming? And what
shall we think of that absence of the moral sentiment, that singular
equivalence to him of good and evil in action, which discredit his
compositions to the pure? The spirit of his biography, of his poems,
of his tales, is identical, and we may here set down by way of
comment on his genius the impressions recently awakened in us by
the story of Wilhelm Meister.
All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain. They
knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank
them. So did Dante, so did Machiavel. Goethe has done this in
Meister. We can fancy him saying to himself:—There are poets
enough of the Ideal; let me paint the Actual, as, after years of
dreams, it will still appear and reappear to wise men. That all shall
right itself in the long Morrow, I may well allow, and my novel may
wait for the same regeneration. The age, that can damn it as false
and falsifying, will see that it is deeply one with the genius and
history of all the centuries. I have given my characters a bias to error.
Men have the same. I have let mischance befall instead of good
fortune. They do so daily. And out of many vices and misfortunes, I
have let a great success grow, as I had known in my own and many
other examples. Fierce churchmen and effeminate aspirants will
chide and hate my name, but every keen beholder of life will justify
my truth, and will acquit me of prejudging the cause of humanity by
painting it with this morose fidelity. To a profound soul is not austere
truth the sweetest flattery?
Yes, O Goethe! but the ideal is truer than the actual. That is
ephemeral, but this changes not. Moreover, because nature is moral,
that mind only can see, in which the same order entirely obtains. An
interchangeable Truth, Beauty and Goodness, each wholly
interfused in the other, must make the humors of that eye which
would see causes reaching to their last effect and reproducing the
world forever. The least inequality of mixture, the excess of one
element over the other, in that degree diminishes the transparency of
things, makes the world opaque to the observer, and destroys so far
the value of his experience. No particular gifts can countervail this
defect. In reading Meister, I am charmed with the insight; to use a
phrase of Ben Jonson’s, “it is rammed with life.” I find there actual
men and women even too faithfully painted. I am moreover
instructed in the possibility of a highly accomplished society, and
taught to look for great talent and culture under a gray coat. But this
is all. The limits of artificial society are never quite out of sight. The
vicious conventions, which hem us in like prison walls and which the
poet should explode at his touch, stand for all they are worth in the
newspaper. We are never lifted above ourselves, we are not
transported out of the dominion of the senses, or cheered with an
infinite tenderness, or armed with a grand trust.
Goethe, then, must be set down as the poet of the Actual, not of
the Ideal; the poet of limitation, not of possibility; of this world, and
not of religion and hope; in short, if we may say so, the poet of
prose, and not of poetry. He accepts the base doctrine of Fate, and
gleans what straggling joys may yet remain out of its ban. He is like
a banker or a weaver with a passion for the country; he steals out of
the hot streets before sunrise, or after sunset, or on a rare holiday, to
get a draft of sweet air and a gaze at the magnificence of summer,
but dares not break from his slavery and lead a man’s life in a man’s
relation to nature. In that which should be his own place, he feels like
a truant, and is scourged back presently to his task and his cell.
Poetry is with Goethe thus external, the gilding of the chain, the
mitigation of his fate; but the Muse never assays those thunder-
tones which cause to vibrate the sun and the moon, which dissipate
by dreadful melody all this iron network of circumstance, and abolish
the old heavens and the old earth before the freewill or Godhead of
man. That Goethe had not a moral perception proportionate to his
other powers, is not then merely a circumstance, as we might relate
of a man that he had or had not the sense of tune or an eye for
colors, but it is the cardinal fact of health or disease; since, lacking
this, he failed in the high sense to be a creator, and, with divine
endowments, drops by irreversible decree into the common history
of genius. He was content to fall into the track of vulgar poets and
spend on common aims his splendid endowments, and has declined
