Viewpoints on Interventions for Learners with Disabilities

Festus E. Obiakor, Ph.D, is the Chief Executive Manager, Sunny Educational Consulting, Shorewood, Wisconsin. He has served as Department Head and Professor, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia and The City College of New York, New York. A teacher, scholar, leader, and consultant, he has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at a variety of universities. He is the author of more than 150 publications, including books, articles, and commentaries; and he has presented papers at many national and international conferences. Festus serves on the editorial boards of reputable nationally and internationally refereed journals, including Multicultural Learning and Teaching (MLT) in which he serves as Executive Editor. He is a leader who has been involved in many landmark scholarly works in the fields of general and special education, with particular focus on African American and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners and he continues to prescribe multidimensional methods of assessment, teaching, and intervention for these individuals. Based on this premise, Festus created the Comprehensive Support Model (CSM), an intervention model that values the collaborative, consultative, and cooperative energies of students, families, teachers/service providers, communities, and government agencies. Jeffrey P. Bakken, Ph.D, is the Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Bradley University. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Elementary Education from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, and graduate degrees in the area of Special Education-Learning Disabilities from Purdue University. His areas of interest include: response to intervention, collaboration, teacher effectiveness, assessment, learning strategies, technology, Smart Classrooms, Smart Universities and Smart Pedagogy. He has written more than 170 academic publications that include books, chapters, journal articles, proceedings at international conferences, audio tapes, encyclopedia articles, and has made 235 presentations at International/National and Regional/State conferences.