Mark Mostert

Mark P. Mostert is co-director of the Institute for Disability and Bioethics and professor of Special Education at Regent University, Virginia Beach. and the fads and pseudoscientific practices found in special education.

Education Mostert grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. He attended the Johannesburg College of Education (now the University of Witwatersrand) where he studied special education and biblical studies. He earned an H.E.D. in Special Education in 1976. Mostert went on to earn a M.Ed. in Special Education (1985), from the University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama and a Ph.D. in Special Education and Teacher Education (1992) from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. His dissertation, published by the University of Illinois, was entitled Metaphor in Special Educators' Language of Practice.

Career In 1977, Mostert became a teacher at Highveld Elementary School in Johannesburg, South Africa. He also taught at Mondeor High School in Johannesburg before moving to Alabama for graduate school. Current policies in states allowing assisted suicide, according to Mostert, do not have the requisite safety policies in place (for example, no witness is required when the medicine is administered) and are open to possible abuse. His concern is people with government jobs—and not physicians—are making decisions about "treatment or the withholding of treatment". Mostert asserts that economic rationale (e.g., the cost of end-of-life care) is still subtly affecting health care policies in the United States.

Mostert advocates getting rid of the term "vegetative state" for people who are chronically and medically unconscious, and replacing it with "persistent, non-responsive state," which is less demeaning.

Mostert has also linked the use of Facilitated Communication (FC), with its "serious problems of validity and logic," with Nazi-era pseudoscience. He wrote in a 2001 article: "The results of these actions were extremely damaging, both practically and ethically, to many people FC was supposed to assist. The reaction of many members of the public and media, who embraced FC based on the flimsiest of evidence, were hardly less astonishing."

The Positive Side of Special Education Mostert co-wrote The Positive Side of Special Education: Minimizing Its Fads, Fancies and Follies (published by R&L Education, 2004) with Kenneth Kavale. The book is an overview of practices and interventions in the field of special education that had "significant impact but lacked scientific validation". The authors explore practices that may have been started with good intentions, but were found to be based more on ideology than logic and rationality. The Positive Side of Special Education won a 2005 Award presented by the American Library Association.

Awards Dille Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, Minnesota University Moorhead (1996-1997) Millman Promising Scholar Award, Cornell University (inaugural winner) (1996) Facilitated Communication Since 1995: A Review of Published Studies (2001) Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany (2002) Meta-Analyses in Mental Retardation (2003) Truth and Consequences with James M. Kauffman and Kenneth A. Kavale (2003) Face Validity of Meta-Analyses in Emotional or Behavioral Disorders (2004) Social Skills Interventions for Individuals with Learning Disabilities with Kenneth A. Kavale (2004) There is a Way to Make Ethical Decisions in the Classroom (2004) The Starting Point Must be the Dignity of Human Worth Facilitated Communication: The Empirical Imperative to Prevent Further Professional Malpractice (2012) An Activist Approach to Debunking FC (2014)

Books Challenging the Refusal of Reasoning in Special Education with Kenneth A. Kavale and James M. Kauffman Interprofessional Collaboration in Schools: Practical Action in the Classroom Managing Classroom Behaviors: A Reflective Case-Based Approach (5th Edition) with James M. Kauffman, Patricia L. Pullen, and Stanley C. Trent The Positive Side of Special Education: Minimizing Its Fads, Fancies, and Follies with Kenneth A. Kavale