EEX4474: Curricula for Teaching Students with Severe Disabilities

Course Description

EEX4474 Teaching Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities is the curriculum and methods course for teaching students whose support needs are extensive — students with significant intellectual disabilities, multiple disabilities, physical impairments and autism with high support needs.

The course is offered at a small number of Florida institutions, including Florida Gulf Coast University, the University of North Florida and the University of West Florida.

The University of West Florida titles it Curricula for Teaching Students with Severe Disabilities, places it in the School of Education, Department of Teaching, Leadership and Research at 3 semester hours, requires EEX 3070, and describes "an introduction to curricula pertaining to students with severe disabilities including intellectual disabilities, physical impairments, and autism," with "emphasis placed on person-centered planning" and team approaches.

⚠ "Person-centred planning" in UWF's description is not a phrase to skim past — it is the organising commitment of the whole field, and it is what distinguishes contemporary practice from what preceded it.

What makes this population's education a distinct problem. Students with moderate to severe disabilities require extensive and ongoing support across settings and across the lifespan. ⚠ The historical answer was segregation and low expectation — institutional placement, exclusion from school entirely before IDEA's predecessor in 1975, and curricula built around what students were assumed unable to do. The contemporary answer is close to the opposite, and understanding why the field changed is a substantial part of the course.

The central curricular tension is genuine and unresolved, and a good course presents it as such.

• The functional curriculum argument: instructional time is finite, and for a student with significant support needs, time spent on academic content is time not spent on communication, self-care, mobility, safety and the daily living skills that determine independence and quality of life. Teach what the student will use.
• The access-to-general-curriculum argument: IDEA entitles every student to the general curriculum, low expectations are self-fulfilling, and the historical record of predicting what students with severe disabilities cannot learn is very poor. Alternate achievement standards exist precisely to make grade-level content accessible at an appropriate depth.
• ⚠ Contemporary practice attempts both — embedding functional skill instruction within age-appropriate, standards-aligned activities — and the course teaches how, while being honest that the tension does not fully resolve.

Communication is the highest-priority instructional domain, and the course treats it that way. ⚠ Many students in this population have limited or no speech, and the foundational principle of the field is that everyone communicates. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) — picture systems, speech-generating devices, symbol boards — is not a last resort after speech fails; the evidence is clear that AAC does not impede speech development and frequently supports it. Presuming competence — treating a student as capable of understanding and of having something to say, absent evidence otherwise — is the ethical and practical default.

Systematic instruction is the methodological core, and it is more precisely specified here than in general education: task analysis breaking a skill into teachable steps, prompting hierarchies with systematic fading, errorless learning, time delay procedures, and generalisation programming — ⚠ because a skill demonstrated only in the classroom with one teacher is not a skill the student has, and generalisation must be taught deliberately rather than assumed.

Transition and self-determination close the course, and they are where its purpose becomes clearest. ⚠ Under IDEA, transition planning begins by age 16 and addresses employment, postsecondary education, independent living and community participation. Supported and customised employment have substantially better outcomes than the sheltered workshop model they replaced, and self-determination — choice-making, self-advocacy, goal-setting — predicts adult outcomes, which is why it is taught rather than assumed.

⚠ Florida context: the state's ESE framework operates under State Board of Education Rule Chapter 6A-6; the Florida Alternate Assessment serves students with the most significant cognitive disabilities; Access Points are Florida's alternate achievement standards; and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities administers adult services including the iBudget waiver, which is the system families will meet at transition.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the characteristics and support needs of students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities, multiple disabilities, physical impairments, and autism with high support needs.
• Explain the historical treatment of people with significant disabilities — institutionalisation, exclusion from schooling, deinstitutionalisation — and how it shaped current law and practice.
• Explain person-centred planning and conduct or contribute to a person-centred planning process.
• Explain presuming competence and its practical implications for instruction and interaction.
• Evaluate the functional curriculum and access-to-general-curriculum arguments, and design instruction that embeds functional skills in age-appropriate, standards-aligned activities.
• Explain alternate achievement standards and Florida's Access Points, and align instruction to them.
• Explain alternate assessment — including the Florida Alternate Assessment — and the eligibility criteria for it.
• Conduct ecological inventories and discrepancy analysis to identify instructional priorities.
• Apply task analysis to break complex skills into teachable steps.
• Apply systematic instruction procedures — prompting hierarchies, prompt fading, time delay, errorless learning, chaining.
• Design for generalisation and maintenance explicitly rather than assuming them.
• Collect and use instructional data to make teaching decisions.
• Explain augmentative and alternative communication and support its implementation across the day.
• Explain assistive technology for access, mobility, participation and communication.
• Apply positive behaviour support and explain functional behaviour assessment, including the principle that behaviour communicates.
• Design instruction in self-care, daily living, community and vocational domains.
• Explain inclusive practice for students with significant support needs, and the evidence on outcomes.
• Explain transition planning — employment, postsecondary options, independent living, community participation — and the legal requirements.
• Explain self-determination and teach choice-making, self-advocacy and goal-setting.
• Collaborate with families, related service providers and paraprofessionals as a team member.
• Apply health, positioning, feeding and safety considerations appropriate to a teacher's role, and know when to defer to a nurse or therapist.
• Apply age-respectful practice — materials, language and expectations appropriate to chronological age.

