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Office Number:
Education 3204
Phone Number:
(805) 893-2198
E-mail:
education.ucsb.edu singer
George H. S. Singer
Professor, Ph.D. (University of Oregon, Eugene)
Emphasis:
Special Education, Disabilities & Risk Studies
Research Interests:
Children and youth with severe disabilities and their families; Behavioral parent training; Psychosocial interventions for families; History and disability; Social policy and families; Parent self-help and advocacy; Family-school relations; Distance learning
Biography:
I am a professor and a member of the Special Education, Disability, and Risk emphasis group in the Graduate School of Education. My interests in Special Education began when I took a year out of college to teach English in a traditional Islamic school in southern Morocco where one of my students was blind. I was intrigued with the challenge of how to teach him and I was also appalled at the social role for people with disabilities in the town where I lived. The one available "job" appeared to be begging in front of the mosque. I went on to work as a vocational trainer at a Goodwill Program before enrolling at the University of Oregon program to earn a teaching credential and Master's degree. Armed with a teaching certificate I taught for three years in public schools programs and then wrote and obtained a federal grant to start a rural group home to serve children with severe behavior problems who had been in public congregate care institutions. This work led me back to the University of Oregon to obtain a Ph.D. in Special Education. During graduate school I worked as a researcher at the Oregon Research Institute where I became a Research Scientist for the next 9 years. I had the wonderful opportunity to learn from mentors at the Institute while running research projects. My experiences in the group home project made me very interested in what families would need in order to keep children at home and out of institutions. Since 1985, questions surrounding families and persons with disabilities have been a primary research interest. From 1991-95 I was the director of the Hood Center for Family Support at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical School where my colleagues and I conducted studies about self-determination and family support. I currently teach seminars on the literature and research on this topic. I am also responsible for teaching classes on the history of disability, and the research and teaching methods for learners with severe disabilities. From 1995-2000 I conducted a federally funded project in our local hospital to introduce Family Centered Care practices in the neonatal intensive care unit. At the same time I continued to work on positive behavioral interventions in homes, schools, and communities. Another interest concerns ways of making research accessible and useful to parents, teachers, and service providers. With Dr. Mike Gerber I am co-directing Caselink, a 3 year research project aimed to develop and test multimedia, interactional, and group based,instructional materials to be mounted on the Web. Another set of interests concerns how people with disabilities may become more self-determing beginning in childhood. My students are also exploring questions related to ethnicity, linguistic minority status, and immigration as these factors impact people with disabilities and their families. Other areas of interest concern social policy issues regarding families who support family members who require extra assistance to participate in normal community life. Finally, I'm interested in the philosophy of social science and its intersection with actual day to day practice of research. I see my work as primarily aimed to provide pragmatic insights, methods, materials, and policies that will be useful in the lives of people with disabilities and their families. In my private life I'm a published poet, furnisher maker, father, and fan of golden-haired retrievers.
Recent Publications:
Goldberg-Hamblin, S., Singer, J., Singer, G.H.S., & Denney, M.K. Early intervention in neonatal nurseries: The promising practice of developmental care. Infants & Young Children, 20(2), 163-171. 2007. [Refereed Journal Article]
Singer, J. & Singer, G.H.S. Writing as physical and emotional healing: Findings from clinical research. In C. Bazerman (Ed.), Handbook of research on writing. 2007. [Book Chapter]
Singer, G.H.S. Developmental differences: Philosophy. In K. Theis & J. Travers (Eds.), Handbook of human development for health care professionals. Thorofare, NJ: Slack. 2006. [Book Chapter]
Powers, L.E., Sowers, J., & Singer, G.H.S. A cross-disability analysis of person-directed long-term services. Journal of Disability Policy, 17(2), 66-76. 2006. [Refereed Journal Article]
Singer, G.H.S. Meta-analysis of comparative studies of depression in mothers of children with and without developmental disabilities. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 111(3), 155-169. 2006. [Literature Synthesis]
Affiliations:
American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR)
American Educational Research Association (AERA)
Association for Positive Behavioral Support (APBS)
The Association for the Severely Handicapped (TASH)
The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC)
The Council for Exceptional Children: Division for Early Intervention (DEC)
The Council for Exceptional Children: Division for Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (CEC-MRDD)
The Council for Exceptional Children: Division for Research (CEC-DR)
