History and Background
The Recommended Practices were first developed by DEC in 1991 to provide guidance to the relatively new field of early intervention/early childhood special education. The original set of practices consisted of 417 different behaviors. In the late 1990s/early 2000s, DEC revised the initial set of practices and established the evidence base for them through an extensive review of the literature. Further, in 2014 DEC, in collaboration with the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (ECTA), revised and updated the practices again, and a new set of DEC Recommended Practices is now available (66 practices total). Below is a timeline illustrating the evolution of the Recommended Practices. Hundreds of individuals consisting of families, researchers and practitioners contributed to the development of the Recommended Practices and continue to shape the evolution of these practices. For more information about the development of the practices, click here to check out DEC’s Recommended Practices Monograph Series and here to view the DEC Recommended Practices 2014 video.