Interdisciplinary teamwork has significantly improved the education of children with special needs. Because the students' needs are complex, the responses of the diverse professionals working together to provide services must be equally multifaceted.

Language and Discourse in Special Education analyzes how interdisciplinary teams work in school settings, specifically how members convey their knowledge in collaboration with others. Results from an in-depth study conducted in a school for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities illustrate the evolution of team culture, from establishing a common language to sharing information to solving day-to-day problems. The book details how educators, therapists, and doctors integrate concepts from their distinct fields and apply this shared knowledge in dealing with students, the administration, and one another. These observations support theoretical models of how teams can most effectively address student needs and identify optimal conditions for meaningful collaboration.

Featured areas of coverage include:

• The importance of interdisciplinary teamwork in special education
• Methods used in analyzing language and discourse
• Key words relating to the team's work with the students
• Discourse events within the team and with the administration
• A practical model for interdisciplinary teamwork

Language and Discourse in Special Education is an essential reference for researchers, professionals, and graduate students working with special needs students in child and school psychology, behavioral therapy (e.g., occupational, psychical, speech), social work, pediatric medicine, and allied mental healthand medical fields.

Autorentext
Iris Manor-Binyamini, Ph.D., is a lecturer and a senior faculty member of the Department of Special Education at the University of Haifa in Israel. Her academic interests include special education in the Bedouin community in Israel, inter- and intra-community comparisons of the coping styles and strategies used by parents and siblings of adults with various disabilities and from different minority communities in Israel, and the collaboration within multidisciplinary teams in special education schools as well as the collaboration between these teams and the parents of children with disabilities.

Zusammenfassung
This book examines the words and discourse as well as their meaning and impact on the everyday culture of a multidisciplinary team at a school for students with mental disabilities. The book examines the organizational, social, professional, and emotional experiences of team members from such disciplines as child and school psychology, special education, therapy (e.g., occupational, speech), social work, and pediatric medicine within a special education school. It explores the ways in which team members describe and interpret the day-to-day requirements of working effectively in a special education school, using their own language and discourse from a subjective point of view. In addition, the book analyzes and interprets the influence of language and discourse on the outlook, behavior patterns, and the coping of team members working in the school with the students, among themselves as a team, and with the difficulties and dilemmas that concern them as well the solutions that they themselves introduce for all these issues. This book, with its focus on the unique and complex work environment of the multidisciplinary special education team, is essential reading for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology, therapeutic disciplines (e.g., occupational, speech), social work, pediatric medicine, and allied mental health and medical fields.

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Multidisciplinary Teams in Special Education Schools: Their Language and Discourse.- Chapter 3. An Ethnographic Case Study.- Chapter 4. Words Relating to the Work Done with Students.- Chapter 5. Words Relating to Teamwork.- Chapter 6. Discourse Events in the Multidisciplinary Team.- Chapter 7. Discourse Events in the Administrative Team.- Chapter 8. Conclusion.