The Development of the Bilingual Special Education Field: Major Issues, Accomplishments, Future Directions, and Recommendations

This paper reviews challenges in educating children "with and without disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. The challenges discussed include (1) biased assessment that results in mis- or over representing CLD students in special education, (2) difficulty distinguishing between disability and differences, and (3) lack of competent bilingual special educators." The authors recommend the use of "the response to intervention (RTI) model in identifying and instructing CLD children with and without disabilities." Future research should (1) examine how collaborative service delivery models contribute to referrals of CLD children with and without disabilities and to their instruction, and (2) "focus on how to expand teachers' knowledge about both the sociocultural and learning contexts to aid in producing positive outcomes for CLD children both with and without disabilities."