Cultural Reciprocity in Special Education

Beth Harry, Ph.D., is a professor of special education at the University of Miami in Florida. A native of Jamaica, Beth graduated from St. Andrew High School in 1962 and went on to pursue her bachelor of arts and master's degrees at the University of Toronto and her doctorate at Syracuse University. Beth has been a teacher all of her adult life, including teaching English at the secondary and community college levels and special education at all levels. Beth's current work focuses on teaching and research related to disability, multicultural, and family issues. She lived in Trinidad for 12 years, where both her children--Melanie and Mark Teelucksingh--were born. Maya Kalyanpur, Ph.D., has focused on teaching and research related to the needs and perspectives of families from culturally diverse backgrounds. In 1997, she received a postdoctoral fellowship at the Beach Center for Families and Disability at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, where the work documented in this book was carried out. She serves as a consulting editor for Mental Retardation and Critical Inquiry into Curriculum and Instruction. She was a classroom teacher and director of a private school for children with disabilities in New Delhi, India, before coming to the United States as a graduate student. She received her doctoral degree in special education from Syracuse University in 1994.