Expanded Core Curriculum
The Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) is the body of knowledge and skills needed by students with visual impairments due to their unique disability-specific needs. The ECC is used in addition to general education core curriculum for students who have visual impairments. The ECC should be used as a framework to assess students, help plan individual learning goals for them, and provide instruction.
The ECC’s Nine Educational Areas
Compensatory or Functional Academic Skills, Including Communication Modes
Compensatory skills are necessary for students to be able to access and work through each area of the core curriculum. Necessary skills include concept development, communication modes, organization and study skills, tactile skills and more.
Functional skills are necessary for students with multiple disabilities to work, play, socialize, and care for their personal needs to the highest possible level. Spatial understanding, speaking and listening skills and communication modes (like writing, American Sign Language, speech, etc.) are considered functional skills.
Orientation and Mobility
Students progress in the area of orientation and mobility by becoming more aware of their bodies and the environments in which they move. Instruction in orientation and mobility helps students work toward being able to travel and move as independently as possible.
Social Interaction Skills
Since students with visual impairments don’t have the ability to observe the environment and body language of people with whom they interact, social skills must be taught carefully, consciously and sequentially. Development in social skills helps students move toward being able to communicate and have fulfilling relationships in their lives as adults.
Independent Living Skills
Often referred to as “daily living skills,” the focus of independent living skills is for individuals with visual impairments to learn to care for themselves in the areas of personal hygiene, food preparation, money management, organization and more. Students with visual impairments require more guidance in these areas since they don’t have access to the visual cues traditional students use to guide their behaviors. Specialized instruction in this curriculum area helps students prepare to manage their daily lives as adults.
Recreation and Leisure Skills
Physical recreation and leisure activities are part of a well-rounded life, and while many traditional physical activities and sports are still valuable to students with visual impairments, they need to be taught differently. The teaching of recreation and leisure skills to blind and visually impaired students must be planned and deliberately taught, and should focus on the development of life-long skills.
Unemployment and underemployment have been the leading problem facing adults in the United States who are visually impaired. This portion of the expanded core curriculum is vital to students and should be part of the expanded curriculum for even the youngest of these individuals. Career education in an expanded core curriculum provides the visually impaired learner of all ages with the opportunity to learn first-hand the work done by the bank teller, the gardener, the social worker, the artist, etc. It provides students opportunities to explore strengths and interests in a systematic, well-planned manner.
Students with visual impairments often require additional adaptive or assistive devices to access and succeed in the classroom. Assistive technology refers to any device, piece of equipment or system used to increase or improve the functioning of an individual with a visual impairment. Assistive technology devices can be high- or low-tech devices.
Sensory Efficiency Skills
Sensory efficiency refers to an individual maximizing the use of all their senses, including optimizing the use of their vision, in order to access the environment. Sensory efficiency is necessary in all components of a student’s life and should be embedded in all other areas of the ECC.
This area of the ECC highlights the importance of believing in oneself, while understanding one’s abilities and limitations. Students learn from successes and failures how to achieve goals in life. Self-determination is the ability for people to control their lives, reach goals they have set and take part fully in the world around them.