Voices from the Field

This article focuses on early childhood classrooms in which young children with disabilities are enrolled, ideally inclusive classrooms. A foundational assumption about which most early intervention professionals would agree is that young children with disabilities learn from: (1) their experiences (interactions) with their physical environments (toys, materials, etc.); (2) their experiences (interactions) with their social environments (parents, teachers, siblings, classmates, etc.); and (3) observing events in their environments, usually others' behavior. They learn little, if anything, from what others "tell" them; lectures are highly ineffective with young children. Adults and older children may learn from being told, but young children do not. In this article, the author discusses two questions that arise from this assumption: (1) "What skills do we want children to learn?"; and (2) "How should we organize their experiences and observations so they will learn those skills?" The author's point in this article is simple: Use naturalistic teaching approaches, but one must also use multiple direct instructional sessions per child per day. A couple generations of young children with disabilities have exited their preschool classrooms with fewer skills than were possible because their interventionists only used naturalistic approaches. This state of practice is neither acceptable nor recommended. The procedures exist for doing better by the children.