Optional Outcomes

• Explain deafblindness and dual sensory impairment.
• Explain complex medical needs in educational settings and nursing collaboration.
• Explain supported and customised employment models in depth.
• Explain postsecondary education options for students with intellectual disabilities, including inclusive campus programmes.
• Explain guardianship alternatives — supported decision-making, powers of attorney.
• Explain Florida's adult service system — APD, the iBudget waiver, vocational rehabilitation.
• Explain peer support and natural supports strategies.
• Explain sexuality education and relationships for people with significant disabilities.
• Explain abuse prevention and recognition — ⚠ this population is at substantially elevated risk.
• Explain disability rights history and self-advocacy movements.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Characteristics and support needs.
• History, disability rights and changing expectations.
• Person-centred planning and presuming competence.
• Curricular models — functional versus general curriculum access; embedded instruction.
• Alternate achievement standards and Access Points.
• Alternate assessment.
• Ecological assessment and instructional priority-setting.
• Task analysis and systematic instruction.
• Prompting, fading and errorless procedures.
• Generalisation and maintenance.
• Data collection and instructional decision-making.
• Communication and AAC.
• Assistive technology.
• Positive behaviour support; behaviour as communication.
• Functional, community and vocational domains.
• Inclusion for students with significant support needs.
• Transition and self-determination.
• Collaboration with families and teams.
• Health, positioning and safety.

Optional Topics

• Deafblindness.
• Complex medical needs.
• Supported and customised employment.
• Inclusive postsecondary education.
• Supported decision-making and guardianship alternatives.
• Florida adult services.
• Peer and natural supports.
• Relationships and sexuality education.
• Abuse prevention.
• Self-advocacy movements.

Resources & Tools

• Standard textbooks: Westling, Carter, Da Fonte and Kurth, Teaching Students with Severe Disabilities — the field's principal text; Snell and Brown, Instruction of Students with Severe Disabilities — the other standard, and strong on systematic instruction; Browder and Spooner, Teaching Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities, which is the reference on academic access for this population.
• Free practitioner resources: the IRIS Center at Vanderbilt — free modules on AAC, systematic instruction and behaviour; the TIES Center (National Center on Inclusive Practices for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities); the National Center on Educational Outcomes for alternate assessment; and PROGRESS Center for IEP development.
• Florida-specific: the Florida Department of Education BEESS; Access Points and the Florida Alternate Assessment materials, published free; the Florida Inclusion Network; CPALMS for standards with aligned resources; and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities for the adult service system families will encounter at transition.
• Professional bodies: TASH — ⚠ the organisation most closely identified with inclusion and rights for people with significant disabilities, and its position statements are frequently assigned; the Council for Exceptional Children and its Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities; ASHA for AAC guidance.
• ⚠ Read material written by people with disabilities and by self-advocates, not only about them. Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE) and The Arc publish accessible material, and the perspective shift is substantial.
• Journals: Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Augmentative and Alternative Communication.
• ⚠⚠ A caution that matters particularly in this field. Interventions for people with significant disabilities and autism attract an unusually large volume of unsupported and occasionally harmful commercial products and methods. Facilitated communication and its successors have been examined repeatedly and are not supported by controlled evidence, and several professional bodies have issued formal position statements against their use. Use peer-reviewed sources and organisational position statements, and treat vendor claims as claims — families are marketed to heavily, and part of a teacher's role is being a reliable source for them.

Career Pathways

• Special education teachers (SOC 25-2052, 25-2057, 25-2058) — ⚠ teachers qualified for students with significant support needs are a shortage area within a shortage area, and hiring demand in Florida is consistent.
• ESE support facilitators and inclusion specialists (SOC 25-2052).
• Behaviour analysts (SOC 21-1094, 19-3039) — ⚠ the BCBA requires a master's with a verified course sequence and supervised fieldwork; Florida has substantial demand, and the systematic instruction content of this course is directly foundational.
• Transition specialists and job coaches (SOC 21-1015, 25-2052) — supported employment providers and school district transition programmes.
• Vocational rehabilitation counsellors (SOC 21-1015) — Florida's Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.
• Adult service providers and residential support (SOC 21-1093, 11-9151) — the Agency for Persons with Disabilities provider network.
• Assistive technology specialists (SOC 25-9031, 29-1129).
• Speech-language pathologists (SOC 29-1127) — ⚠ AAC is a major SLP specialisation and this course is good background; requires a master's and CCC-SLP certification.
• Occupational and physical therapists (SOC 29-1122, 29-1123) — school-based practice.
• Paraprofessionals (SOC 25-9042) — ⚠ an entry route not requiring a bachelor's degree, and one that many teachers in this field come through.
• Disability advocacy and policy (SOC 11-9151, 19-3094) — The Arc, Disability Rights Florida, and the state's developmental disabilities council.
• Graduate study in special education, applied behaviour analysis, or disability studies.

