Creating Inclusive Learning Environments for Young Children

What to Do on Monday Morning

Clarissa Willis

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781452295398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

This book provides information on common disabilities and practical strategies for creating inclusive environments and building student relationships.

Part I

Children With Special Needs in the Inclusive Classroom

1

Working With Children With Special Needs

Figure 1.1 Children with special needs learn best in a natural environment.

WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW TO WORK WITH CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS?

As with children in a general education setting, those with special needs have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Some children may have recognizable disabilities, such as a child with cerebral palsy who is in a wheelchair or a child with vision difficulties who wears glasses. Other children, while not having been diagnosed with a specific disability, may exhibit challenging behaviors that interrupt the daily routine.

Children may have a nonspecific diagnosis, such as developmental delay. Pediatricians and other medical professionals often prefer this diagnosis for young children, since it implies that, given time and opportunity, the child may “catch up” in the areas in which they are currently delayed. In other cases, a child may be “at risk” for a disability because of environmental conditions or due to a chronic health condition, such as a depressed immune system or chronic asthma. At risk does not mean that the child has a particular disability; it simply means that there is a high probability that, without intervention, the child will develop a permanent delay.

Regardless of the type of delay a child experiences, it is important to keep in mind that all children can learn and should be allowed to participate in everyday routines and activities to the best of their capabilities. Research tells us that children learn best in natural environments with typically developing peers (Allen & Cowdery, 2005; Brown, Hemmeter, & Pretti-Frontczak, 2005). This interaction not only benefits the child with special needs, but also helps children without special needs learn about tolerance and acceptance of others.

SETTING THE STAGE FOR INCLUSION

Prior to the 1960s, only a few programs served young children with special needs. Most of these “special schools” were residential state schools or were focused on specific disabilities, such as programs for the deaf or blind. Public school programs, if they existed at all, were self-contained programs located in buildings separate from where children without special needs attended school.

One of the most significant breakthroughs for children with special needs occurred in 1965, when Head Start, a program explicitly designed for low-income children and families, was signed into law. The Equal Opportunity Act of 1964 (PL 88-452) was instrumental in a Head Start initiative that was adopted in the early 1970s. This initiative mandated that 10 percent of the Head Start slots would be designated specifically for children with special needs. This was the first time that a federal program had provided incentives for children with special needs to be included in educational environments with their peers. In 1968, another critical piece of legislation was passed, the Handicapped Children’s Early Education Program (HCEEP), funded by the U.S. Department of Education. This legislation provided money for states to develop model programs or to replicate existing programs for young children with special needs. These model programs served as the basis for most of the early research on the efficacy or effectiveness of services for young children with special needs.

Public Law 94-142, also called the Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, mandated services for school-age children with disabilities. Under the provisions of this act, services for preschool children were not required but were strongly encouraged through monetary incentives. This act introduced many new terms, including mainstreaming, which was used to describe the amount of time each day that a child with special needs participated in a program with peers who did not have special needs. For many children, the time allocated to spend with peers was during recess, lunch, or nonacademic subjects such as music or art. While mainstreaming was a far better alternative than a segregated or self-contained setting, it was still not very inclusive. Some educators seemed to believe that mainstreaming was like inviting someone to visit you for a few minutes or a few hours and then sending them back to their own house. In effect, mainstreaming for many children meant they could visit a regular classroom for a specified amount of time, but they really did not participate in many of the activities that were going on. In fact, some children merely observed, while others learned and interacted with each other. At best, interaction between children with special needs and their typically developing peers was minimal and artificial.

Public Law 94-142, however, did set the stage for subsequent laws that were designed to ensure that all children with special needs received the services to which they were legally entitled. One of the laws was Public Law 99-457, or the Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments, which amended Public Law 94-142 to mandate services for children ages three to five who have a diagnosed special need. Several other amendments have subsequently been put into place and have further strengthened the law and mandate for services for all children. Public Law 101-476, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (PL 108-446), outlines very specific guidelines that local school districts are required to adhere to by law when providing for the needs of children with disabilities. The provisions of the act for children age three to twenty-one are the following:

1. Each school district must provide a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). This includes the provision that the child is entitled to all services that are appropriate to meet his educational needs. Examples of related services include, but are not limited to, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and transportation. In addition, these services must be provided without cost to parents. Not all children with disabilities will qualify for all offered services, but each child is entitled to those services that accommodate his particular needs. It should be noted that many school districts do not have programs for three-year-olds. If this is the case, such districts may choose to make a contract with outside child care providers, or with centers where children without special needs may be enrolled.

