Mainstreaming (education)

Not to be confused with Inclusion (education).

Mainstreaming, in the context of education, is the practice of educating students with special needs in regular classes during specific time periods based on their skills.[1] This means regular education classes are combined with special education classes. Schools that practice mainstream believe that students with special needs who cannot function in a regular classroom to a certain extent "belong" in the special education environment.[2]

Access to a special education classroom, often called a "self-contained classroom or resource room", is valuable to the student with a disability. Students have the ability to work one-on-one with special education teachers, addressing any need for remediation during the school day. Many researchers, educators and parents have advocated the importance of these classrooms amongst political environments that favor their elimination.[3]

Proponents of both philosophy of educational inclusion assert that educating children with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers fosters understanding and tolerance, better preparing students of all abilities to function in the world beyond school.[4] Children with special needs may face social stigma as a result of being mainstreamed, but also may help them socially develop.[5]

Advantages

Benefits to students with disabilities

It is believed that educating children with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers, facilitates access to the general curriculum for children with disabilities. Studies show that students with disabilities who are mainstreamed have:

Mainstreaming also benefits other children. It opens the lines of communication between those students with disabilities and their peers. If they are included into classroom activities, all students become more sensitive to the fact that these students may need extra assistance.

Benefits to non-disabled students

Some people believe that educating non-disabled students and students with disabilities together creates an atmosphere of understanding and tolerance that better prepares students of all abilities to function in the world beyond school. Students without disabilities who engaged in an inclusive physical education program reported increases in self-concept, tolerance, self-worth, and a better understanding of other people.[13] The students also reported that the inclusion program was important because it prepared them to deal with disability in their own lives.[14] Positive aspects that come from inclusion are often attributed to contact theory.[15] Contact theory asserts that frequent, meaningful, and pleasant interactions between people with differences tend to produce changes in attitude.[16]

Disadvantages

Although mainstreaming in education has been shown to provide benefits, there are also disadvantages to the system.

Tradeoff with non-disabled students's academic education

One potentially serious disadvantage to mainstreaming is that a mainstreamed student may require much more attention from the teacher than non-disabled students in a general class. Time and attention may thus be taken away from the rest of the class to meet the needs of a single student with special needs. The effect that a mainstreamed student has on the whole class depends strongly on the particular disabilities in question and the resources available for support. In many cases, this problem can be mitigated by placing an aide in the classroom to assist the student with special needs, although this raises the costs associated with educating this child.[17]

Teachers are encouraged to teach the entire class differently. This includes being less abstract and more concrete in content, changing lighting, simplifying the design of the classroom, and having a predictable structure and routine rather than novelty. [18] [19]

Harm to academic education of students with disabilities

Parents fear that general education teachers do not have the training and skills to accommodate special needs students in a general education classroom setting. However, professional training and supportive services can usually address these concerns. Some research has suggested teachers who are not aware of—and later may choose not to adopt—modifications needed for students with special needs are also more resistant to having these students in class.[20] This can lead to regression of the students with disabilities as well as overall decreased classroom productivity.

Teacher-student interactions

It has been seen that general educators provide 98.7% of their teaching time doing whole class interactions. Students with disabilities have been known to require a significant more amount of one on one attention with the classroom teacher. Children with disabilities spend twice as much time in whole-class activities than in one on one activities due to the amount of whole-class teaching, yet these students are half as likely to engage in whole-class learning activities such as writing, reading and participating showing that whole group activities do not address the needs of students with disabilities as much as one on one work would.[21]

Social issues

Compared to fully included students with disabilities, those who are mainstreamed for only certain classes or certain times may feel conspicuous or socially rejected by their classmates. They may become targets for bullying. Mainstreamed students may feel embarrassed by the additional services they receive in a regular classroom, such as an aide to help with written work or to help the student manage behaviors. Some students with disabilities may feel more comfortable in an environment where most students are working at the same level or with the same supports. In the United States, students with autism spectrum disorders are more frequently the target of bullying than non-autistic students, especially when their educational program brings them into regular contact with non-autistic students.[22]

As seen above there are many social issues however to improve these issues a buddy system has been shown to improve these issues. Through having a buddy system an upper school student will be paired with a younger child preferable with a disability by doing this the younger student is provided with a positive relationship with a fellow student even though they are older. Through the buddy system the younger student will learn the benefits of having and sustaining a positive and supportive friendship, learns to value opinion just by having the upper school student around. These social issues are improved due to the upper school student helping to alter the social experiences of the younger child through this formed friendship.[23]

Costs

Schools are required to provide special education services but may not be given additional financial resources. The per-student cost of special education is high. The U.S.'s 2005 Special Education Expenditures Program (SEEP) indicates that the cost per student in special education ranges from a low of $10,558 for students with learning disabilities to a high of $20,095 for students with multiple disabilities. The average cost per pupil for a regular education with no special education services is $6,556. Therefore, the average expenditure for students with learning disabilities is 1.6 times that of a general education student.

