In a quote from the Six-Hour Retarded Child, your text said, "educability has been defined less by actual potentials of persons and more by levels of society's demand for people of certain levels of function." Discuss the implications of this quote for assessment, identification, and interventions with students with intellectual disabilities

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: Answers will vary but could include some or all of the following points:
• A complete assessment should include an environmental inventory to determine the social and practical functional demands encountered by the learner.
• Identification should be based on an evaluation of deficits in adaptive behavior across the major functional domains in addition to the assessment of intellectual functioning (i.e., IQ).
• Only when there is clear evidence of functional deficits should the category of intellectual disabilities be used.
• Interventions should include functional skill goals as well as academic goals.
• Some environments place higher functional demands on individuals; in such environments, a learner might be found to have an intellectual disability, while in a less challenging social environment, the category might not be justified or even considered (e.g., mild intellectual disability was frequently overlooked in earlier, less technologically-advanced environments).
• The learner's skill in the home language should be considered as an important environmental variable, particularly when the language of instruction differs from the home language.