2. Assessments must be nonbiased and nondiscriminatory. They must be conducted in the child’s native language, and most important, educational decisions about a child cannot be made based on a single test. In other words, a variety of assessments is used to determine eligibility for educational services.

3. Once a child has been determined as eligible for services, an educational plan is developed and written by a team that includes the child’s family, a special education teacher, and a general education teacher. This team reviews and updates the individual education program (IEP) on an annual basis. The child’s IEP clearly outlines what types of service she will receive and how often she will receive the service.

4. The child must receive the service to which he is entitled in an environment that is the least restrictive. Presumed and made clear in the most recent reauthorization of IDEA is that the least restrictive environment (LRE) should be the general education classroom, unless there is justification as to why it would not be appropriate. Again, many school districts elect to make a contract with a private preschool to provide these services. However, because contracting with organizations outside the school is often cost prohibitive, more districts are opting to provide the services themselves.

5. Children from birth to age three with special needs usually receive services through a state-provided comprehensive early intervention system. The child is assigned a service coordinator who works with the family to assess the child, plan appropriate services, and develop an individual family service plan (IFSP). The IFSP is a written plan for services the child will receive, which helps guide the family as the child transitions into other programs. For children, birth to age three, services are provided in the child’s natural environment, defined as the place where the child might spend time if she did not have a disability. In most cases, the natural environment is at home. However, if both parents work, the natural environment may be a preschool or a private home care provider.

INCLUSION, BLENDING, AND REVERSE MAINSTREAMING

Over time, as children with special needs were observed spending time with their typically developing peers, educators began to recognize that inclusion went beyond mainstreaming. More important, they realized that to fully include a child meant that the child had to become more than an occasional visitor in the classroom. It meant that the child needed to become a member of the classroom community. One method for providing children with special needs with opportunities to be with their peers without special needs was called reverse mainstreaming. Children without special needs are placed in a program or educational setting that consists of children with special needs. Reverse mainstreaming is certainly considered a better alternative than segregated programs, but it is still not a fully inclusive program since most of the children in the classroom have special needs.

Because regular early childhood educators and early childhood special education teachers work together in the inclusive program to “blend” aspects of both regular and special education into their programs, the term blended practices is often used. However, before practices can be successfully blended, all those working with the child must fully understand the concepts and philosophy behind inclusion.

WHY IS INCLUSION IMPORTANT?

For the past 25 years, a significant body of literature has attested to the positive outcomes for children with special needs who have been placed in settings with their typically developing peers (Brown et al., 2005). Children with special needs who receive related services (special education, speech/language therapy, occupational therapy, etc.) benefit more when those services are provided in the natural environment with their peers (Allen & Cowdery, 2005). Natural environments are settings where children without special needs learn and play. These may include public and private preschool programs. Ongoing research has shown that embedding instruction and therapeutic services within the framework of natural environments is both beneficial to the child and cost effective for the setting (Bailey & McWilliam, 1990; Bricker & Cripe, 1992; Noonan & McCormick, 2000). However, just placing a child with special needs in a setting with his peers does not ensure that “meaningful” inclusion will take place.

WHAT IS “MEANINGFUL” INCLUSION?

The Division of Early Childhood (DEC), a subdivision of the Council for Exceptional Children, is a professional organization dedicated to the field of early childhood special education. The DEC position paper on inclusion states that inclusion is “a value that supports the rights of all children, regardless of their diverse abilities, to participate actively in natural settings within their communities.” However, meaningf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Part I: Children With Special Needs in the Inclusive Classroom
• Part II: Who Are the Children With Special Needs?
• Part III: Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom
• Appendix
• Children’s Books That Feature Dynamic Characters With Special Needs
• Resources for Special Needs Products
• Index