the office proffered to now and then a man in many centuries in the
power of his genius, of a Redeemer of the human mind. He has
written better than other poets only as his talent was subtler, but the
ambition of creation he refused. Life for him is prettier, easier, wiser,
decenter, has a gem or two more on its robe, but its old eternal
burden is not relieved; no drop of healthier blood flows yet in its
veins. Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physician still at the
side of the road, and confess as this man goes out, that they have
served it better who assured it out of the innocent hope in their
hearts that a Physician will come, than this majestic Artist, with all
the treasuries of wit, of science, and of power at his command.
The criticism, which is not so much spoken as felt in reference to
Goethe, instructs us directly in the hope of literature. We feel that a
man gifted like him should not leave the world as he found it. It is
true, though somewhat sad, that every fine genius teaches us how to
blame himself. Being so much, we cannot forgive him for not being
more. When one of these grand monads is incarnated whom nature
seems to design for eternal men and draw to her bosom, we think
that the old weariness of Europe and Asia, the trivial forms of daily
life will now end, and a new morning break on us all. What is
Austria? What is England? What is our graduated and petrified social
scale of ranks and employments? Shall not a poet redeem us from
these idolatries, and pale their legendary lustre before the fires of the
Divine Wisdom which burn in his heart? All that in our sovereign
moments each of us has divined of the powers of thought, all the
hints of omnipresence and energy which we have caught, this man
should unfold, and constitute facts.
And this is the insatiable craving which alternately saddens and
gladdens men at this day. The Doctrine of the Life of Man
established after the truth through all his faculties;—this is the
thought which the literature of this hour meditates and labors to say.
This is that which tunes the tongue and fires the eye and sits in the
silence of the youth. Verily it will not long want articulate and
melodious expression. There is nothing in the heart but comes
presently to the lips. The very depth of the sentiment, which is the
author of all the cutaneous life we see, is guarantee for the riches of
science and of song in the age to come. He who doubts whether this
age or this country can yield any contribution to the literature of the
world, only betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the
human soul. Has the power of poetry ceased, or the need? Have the
eyes ceased to see that which they would have, and which they
have not? Have they ceased to see other eyes? Are there no lonely,
anxious, wondering children, who must tell their tale? Are we not
evermore whipped by thoughts;
“In sorrow steeped, and steeped in love
Of thoughts not yet incarnated.”
The heart beats in this age as of old, and the passions are busy as
ever. Nature has not lost one ringlet of her beauty, one impulse of
resistance and valor. From the necessity of loving none are exempt,
and he that loves must utter his desires. A charm as radiant as
beauty ever beamed, a love that fainteth at the sight of its object, is
new to-day.
“The world does not run smoother than of old,
There are sad haps that must be told.”
Man is not so far lost but that he suffers ever the great Discontent
which is the elegy of his loss and the prediction of his recovery. In
the gay saloon he laments that these figures are not what Raphael
and Guercino painted. Withered though he stand, and trifler though
he be, the august spirit of the world looks out from his eyes. In his
heart he knows the ache of spiritual pain, and his thought can
animate the sea and land. What then shall hinder the Genius of the
time from speaking its thought? It cannot be silent, if it would. It will
write in a higher spirit and a wider knowledge and with a grander
practical aim than ever yet guided the pen of poet. It will write the
annals of a changed world, and record the descent of principles into
practice, of love into Government, of love into Trade. It will describe
the new heroic life of man, the now unbelieved possibility of simple
living and of clean and noble relations with men. Religion will bind
again these that were sometime frivolous, customary, enemies,
skeptics, self-seekers, into a joyful reverence for the circumambient
Whole, and that which was ecstacy shall become daily bread.

