Supporting Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education: A Cross-Cultural Competence Video Library

Looking for explicit, practical guidance on supporting culturally and linguistically diverse young children? Planning a college course or in-service workshop on cross-cultural competence? Start with this complete professional development resource for early interventionists and special educators, a guided tour of four key issues professionals will encounter as they work with culturally and linguistically diverse children and families.

Filled with insightful interviews and how-to suggestions based on recommended practices, the four in-depth episodes on this DVD prepare professionals to

1. Plan activities and routines that reflect the diversity of children in the class. Go inside an inclusive, culturally diverse preschool, and watch the educators work together to embed children's home languages in everyday routines. Viewers will see examples in action as teachers and children sing a greeting song in Spanish, taste foods from different cultures, use books and art projects to explore diversity, and more.
2. Partner with families to support dual language learning. Get rare personal insight into the experience of bilingual families of children with special needs. Viewers will meet three diverse families; learn about their hopes, beliefs, and concerns; and see first-hand how bilingual parents support children's dual language development at home. An SLP highlights the benefits of learning two languages and offers suggestions for supporting children's dual language learning.
3. Conduct culturally responsive early intervention. Four culturally and linguistically diverse early interventionists share their experiences working with families of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, discuss contrasting perspectives, and give viewers practical guidance on helping families promote early language development.
4. Collaborate with interpreters. What are the characteristics of effective interpreters, and how can teachers and interventionists partner with them to benefit families? Viewers will find out— and learn from simulations of a meeting and home visit with a parent, teacher, and interpreter.

Early childhood professionals will also get 15 helpful PDF resources (printable from the DVD), including discussion questions, blank planning forms, learning activities from each chapter on the DVD, guidelines for working with interpreters, relevant terminology, and interpreter qualifications.

Whether used in college courses, staff training, or independent study, this DVD gives teachers and interventionists vivid foundational knowledge they'll use year after year to plan high-quality, culturally responsive services.

Deborah Chen, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Special Education, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), teaches in the Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) programs. She also supervises ECSE credential candidates in early intervention and early childhood special education programs located in highly diverse communities in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. As an immigrant to the United States from Jamaica (West Indies) with Chinese roots, Dr. Chen has a personal and professional interest in working with families of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Dr. Chen has extensive experience serving with families and their children with sensory impairments and multiple disabilities as an early interventionist, teacher, program administrator, teacher trainer, and researcher. She has directed projects of significance, model demonstration, outreach, research-to-practice, and personnel development projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education. These projects have focused on working with families and children of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, home-based early intervention, interdisciplinary training, caregiver-child interactions, and early communication and tactile communication strategies with children who are deaf-blind. Her publications reflect these professional efforts and interests.

Dr. Chen has disseminated her work at local, state, national, and international conferences. In addition, she has been invited to conduct professional development courses and to present at international conferences in Australia, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Qatar, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Ms. Cox is the Director of the CHIME Institute Early Education Programs; developmentally appropriate inclusive programs that serve a diverse population of young children and their families. She holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and Master's degree in Educational Psychology, Early Childhood Special Education. Her professional experience in the field of education extends for the past twenty-five years. In addition, Ms. Cox provided early intervention services for young children with disabilities and acted as an inclusion specialist for preschool children with disabilities in inclusive site.

Ms. Cox has served as a part-time instructor, master teacher, and fieldwork supervisor for the Department of Special Education at California State University, Northridge. She currently trains and supports teachers in the field of Early Childhood Special Education and since 1989 has provided mentoring and supervision for university students at the CSUN. Ms. Cox was born and raised in Brazil and is bilingual in Portuguese and English.

Michele Haney, Ph.D., completed her undergraduate degree at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont; earned her master's degree in educational administration at Castleton State College in Castleton, Vermont; and received her doctorate in special education from the California State University - Los Angeles and the University of California - Los Angeles. Her initial work as an early childhood educator included developing programs to serve children with and at risk for disabilities within existing preschool and child care programs using the consulting teacher model. Her interest in young children with emerging developmental problems brought her to the Marianne Frostig Center for Children with Learning Disabilities, where she developed a program for preschool-age children at risk for later learning problems.

Dr. Haney has co-directed or coordinated a number of national demonstrations, preservices, and in-service training programs designed to increase the skills of individuals working with young children with disabilities. Her research, focused on behaviors facilitating parent-child interactions, has most recently addressed increasing communication between parents and their infants who are deaf-blind.