This section is a brief summary of a philosophy in education called "outcome based education." Mobility specialists write outcomes on three levels: experiences to be accomplished; knowledge to be learned and repeated; and competencies (behaviors) to be demonstrated.

Traditional education is time based. Students are judged on what they learn within specific time frames; one week to learn spelling words, two months to learn subtraction, one year to pass second grade. Unlike traditional education, orientation and mobility training is outcome based. The major concern is whether a student learns a skill or concept. When the skill is learned is important, but it is not the primary limiting factor.

Experience

It is okay to have new experiences or to repeat the ones that are important and/or fun. Going to the mall, having the "mall experience", is a valid outcome. Experience reduces fear and increases confidence, setting the stage for gaining knowledge and becoming competent. Blind children need real world experiences to provide the foundation for concept development. Classroom discussions or simulations do not always transfer to the real world. All knowledge starts with experience.

Knowledge

The next step is to repeat to the teacher key ideas: how department stores are laid out, movement patterns found in grocery stores, who can help with problems while in a mall, how canes are used; ie. articulating skills, layouts, services, routes, rules, landmarks, and behaviors.

Competence

The final stage is demonstrated competence. If a student can be dropped off at a mall (in a neighborhood, at the grocery store, etc.), and be independent there (safe, efficient, oriented, and relaxed) then the best level of outcome is reached. Mobility specialists require students to demonstrate mastery of objectives. No blind student gets a C grade in street crossing skills from a mobility teacher. Blind children must cross every street safely, every day.

The three outcome levels roughly correspond to developmental ages. "Experience" is what preschool and early elementary education are all about; Piaget's pre-operational stage. In late elementary school and early middle school, children actively gather knowledge and begin to understand and explain objects and their spatial relationships (Piagets operational stage). During the teen years, Piaget's stage of formal operations, students can be expected to demonstrate competence in skill areas, and in higher order cognitive processing areas.

Many individuals with vision problems or blindness have multiple impairments. With an outcome based curriculum, you need not address the multiple impairments or degree of vision loss separately. Some outcomes simply do not apply or the outcomes remain the same but take longer (or less time) to accomplish.

The normal human developmental cycle

Neuromuscular systems develop in a pattern. Blind students, for example, cannot be expected to use adult cane skills until motor coordination patterns have developed in the arms, hands, fingers, legs and feet. Cognitive and emotional development also unfold as children mature. These stages have to be understood so that concepts can be presented when the student is optimally ready to receive the knowledge. A child's ability to stay oriented in space, to be a good navigator, depends on the development of spatial concepts. The ability to comprehend and use these spatial concepts unfolds with maturity.

Age appropriate behaviors

Parents usually don't allow their children to cross streets unattended before the age of five. Parents make judgments based on their child's skill level and on the degree of danger any street might contain (width, traffic, whether there are stop signs or not, etc.). We get an idea of appropriate outcomes for blind children knowing what is expected of sighted kids.

Common sense

Sighted people don't cross expressways on foot. They don't go for walks in snow storms, and they avoid certain urban neighborhoods. Blind children need instruction about the common sense travel patterns of their culture.

Expectations about the future

We live in a time of rapid change. Electronic and bio-technologies are transforming the world. Mobility specialists, like other professionals, have become futurists (whether they want to be or not). We have to make educated guesses about the future and design appropriate lesson plans to prepare students. To give one example, we live in a "change hungry" world. Malls are constantly redesigning store layouts, moving and shifting displays to provide a rich, continually stimulating visual circus for sighted customers. This puts a burden on blind individuals that has to be addressed, especially as this trend intensifies.

All children can learn

Blind children can learn. Deaf blind children can learn. Multiply handicapped children can learn. Not all children will learn at the same pace, but they will all be striving to accomplish appropriate outcomes.

Success breeds success

This is a self-fulfilling prophesy: the more successful children are and feel, the more accomplished they become. We are also talking about teacher and parent attitudes. High expectations, positive emotions, constructive feedback, all good intentions feed on themselves.

Schools control the conditions of success

This simply means that schools and teachers are not allowed to cop out (or set up negative self-fulfilling prophesies). A child's failure to learn cannot be blamed on the society, the family, bad times, or wrong times (these are all contributing circumstances, of course, but cannot be used as an excuse not to teach with maximum effort). Schools have within their power the ability to teach children, and it is the job of schools to do so.

It is our role (as teachers and parents) to state explicitly what outcomes our students need to have achieved on the day they leave our care. It is a major goal of this book to list the orientation and mobility outcomes that must be accomplished by the day of graduation.

To design an outcome based approach for teaching orientation and mobility, we need to follow five steps.

One: We have to continually make educated guesses about the future our students will face.

Two: Based on future predictions and on current knowledge, we will define what a competent blind traveler should be on the day of graduation. We will need to list broad but significant areas of competency: knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Three: Taking each outcome in turn, we will flesh out the learning experiences, the knowledge base, and the competency areas that students will participate in on their way to earning credit.

Four: After we know what experiences, knowledge and competencies we want our students to have, we are ready for the next step: to organize outcomes into a curriculum, with lesson plans and instructional objectives.

Five: Once we have a list of outcomes, we must clearly decide how students will demonstrate their achievements. In other words, we need to develop assessments that have teeth for each of the outcomes. If we expect blind travelers to walk with a normal gait and at a normal speed for example, we will need assessment strategies to measure gait and speed.

Goals were discussed in a previous section. There are two overall goals, increased independence, and improved quality of life.

Outcomes are significant accomplishments (not the little details) that are to be achieved by the completion of the students orientation and mobility education. There are four outcomes; the student will:

Be proficient using mobility skills.

Be a proficient navigator

Be equipped with the knowledge (and sophistication) to handle changes coming from communications and biotechnology revolutions

Have a broad understanding of the function of human vision, the implications of vision loss, and the adaptations necessary to keep vision impairment from becoming a disability or a handicap.

The curriculum is the collection of lesson plans organized for each of the outcome areas. Cane travel, for example, would fall under the outcome "proficiency using mobility skills".

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