⚠ Florida certification note, repeated because it matters: ESE certification runs through a state-approved preparation programme plus the Florida Teacher Certification Examinations, and ESOL coverage is separately required for many positions. Take the General Knowledge test early — it gates programme admission and internship placement, and it delays students every year. Confirm current requirements with FLDOE and your programme, not with any secondary source including this one.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ This number does not hold the same subject at every institution

	Statewide / UWF	FGCU's catalog entry
Title	Teaching Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities / Curricula for Teaching Students with Severe Disabilities	Teaching Students with Moderate/Severe Disabilities
Described content	curricula for students with severe disabilities — intellectual disabilities, physical impairments, autism; person-centred planning; team approaches	⚠ planning and conducting ASSESSMENTS to support identification, instructional planning and programme evaluation for INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN with and without disabilities
Subject	curriculum and instruction, school-age	⚠ early childhood assessment

⚠⚠ Assessment of infants and young children is a different subject from curricula for school-age students with severe disabilities — different content, different age range, different professional competencies. The statewide title matches the UWF reading, which is what this guide covers.

What to do:

• Read your own institution's course description, not the number and not the statewide title.
• ⚠ The credit will articulate on the number regardless — a receiving institution records "Teaching Students with Moderate/Severe Disabilities" either way. That is the risk, not the reassurance.
• Keep your syllabus, and — given that teacher preparation programmes must document competencies for state approval — raise any transferred ESE course with the college of education rather than the registrar.
• ⚠ If your programme requires early childhood assessment as a separate competency, check which course actually supplied it.

Recorded in this repository's register of one-number-two-subjects cases. It is a genuine divergence rather than emphasis: the age range and the professional task both differ.

⚠ The companion course — check EEX4254 too

This course is normally paired with EEX4254 (mild to moderate disabilities), for which this repository publishes a guide. Together they cover the ESE population, and most programmes require both. ⚠ Note that UWF titles EEX4254 more broadly ("exceptionalities") than the statewide title, so the two courses' boundary sits slightly differently at different institutions. Read both descriptions when planning a sequence.

Prerequisites and position in the curriculum

UWF requires EEX3070 — the introductory exceptional student education course, supplying disability categories, the legal framework and foundational concepts. ⚠ Genuine content: this is a curriculum and methods course and assumes you already know what an IEP is and what IDEA requires.

⚠ Programme admission is a separate and earlier gate. Florida teacher preparation programmes typically require a minimum GPA, the General Knowledge examination, and background screening before upper-division education coursework or any school placement. Check these in your first year — they are the most common cause of delayed graduation in education degrees.

⚠ Field experience is normally attached and is significant here. Expect scheduled hours in an ESE classroom, requiring daytime availability and completed background screening. For this course specifically, the field placement is where most of the learning happens — systematic instruction is a practical skill and cannot be learned from a text.

Course format and workload

3 credits, 45 contact hours, plus field hours where required.

Expect 6–9 hours per week outside class. Assessment typically includes task analyses, instructional programmes with data collection systems, a person-centred plan, case studies, examinations, and portfolio artefacts aligned to certification and accreditation standards.

⚠ Keep everything. Education programmes are accredited against standards and require portfolio evidence later; students who discard coursework routinely have to reconstruct it.

⚠ The instructional programme assignments are graded on precision, and that is the point. "Teach the student to make a sandwich" is not a task analysis. A usable one specifies each step, the prompt level, the fading schedule, the mastery criterion and the data system — because a paraprofessional or a substitute must be able to run it exactly as written and the data must mean the same thing across people.