II.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. [6]

We sometimes meet in a stage coach in New England an erect,

muscular man, with fresh complexion and a smooth hat, whose
nervous speech instantly betrays the English traveller;—a man
nowise cautious to conceal his name or that of his native country, or
his very slight esteem for the persons and the country that surround
him. When Mr. Bull rides in an American coach, he speaks quick and
strong; he is very ready to confess his ignorance of everything about
him, persons, manners, customs, politics, geography. He wonders
that the Americans should build with wood, whilst all this stone is
lying in the roadside; and is astonished to learn that a wooden house
may last a hundred years; nor will he remember the fact as many
minutes after it has been told him: he wonders that they do not make
elder-wine and cherry-bounce, since here are cherries, and every
mile is crammed with elder-bushes. He has never seen a good horse
in America, nor a good coach, nor a good inn. Here is very good
earth and water and plenty of them; that he is free to allow; to all
other gifts of nature or man his eyes are sealed by the inexorable
demand for the precise conveniences to which he is accustomed in
England. Add to this proud blindness the better quality of great
downrightness in speaking the truth, and the love of fair play, on all
occasions, and moreover the peculiarity which is alleged of the
Englishman, that his virtues do not come out until he quarrels.
Transfer these traits to a very elegant and accomplished mind, and
we shall have no bad picture of Walter Savage Landor, who may
stand as a favorable impersonation of the genius of his countrymen
at the present day. A sharp, dogmatic man, with a great deal of
knowledge, a great deal of worth, and a great deal of pride; with a
profound contempt for all that he does not understand; a master of
all elegant learning, and capable of the utmost delicacy of sentiment,
and yet prone to indulge a sort of ostentation of coarse imagery and
language. His partialities and dislikes are by no means culpable, but
are often whimsical and amusing; yet they are quite sincere, and,
like those of Johnson and Coleridge, are easily separable from the
man. What he says of Wordsworth is true of himself, that he delights
to throw a clod of dirt on the table, and cry “Gentlemen, there is a
better man than all of you.” Bolivar, Mina and General Jackson will
never be greater soldiers than Napoleon and Alexander, let Mr.
Landor think as he will; nor will he persuade us to burn Plato and
Xenophon, out of our admiration of Bishop Patrick, or “Lucas on
Happiness,” or “Lucas on Holiness,” or even Barrow’s Sermons. Yet
a man may love a paradox without either losing his wit or his
honesty. A less pardonable eccentricity is the cold and gratuitous
obtrusion of licentious images, not so much the suggestion of
merriment as of bitterness. Montaigne assigns as a reason for his
license of speech, that he is tired of seeing his Essays on the work-
tables of ladies, and he is determined they shall for the future put
them out of sight. In Mr. Landor’s coarseness there is a certain air of
defiance, and the rude word seems sometimes to arise from a
disgust at niceness and over-refinement. Before a well-dressed
company he plunges his fingers in a cesspool, as if to expose the
whiteness of his hands and the jewels of his ring. Afterward, he
washes them in water, he washes them in wine; but you are never
secure from his freaks. A sort of Earl Peterborough in literature, his
eccentricity is too decided not to have diminished his greatness. He
has capital enough to have furnished the brain of fifty stock authors,
yet has written no book.
But we have spoken all our discontent. Possibly his writings are
open to harsher censure; but we love the man, from sympathy as
well as for reasons to be assigned; and have no wish, if we were
able, to put an argument in the mouth of his critics. Now for twenty
years we have still found the “Imaginary Conversations” a sure
resource in solitude, and it seems to us as original in its form as in its
matter. Nay, when we remember his rich and ample page, wherein
we are always sure to find free and sustained thought, a keen and
precise understanding, an affluent and ready memory familiar with all
chosen books, an industrious observation in every department of life,
an experience to which nothing has occurred in vain, honor for every
just and generous sentiment and a scourge like that of Furies for
every oppressor, whether public or private,—we feel how dignified is
this perpetual Censor in his curule chair, and we wish to thank a
benefactor of the reading world.
Mr. Landor is one of the foremost of that small class who make
good in the nineteenth century the claims of pure literature. In these
busy days of avarice and ambition, when there is so little disposition