Careful attention must be given as well to combinations of students with disabilities in a mainstreamed classroom. For example, a student with conduct disorder may not combine well with a student with autism, while putting many children with dyslexia in the same class may prove to be particularly efficient.

Special consequences for deaf students

Deafness is a low-incidence disability, which means that a deaf child will often be the only student in the classroom with hearing loss.[24] This leads to a special set of issues in the mainstream classroom. While students with other disabilities may experience isolation and bullying by their non-disabled peers, they often share a common language. This is not the case for deaf students. Very few people in the mainstream academic setting know sign language, which means the communication barrier is large and can have negative effects on both academic achievement and social development.

Alternatives: what mainstreaming is not

The alternatives to mainstreaming for special needs students are separation, inclusion, and excluding the student from school. Normally, the student's individual needs are the driving force behind selecting mainstreaming or another style of education.

Mainstreaming does not involve putting a child full-time in a special school.

Mainstreaming does not involve placing a child full-time in a regular classroom. A student who spends the entire day in a regular classroom with non-disabled peers is considered fully included. Most students with mild levels of disabilities such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder, or with non-cognitive disabilities such as diabetes are fully included.

Mainstreaming does not involve teaching the child outside of school. A student who is taught in an institution (such as a hospital) or at home (such as while recovering from a serious illness) is excluded. Such a student may receive one-on-one instruction or may attend small group instruction. A student who is excluded from school may or may not have been expelled from the school.

History of mainstreaming in US schools

Before the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) was enacted in 1975, U.S. public schools educated only 1 out of 5 children with disabilities.[27] Approximately 200,000[27] children with disabilities such as deafness or mental retardation lived in state institutions that provided limited or no educational or rehabilitation services,[28] and more than one million children were excluded from school.[27] Another 3.5 million children with disabilities attended school but did not receive the educational services they needed.[27] Many of these children were segregated in special buildings or programs that neither allowed them to interact with non-disabled students nor provided them with even basic academic skills.

The EHA, later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), required schools to provide specialized educational services to children with disabilities. The ultimate goal was to help these students live more independent lives in their communities, primarily by mandating access to the general education standards of the public school system.

Initially, children with disabilities were often placed in heterogeneous "special education" classrooms, making it difficult for any of their difficulties to be addressed appropriately. In the 1980s, the mainstreaming model began to be used more often as a result of the requirement to place children in the least restrictive environment (Clearinghouse, E. 2003). Students with relatively minor disabilities were integrated into regular classrooms, while students with major disabilities remained in segregated special classrooms, with the opportunity to be among normal students for up to a few hours each day. Many parents and educators favored allowing students with disabilities to be in classrooms along with their nondisabled peers.

In 1997, IDEA was modified to strengthen requirements for properly integrating students with disabilities. The IEPs must more clearly relate to the general-education curriculum, children with disabilities must be included in most state and local assessments, such as high school exit exams, and regular progress reports must be made to parents. All public schools in the U.S. are responsible for the costs of providing a Free Appropriate Public Education as required by federal law. Mainstreaming or inclusion in the regular education classrooms, with supplementary aids and services if needed, are now the preferred placement for all children. Children with disabilities may be placed in a more restricted environment only if the nature or severity of the disability makes it impossible to provide an appropriate education in the regular classroom.

Australian context

It has been estimated that in the year of 2009 there has been 292,600 children attending school within Australia that has been diagnosed with a disability also within this year is has been seen that there had been a higher rate of participation within school activities coming from children with a disability compared to children without one. It has been shown that almost one in ten males within schools (186,000) had been diagnosed with a disability where the level of females within a school (106,600) diagnosed with a disability was around one in sixteen. Within mainstream schools it has been shown that primary schools had a higher number of students with disabilities with a high 9.1% where students within secondary schools where only 7.4% had a disability. Out of the 71,000 students attending school with a disability 64.7% have been known to have a severe or core-activated limitation. It has also been proven that special needs children within Australia demonstrate higher academic outcomes when in a mainstream school where they have been given opportunities to engage in higher academic levels and activities. Having children with a disability in a mainstream school has also been shown to increase in independent communication and motor skills.[29]

