Early Learning Visual Impairment Services Training and Advancement (EL VISTA) Project: Leading the Way for a New Profession within a Profession
Author: Landa-Vialard, Olaya
Date: 2018-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Visual Impairments,Early Intervention,Infants,Toddlers,Early Childhood Education,Deaf Blind,Severe Disabilities,Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Equal Education

The Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Child Development Institute, Early Intervention Training Center for Infants and Toddlers with Visual Impairments and Their Families, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was a national project that developed resources with the goal of building the capacity of colleges and universities to prepare personnel to serve infants and toddlers with visual impairments and their families. Researchers and leaders collaborated to develop a white paper outlining recommended practices by early intervention and visual impairment professionals in their work with children. It was from this research, practice, and policy base that a new early intervention training program, Early Learning Visual Impairment Services Training and Advancement (EL VISTA), at Illinois State University (ISU) was built. Experts in the field of visual impairment have agreed that training combining early intervention and visual impairment standards and recommended practices requires a specialized set of knowledge and skills. Children with visual impairments or deafblindness from birth through the age of 22 years receive services from trained teachers of students with visual impairments and orientation and mobility (O&amp;M) specialists. Yet teachers of visually impaired students and O&amp;M specialists are typically not fully trained in the developmental patterns of babies and children with visual impairments or deafblindness. The number of infants and toddlers with visual impairments or deafblindness who deserve and require highly skilled teachers of visually impaired students and O&amp;M specialists trained in early intervention points to the need for additional programs that prepare personnel in early intervention. This article sends out an urgent call to the field of visual impairment to prioritize this need and establish a new profession within a profession, teachers of visually impaired students and O&amp;M specialists who are a highly trained subset of the field of visual impairment, in order to meet the unique needs of infants and toddlers ages birth through 3 years who are visually impaired or deafblind. Standards, guidelines, and recommended practices from both the early intervention field and the field of visual impairment could guide the development and implementation of a personnel training program that is focused on providing high-quality training so as to produce new service providers to meet the unique needs of these infants and toddlers. To address the need for trained personnel to serve children and their families, ISU was awarded a five-year Office of Special Education Programs OSEP personnel preparation grant, EL VISTA (H325K140108) beginning in 2014. The primary goals for the project are: (1) to improve the quality of personnel who are fully credentialed to serve infants and toddlers who are visually impaired or deafblind who live in urban and rural areas where there are critical shortages; (2) to increase the number of personnel who are fully credentialed to serve these infants and toddlers who live in urban and rural areas where there are critical shortages; and (3) to create and implement a clear, effective plan for evaluating the knowledge and skills of graduates. One by one, this article outlines each of the three goals and describes plans for implementing and addressing a unique curricular design employed in the EL VISTA project that forges ahead toward recommended practices and personnel preparation curricular standards from both the early intervention field and the visual impairment field toward the creation of a new profession: the early intervention and visual impairment profession.