to profound thought or to any but the most superficial intellectual
entertainments, a faithful scholar, receiving from past ages the
treasures of wit and enlarging them by his own love, is a friend and
consoler of mankind. When we pronounce the names of Homer and
Æschylus; Horace, Ovid and Plutarch; Erasmus, Scaliger and
Montaigne; Ben Jonson and Isaak Walton; Dryden and Pope,—we
pass at once out of trivial associations and enter into a region of the
purest pleasure accessible to human nature. We have quitted all
beneath the moon and entered that crystal sphere in which
everything in the world of matter reappears, but transfigured and
immortal. Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the
wrongs of his condition. The existence of the poorest play-wright and
the humblest scrivener is a good omen. A charm attaches to the
most inferior names which have in any manner got themselves
enrolled in the registers of the House of Fame, even as porters and
grooms in the courts; to Creech and Fenton, Theobald and Dennis,
Aubrey and Spence. From the moment of entering a library and
opening a desired book, we cease to be citizens, creditors, debtors,
housekeepers and men of care and fear. What boundless leisure!
what original jurisdiction! the old constellations have set, new and
brighter have arisen; an Elysian light tinges all objects:—
“In the afternoon we came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.”
And this sweet asylum of an intellectual life must appear to have
the sanction of nature, as long as so many men are born with so
decided an aptitude for reading and writing. Let us thankfully allow
every faculty and art which opens new scope to a life so confined as
ours. There are vast spaces in a thought: a slave, to whom the
religious sentiment is opened, has a freedom which makes his
master’s freedom a slavery. Let us not be so illiberal with our
schemes for the renovation of society and nature as to disesteem or
deny the literary spirit. Certainly there are heights in nature which
command this; there are many more which this commands. It is vain
to call it a luxury, and as saints and reformers are apt to do, decry it
as a species of day-dreaming. What else are sanctities, and reforms,
and all other things? Whatever can make for itself an element,
means, organs, servants, and the most profound and permanent
existence in the hearts and heads of millions of men, must have a
reason for its being. Its excellency is reason and vindication enough.
If rhyme rejoices us there should be rhyme, as much as if fire cheers
us we should bring wood and coals. Each kind of excellence takes
place for its hour and excludes everything else. Do not brag of your
actions, as if they were better than Homer’s verses or Raphael’s
pictures. Raphael and Homer feel that action is pitiful beside their
enchantments. They could act too, if the stake was worthy of them:
but now all that is good in the universe urges them to their task.
Whoever writes for the love of truth and beauty, and not with ulterior
ends, belongs to this sacred class; and among these, few men of the
present age have a better claim to be numbered than Mr. Landor.
Wherever genius or taste has existed, wherever freedom and justice
are threatened, which he values as the element in which genius may
work, his interest is sure to be commanded. His love of beauty is
passionate, and betrays itself in all petulant and contemptuous
expressions.
But beyond his delight in genius and his love of individual and civil
liberty, Mr. Landor has a perception that is much more rare, the
appreciation of character. This is the more remarkable considered
with his intense nationality, to which we have already alluded. He is
buttoned in English broadcloth to the chin. He hates the Austrians,
the Italians, the French, the Scotch, and the Irish. He has the
common prejudices of an English landholder; values his pedigree,
his acres and the syllables of his name; loves all his advantages, is
not insensible to the beauty of his watch seal, or the Turk’s head on
his umbrella; yet with all this miscellaneous pride there is a noble
nature within him which instructs him that he is so rich that he can
well spare all his trappings, and, leaving to others the painting of
circumstance, aspire to the office of delineating character. He draws
his own portrait in the costume of a village schoolmaster, and a
sailor, and serenely enjoys the victory of nature over fortune. Not
only the elaborated story of Normanby, but the whimsical selection of
his heads proves this taste. He draws with evident pleasure the
portrait of a man who never said anything right and never did
anything wrong. But in the character of Pericles he has found full
play for beauty and greatness of behavior, where the circumstances
are in harmony with the man. These portraits, though mere sketches,
must be valued as attempts in the very highest kind of narrative,