⚠⚠ Language, dignity and professional practice

This course concerns people who have historically been described, decided for, and segregated. How they are discussed is professional practice, not etiquette:

• ⚠ Age-respectful materials and language. A seventeen-year-old is a seventeen-year-old. Using materials, tone or activities designed for young children with an older student is a documented and common failure, and it communicates low expectation to everyone in the room.
• Presume competence. ⚠ Do not discuss a student in their presence as though they were absent — including students who do not speak. Receptive understanding frequently exceeds expressive ability, and the assumption should run that way.
• Person-first language is the default in education and in IDEA; ⚠ identity-first is preferred by many autistic self-advocates. Follow the individual's or family's stated preference.
• Outdated clinical terms — including "mental retardation", replaced in federal law by Rosa's Law — are not used.
• ⚠ Students with disabilities and students with disabled family members are in every section. Some will be siblings, some future guardians. Nobody is required to disclose, and the material can be personally close.
• ⚠ Some content is genuinely hard — institutional history, abuse risk, restraint and seclusion. Raising a concern with the instructor is reasonable; institutional counselling is confidential and covered by fees already paid.

⚠ Restraint, seclusion and mandatory reporting

Worth flagging because the course will cover it and because it carries legal obligation:

• Florida statute restricts the use of restraint and seclusion with students with disabilities and imposes documentation and parent notification requirements. Districts have specific policies and required training.
• ⚠ Positive behaviour support is the professional standard, and restraint is an emergency measure, not an intervention.
• ⚠⚠ All Florida school personnel are mandatory reporters of suspected abuse or neglect, and people with significant disabilities are at substantially elevated risk. Know the reporting requirement before your field placement, not during it — the Florida Abuse Hotline is 1-800-96-ABUSE.

Articulation and transfer

EEX4474 is a 4000-level upper-division course, not generally offered at Florida College System institutions, and taken after transfer.

⚠⚠ Beyond the subject divergence above, the binding constraint is programme approval rather than course credit. Teacher preparation programmes are state-approved and accredited, and must document that graduates meet defined competencies — so a receiving programme may require its own version of a methods course regardless of transferred credit. Ask the college of education, early.

Teacher preparation is the eighth field this repository has documented where programmatic approval outranks course credit, after nursing, medical laboratory science, social work (CSWE), financial planning (CFP Board), chemistry (ACS), public health (CEPH) and health information management (CAHIIM).

⚠ Prefix note. EEX is exceptional student education; EDF educational foundations; EDG curriculum and instruction; EEC early childhood; RED reading; TSL ESOL. ⚠ Note that FGCU's divergent reading of this number is early-childhood assessment content, which elsewhere sits under EEC — a useful confirmation that the divergence is real rather than a wording difference. Related: EEX3070 (the prerequisite) and EEX4254 (the companion, guide available).

AI Integration

⚠ This is a field where assistive technology has produced genuine, uncontroversial benefit, and where the newest tools raise one question the field has fought about before.

Where the technology genuinely helps — and this is course content:

• AAC has improved substantially. Predictive language, faster symbol access, and more natural speech output make communication devices more usable. ⚠ For a student with no functional speech, this is not convenience — it is access to being heard.
• Eye-gaze and switch access for students with significant physical impairments.
• Environmental control supporting independence in daily living.
• Materials adaptation — producing symbol-supported or simplified versions of grade-level text quickly, which is a real workload reduction for a teacher differentiating for several students at once.
• Documentation support — ⚠ ESE teachers carry heavy paperwork loads, and drafting routine text is a legitimate use.

⚠⚠ The hard question, and it is not new. Predictive and generative features in communication systems raise the same authorship question that facilitated communication raised decades ago: when a device suggests, completes or generates language, whose words are these? The field has a painful history here — facilitated communication produced apparent communication that controlled testing showed came from the facilitator, with serious consequences including false allegations, and professional bodies issued position statements against it.

The lesson the field drew is directly applicable: the burden is on demonstrating that the communication is the person's own — and a system that predicts fluent sentences from minimal input deserves exactly that scrutiny. ⚠ This is not an argument against AAC or against prediction, both of which are well supported. It is an argument for knowing what the system is contributing, and it is a genuinely good discussion for this course.

⚠ Two rules specific to this field:

• Never enter student information into an AI service. ⚠ Student records are FERPA-protected and IEP content is confidential; students in this population frequently have detailed medical information in their records as well. Use fictional or fully de-identified cases in coursework.
• AI-drafted IEP goals and behaviour plans require professional judgement, not adoption. ⚠ These are legal documents; goals must be individualised and measurable, and generic goals are a documented compliance problem these tools make easier to mass-produce.

Using AI for your own coursework. Models are useful for explaining a legal provision or a procedure and for drafting a first version of a plan you then correct. ⚠ Where they fail: they produce plausible strategies with no evidence base, and in this field specifically they may surface interventions the profession has examined and rejected. Check against IRIS, the What Works Clearinghouse, and professional position statements.

Academic integrity. Read the syllabus. ⚠ Florida educators are subject to the Principles of Professional Conduct, enforceable against certification, and academic integrity findings are reportable in certification review. The practical argument is stronger: you will be designing instruction for students who depend on it being done well, and that capacity is built now.