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

Overview & Synopsis

In this paper, we review various challenges in regard to 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 overrepresenting CLD students in special education, (2) difficulty distinguishing between disability and differences, and (3) lack of competent bilingual special educators. As recommended practices, we propose to use the response to intervention model in identifying and instructing CLD children with and without disabilities. We point out that future research should examine how collaborative service delivery models contribute to referrals of CLD children into special education and the instruction of these children. Future research should also 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.