which not only has very few examples to exhibit of any success, but
very few competitors in the attempt. The word Character is in all
mouths; it is a force which we all feel; yet who has analyzed it? What
is the nature of that subtle and majestic principle which attaches us
to a few persons, not so much by personal as by the most spiritual
ties? What is the quality of the persons who, without being public
men, or literary men, or rich men, or active men, or (in the popular
sense) religious men, have a certain salutary omnipresence in all our
life’s history, almost giving their own quality to the atmosphere and
the landscape? A moral force, yet wholly unmindful of creed and
catechism, intellectual, but scornful of books, it works directly and
without means, and though it may be resisted at any time, yet
resistance to it is a suicide. For the person who stands in this lofty
relation to his fellow-men is always the impersonation to them of
their conscience. It is a sufficient proof of the extreme delicacy of this
element, evanescing before any but the most sympathetic vision,
that it has so seldom been employed in the drama and in novels. Mr.
Landor, almost alone among living English writers, has indicated his
perception of it.
These merits make Mr. Landor’s position in the republic of letters
one of great mark and dignity. He exercises with a grandeur of spirit
the office of writer, and carries it with an air of old and
unquestionable nobility. We do not recollect an example of more
complete independence in literary history. He has no clanship, no
friendships that warp him. He was one of the first to pronounce
Wordsworth the great poet of the age, yet he discriminates his faults
with the greater freedom. He loves Pindar, Æschylus, Euripides,
Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Virgil, yet with open eyes. His position
is by no means the highest in literature: he is not a poet or a
philosopher. He is a man full of thoughts, but not, like Coleridge, a
man of ideas. Only from a mind conversant with the First Philosophy
can definitions be expected. Coleridge has contributed many
valuable ones to modern literature. Mr. Landor’s definitions are only
enumerations of particulars; the generic law is not seized. But as it is
not from the highest Alps or Andes but from less elevated summits
that the most attractive landscape is commanded, so is Mr. Landor
the most useful and agreeable of critics. He has commented on a
wide variety of writers, with a closeness and extent of view which
has enhanced the value of those authors to his readers. His
Dialogue on the Epicurean philosophy is a theory of the genius of
Epicurus. The Dialogue between Barrow and Newton is the best of
all criticisms on the essays of Bacon. His picture of Demosthenes in
three several Dialogues is new and adequate. He has illustrated the
genius of Homer, Æschylus, Pindar, Euripides, Thucydides. Then he
has examined before he has expatiated, and the minuteness of his
verbal criticism gives a confidence in his fidelity when he speaks the
language of meditation or of passion. His acquaintance with the
English tongue is unsurpassed. He “hates false words, and seeks
with care, difficulty and moroseness those that fit the thing.” He
knows the value of his own words. “They are not,” he says, “written
on slate.” He never stoops to explanation, nor uses seven words
where one will do. He is a master of condensation and suppression,
and that in no vulgar way. He knows the wide difference between
compression and an obscure elliptical style. The dense writer has yet
ample room and choice of phrase, and even a gamesome mood
often between his valid words. There is no inadequacy or
disagreeable contraction in his sentence, any more than in a human
face, where in a square space of a few inches is found room for
every possible variety of expression.
Yet it is not as an artist that Mr. Landor commends himself to us.
He is not epic or dramatic, he has not the high, overpowering
method by which the master gives unity and integrity to a work of
many parts. He is too wilful, and never abandons himself to his
genius. His books are a strange mixture of politics, etymology,
allegory, sentiment, and personal history; and what skill of transition
he may possess is superficial, not spiritual. His merit must rest, at
last, not on the spirit of the dialogue or the symmetry of any of his
historical portraits, but on the value of his sentences. Many of these
will secure their own immortality in English literature; and this, rightly
considered, is no mean merit. These are not plants and animals, but
the genetical atoms of which both are composed. All our great debt
to the Oriental world is of this kind, not utensils and statues of the
precious metal, but bullion and gold-dust. Of many of Mr. Landor’s
sentences we are fain to remember what was said of those of
Socrates; that they are cubes, which will stand firm, place them how
or where you will.