See also

References

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  2. Mainstreaming: "Special needs students "belong" in the special classroom", accessed October 16, 2007
  3. The Effectiveness of Resource Programming Sindelar and Deno J Spec Educ.1978; 12: 17-28
  4. IDEA Funding Coalition, "IDEA Funding: Time for a New Approach," Mandatory Funding Proposal, Feb. 20 2001, p. 2.
  5. globalpost http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/advantages-disadvantages-mainstreaming-special-education-children-25659.html. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. Special Education Inclusion
  7. (2006). Mainstreaming Deaf Students. Independent School, 66, 6. Retrieved November 29, 2007, from EBSCOhost database.
  8. Meyer, B.J.F.; Poon, L.W. (2001). "Effects of structure strategy training and signalling on recall of text". Journal of Educational Psychology. 93 (1): 140–160. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.141.
  9. NA Madden, RE Slavin (1983). Review of Educational Research, Vol. 53, No. 4, 519-569
  10. (2007). Twenty-five years of progress in educating children with disabilities through IDEA. National Research Center on Learning Disabilities. Retrieved November 29, 2007 from http://www.nrcld.org/resources/osep/historyidea.html
  11. Wolfberg, P.J.; Schuler, A.L. (1999). "Fostering peer interaction, imaginative play and spontaneous language in children with autism". Child Language Teaching & Therapy. 15: 41–52. doi:10.1191/026565999667036164.
  12. Tidmarsh, L.; Volkmar, F. (2003). "Diagnosis and epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders". Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.
  13. Suomi, J.; Collier, D.; Brown, L. (2003). "Factors affecting the social experiences of students in elementary physical education classes". Journal of Teaching in Physical Education. 22 (2): 186.
  14. Block, M. E. (1999). "Are children with disabilities receiving appropriate physical education?.". Teaching Exceptional Children. 31 (3): 18–23.
  15. Lieberman, L.; James, A.; Ludwa, N. (2004). "The impact of inclusion in general physical education for all students". Journal of Physical Education. 75 (5): 37–55. doi:10.1080/07303084.2004.10607238.
  16. Chu, D.; Griffey, D. (1985). "The contact theory of racial integration: The case of sport". Sociology of Sport Journal. 2 (4): 323–333.
  17. Manzitti, Edward T.; "An Evaluation of Mainstreaming in Vocational Education Programs in the State of Michigan."
  18. Watson, Sue. "A List of Typical Special Ed. Accommodations". About.com. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
  19. "Effective Accommodations for IEPs". teachervision.com. The Council for Exceptional Children. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
  20. Joyce, B.,& Weil, M. (1986). Models of teaching (3rd ed.) Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
  21. Cameron, David Lansing (2014-10-01). "An examination of teacher–student interactions in inclusive classrooms: teacher interviews and classroom observations". Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs. 14 (4): 264–273. doi:10.1111/1471-3802.12021. ISSN 1471-3802.
  22. Sterzing PR, Shattuck PT, Narendorf SC, Wagner M, Cooper BP (September 2012). "Bullying Involvement and Autism Spectrum Disorders: Prevalence and Correlates of Bullying Involvement Among Adolescents With an Autism Spectrum Disorder". Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 166 (11): 1–7. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2012.790. PMID 22945284. Lay summary.
  23. Rider, Louise (2000-12-01). "Peer Education in Mainstream Secondary Education: Using 'Buddying' to Address Social and Behavioural Issues". Pastoral Care in Education. 18 (4): 3–7. doi:10.1111/1468-0122.00173. ISSN 1468-0122.
  24. 1 2 Stinson, Michael; Antia, Shirin (Summer 1999). "Considerations in Educating Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Inclusive Settings" (PDF). Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 4 (3): 163–174. doi:10.1093/deafed/4.3.163. Retrieved 2011-04-04.
  25. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hall, Wyatte. "Decrease of Deaf Potential in a Mainstreamed Environment". Rochester Institute of Technology. Retrieved 5 April 2011.
  26. Vandell, Deborah Lowe; George, Linda B. (June 1981). "Social Interaction in Hearing and Deaf Preschoolers: Successes and Failures in Initiations". Child Development. 52 (2): 627–635. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1981.tb03089.x. JSTOR 1129183.
  27. 1 2 3 4 "NCD - Back to School on Civil Rights: Advancing the Federal Commitment to Leave No Child Behind". Retrieved 2008-02-13.
  28. Schiller, Ellen, Fran O’Reilly, Tom Fiore, Marking the Progress of IDEA Implementation, published by the Office of Special Education Programs. URL: http://nclid.unco.edu/Resources/IDEA_Progress.pdf , Retrieved June 26, 2007.
  29. Statistics, c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of. "Main Features - Children At School With Disability". www.abs.gov.au. Retrieved 2016-05-17.

External links

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