Special education teachers for students with extensive support needs often and unwittingly make misinformed decisions. These decisions are situated within systems, which fail to support expertise development in teaching this population, resulting in decisions influenced by media, commercially available curricula, and outdated assumptions about possible student outcomes. We propose a framework for making and evaluating decisions about teaching students with extensive support needs to support teacher education in this area. Based on 45 years of research and theory, we propose that teacher educators should prepare teachers to (a) know what to teach; (b) know how to teach; and (c) identify who teaches students with extensive support needs. We further suggest that teacher education and teacher decision-making for students with extensive support needs should be evaluated based on the following basic questions: (a) Is it inclusive? (b) Is it dignifying? (c) Is it student centered? and (d) Is it evidence-based? A rationale and recommendations for practice are provided.

All people need different supports to be successful in their daily lives. For individuals with intellectual disabilities, support needs have traditionally been agency-directed. Circles of Support shift the control over who identifies and directs those support needs from an agency-directed model to a self-directed model, putting the individual with an intellectual disability at the center of a self-selected team of individuals involved across all environments in their daily life. By reconceptualizing how individuals identify and receive supports, individuals are given the control and agency needed to live a self-determined life. This interview is with two people working together in a different way from traditional agency-directed supports, shifting control over decisions from the provider agency to the person with a disability, allowing for greater control over all areas of his life.

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