III.

PRAYERS. [7]

“Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,

Nor gems whose rates are either rich or poor
As fancy values them: but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven and enter there
 Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.”
Shakspeare.
Pythagoras said that the time when men are honestest is when
they present themselves before the gods. If we can overhear the
prayer we shall know the man. But prayers are not made to be
overheard, or to be printed, so that we seldom have the prayer
otherwise than it can be inferred from the man and his fortunes,
which are the answer to the prayer, and always accord with it. Yet
there are scattered about in the earth a few records of these devout
hours, which it would edify us to read, could they be collected in a
more catholic spirit than the wretched and repulsive volumes which
usurp that name. Let us not have the prayers of one sect, nor of the
Christian Church, but of men in all ages and religions who have
prayed well. The prayer of Jesus is (as it deserves) become a form
for the human race. Many men have contributed a single expression,
a single word to the language of devotion, which is immediately
caught and stereotyped in the prayers of their church and nation.
Among the remains of Euripides we have this prayer: “Thou God of
all! infuse light into the souls of men, whereby they may be enabled
to know what is the root from whence all their evils spring, and by
what means they may avoid them.” In the Phædrus of Plato, we find
this petition in the mouth of Socrates: “O gracious Pan! and ye other
gods who preside over this place! grant that I may be beautiful
within; and that those external things which I have may be such as
may best agree with a right internal disposition of mine; and that I
may account him to be rich, who is wise and just.” Wacic the Caliph,
who died a. d. 845, ended his life, the Arabian historians tell us, with
these words: “O thou whose kingdom never passes away, pity one
whose dignity is so transient.” But what led us to these
remembrances was the happy accident which in this undevout age
lately brought us acquainted with two or three diaries, which attest, if
there be need of attestation, the eternity of the sentiment and its
equality to itself through all the variety of expression. The first is the
prayer of a deaf and dumb boy:—
 “When my long-attached friend comes to me, I have
pleasure to converse with him, and I rejoice to pass my
eyes over his countenance; but soon I am weary of
spending my time causelessly and unimproved, and I
desire to leave him, (but not in rudeness), because I
wished to be engaged in my business. But thou, O my
Father, knowest I always delight to commune with thee in
my lone and silent heart; I am never full of thee; I am
never weary of thee; I am always desiring thee. I hunger
with strong hope and affection for thee, and I thirst for thy
grace and spirit.
“When I go to visit my friends, I must put on my best
garments, and I must think of my manner to please them. I
am tired to stay long, because my mind is not free, and
they sometimes talk gossip with me. But oh, my Father,
thou visitest me in my work, and I can lift up my desires to
thee, and my heart is cheered and at rest with thy
presence, and I am always alone with thee, and thou dost
not steal my time by foolishness. I always ask in my heart,
where can I find thee?”

The next is a voice out of a solitude as strict and sacred as that in

which nature had isolated this eloquent mute:—
“My Father, when I cannot be cheerful or happy, I can
be true and obedient, and I will not forget that joy has
been, and may still be. If there is no hour of solitude
granted me, still I will commune with thee. If I may not
search out and pierce thy thought, so much the more may
my living praise thee. At whatever price, I must be alone
with thee; this must be the demand I make. These duties
are not the life, but the means which enable us to show
forth the life. So must I take up this cross, and bear it
willingly. Why should I feel reproved when a busy one
enters the room? I am not idle, though I sit with folded
hands, but instantly I must seek some cover. For that
 shame I reprove myself. Are they only the valuable
members of society who labor to dress and feed it? Shall
we never ask the aim of all this hurry and foam, of this
aimless activity? Let the purpose for which I live be always
before me; let every thought and word go to confirm and
illuminate that end; namely, that I must become near and
dear to thee; that now I am beyond the reach of all but
thee.
“How can we not be reconciled to thy will? I will know
the joy of giving to my friend the dearest treasure I have. I
know that sorrow comes not at once only. We cannot meet
it and say, now it is overcome, but again, and yet again, its
flood pours over us, and as full as at first.
“If but this tedious battle could be fought,
Like Sparta’s heroes at one rocky pass,
‘One day be spent in dying,’ men had sought
The spot, and been cut down like mower’s grass.”
The next is in a metrical form. It is the aspiration of a different
mind, in quite other regions of power and duty, yet they all accord at
last.

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf

Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high,
As I can now discern with this clear eye.

“And next in value, which thy kindness lends,

That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe’er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.

“That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,

And my life practise more than my tongue saith;
That my low conduct may not show,
Nor my relenting lines,
That I thy purpose did not know,