VIDBE-Q Volume 66, Issue 2
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established the NYC Cortical Visual Impairment Cohort (hereafter referred to as
the Cohort). EVS is the largest educational department serving children with visual
impairments in the United States, employing over 90 vision service providers
(TVIs) and serving approximately 900 students. With numbers continually
increasing, an estimated 15-20% of EVS students are diagnosed with CVI.
NYDBC is a federally funded Technical Assistance & Dissemination grant
program (USDOE, Office of Special Education Programs) providing support
services to educational teams and families of children and youth with combined
vision and hearing loss, across New York State.
Based on an identified need to increase peer-based training on practices
relevant to students with CVI, specific goals emerged for the Cohort. These goals
included increased identification and referral of students who have CVI (including
those with combined vision and hearing loss) and increased skills in conducting
appropriate assessments and designing educational interventions for students with
CVI. The Cohort was established as a deliberate community of practice in order to
address these goals. Communities of practice are defined by Wegner, McDermott,
and Synder (2002) as, "...groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems,
or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this
area by interacting on an ongoing basis" (p. 4). The Cohort consists primarily of
itinerant educational vision service providers selected based on their capacity to
