Reviews for Introduction to Special Education: Making a Difference

The average rating for Introduction to Special Education: Making a Difference based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-05 00:00:00 William Garvin This book is reasonably informative about the subject matter, and if the subject is one that is not incredibly interesting but is instead mostly a repetitive restatement of the obvious, (children with various disabilities are still entitled to a Free And Public Education in the Least Restrictive Environment Possible)that isn't entirely the fault of the book. The book does give a reasonably good, detailed look at many different types of disabilities, the issues related to each, and some tips on what sort of adjustments teachers of students with those disabilities might have to make. The problem is, the book is atrociously copyedited and proofread; one would think that a book that costs what a college textbook costs could have been afforded a proofreader. One would also think that by the seventh edition, most of these errors would have been caught and corrected. But, apparently, one would be wrong, so we get such errors as "Social justice is an illusive concept..." (rather than "elusive"), and "One judge of every society is how it treats its citizens, all of them, despite being viewed as different on some perceived dimension." (As it's written, "despite being viewed as different" is modifying "one judge", rather than "its citizens", and "on some perceived dimension" should probably read "in some perceived dimension" or "on some perceived continuum." In any case, the sentence is a syntactical mess.) Both of these errors appeared on the first full page of the book, page 4, and page five had "However, perspectives or orientations about individuals also guide people's thinking." ("Perspectives about individuals" might, by some stretch, be a coherent thought; "orientations about individuals" makes no sense whatsoever.) Page seven has one sentence with two egregious errors, a double negative AND a missing word: "So, if supporting services were available to help every individual when problems occur, then no individual would not be negatively treated and would be viewed successful." ("...no individual would be negatively treated and would be viewed AS successful.") Page 16 has the word "not" when, as far as I can tell, the intended word was "to": "The impact of ADA has been great, with accomodations and greater access not part of American life." Page 18 has a relatively minor quibble; in the inset caption to the picture, it says "The benefits are many when everyone can clearly hear the teacher's instructions, can focus better on learning, and doesn't have to strain to hear..." If we break those clauses down, we are left with "...when everyone doesn't have to strain to hear...". It seems to me that it would be better to separate that clause out from the others, and instead of stretching parallel construction, to have said, "and no one has to strain...". After all, it is generally true that not EVERYONE has to strain to hear, but it's still a problem if ANYONE has to strain. Page 23 has a use of the word "surmount" when "mount" was intended, ("...educational opportunites are missed and feelings of exclusion surmount") as well as "in-creased" when "increased" was intended, and "being accessible" when "accessibility" was intended ("So being accessible to an appropriate education ...is important.") The entire first chapter is like this; after that, the book settles down a bit and generally only has one or two errors of this sort per chapter, which is still FAR too frequent for a scholarly textbook, and wouldn't even be acceptable in a mass-market paperback, but is, at least, an improvement. All in all, though, the sloppiness is such that I can't possibly rate this book higher than two stars, and in fact it's far closer to a one-star review than it is to a three-star, in spite of containing a fair amount of potentially useful information.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-03-19 00:00:00 Benjamin Curtis Is it wrong to put your textbooks on this site? Geeky, I'm sure, but hey, it helps me keep up with it all! :) This book is an awesome resource for learning a little bit about a wide range of disabilities. It's really one of the more interesting text books I've read.