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APPLIED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT & SPECIAL ED.
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Examines research stuties on mandates of IDEA & ADA; full-inclusion models & strategies. Theory & practice in classroom.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines research stuties on mandates of IDEA & ADA; full-inclusion models & strategies. Theory & practice in classroom.
Paper Introduction:
Introduction
This research examines the applied learning environment and special-education classrooms. Awareness of how organizations and instructors have responded to the mandates of IDEA and ADA and in particular of full-inclusion responses to the educational needs of exceptional students may foster optimal strategic implementation and use of resources in the learning environment and point in the direction of effective classroom management and student development. The research reviews recent literature on the subject, and discusses implications of existing research with a view toward forecasting possible lines of experimental and practitioner development.
Review of Literature
The big picture of special education literature is that it
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In a follow-up survey of relatively recentspecial-ed graduate teachers, the study authors found a tendency to followpreparatory-studies guidelines in their classrooms and a persistenttendency to honor and attempt to meet the needs of exceptional children intheir charge. Implicit in the gaps of classroom-practitioner's institutional "savvy" are suggestions for training curriculathat at least touch on, if not cover in depth, administrative andinstitutional issue fronts that may affect performance and potential foreffective instruction in a given learning environment. (2 , Winter). That is because government mandates about inclusionand accommodative educational services to special-needs and thereforepossibly disadvantaged children function as a caution againstdiscriminatory behavior. Morse and Schuster (2 ) evaluate theeffectiveness of a way of training mildly mentally disabled elementary-school students to shop for groceries. A reading strategy, writing strategy, and social-skillsstrategy are each structured around a process of teaching the student howto think, step by step, about an activity (whether reading, writing, orconversing with others), then organize thoughts, and then act on thosethoughts in some way. Hemmeter, M.L. Leveling theplaying field or leveling the players? S. (2 , Winter).:"The kids keep me fresh!" Results of a follow-up survey of graduates fromtwo special education teacher education programs who are teaching. Preventing School Failure, 44, 8l-2. The study sought to determinewhether a combination of storyboarded classroom simulations and "in vivo"or community-based instruction (CBI) in the chain of shopping tasks in thestore setting would be effective in teaching subjects how to buy twospecific items, whether the skills acquired would be retained for sixweeks, and whether that item-specific exercise would be generalizable togrocery shopping for other items. Education, 12 , 569-74,546. (2 , Spring). Vaughn, S., Klingner, J., & Hughes, M. Nevin, A., Thousand, J., Parsons, A. Where to position Salend, Taylor, and Whittaker's (1998) discussion ofthe special-education needs of migrant students and their families isproblematic. But she cautions that more research isnecessary "in order to fine-tune practice."Policy Issues At some level, public policy is implicated in virtually all special-education literature. Awareness of how organizations and instructors haveresponded to the mandates of IDEA and ADA and in particular of full-inclusion responses to the educational needs of exceptional students mayfoster optimal strategic implementation and use of resources in thelearning environment and point in the direction of effective classroommanagement and student development. (2 , Winter). All of this is in the backgroundof a status report by Sullivan, Lantz, and Zirkel (2 ), which describesthe impact of the ADA and IDEA (particularly Section 5 4, which requiresall federally funded agencies not to exclude otherwise qualifiedindividuals from joining in funded activities solely on the basis of theirdisability). Kluth, P. Teaching the gifted student. It is in the realm of competitive athletics that parents, publicpolicy advocates, and school administrators seem most intent on urgingtheir views. However,constructing valid theories and research designs is a special challenge inan evolving policy arena. The sea change in optimal special-education classroom learningstructures--from programmatic segregation to programmatic inclusion ofspecial-ed and general-ed student populations over the course of some 3 years--has been accompanied by modal shifts in special-ed teacher educationand training. In popular imagination, of course, special educationtends to refer to the needs of disabled rather than gifted students. On the theory that systematically building their own knowledge,practice, and experiential base can help teachers of exceptional and/or at-risk populations, Black, Sileo, and Prater (2 ) constructed a study ofhow keeping a "learning journal" meant to coach teaching-methods traineesdoing classroom instruction into reflection on their experiences inside andoutside the learning environment might help them integrate and profit fromthe interpenetration of curricular content and extracurricular experiences.The journals, also called "topical autobiographies," were envisioned as amethod of helping trainees track, with mentor input, their professional andpersonal development vis-à-vis classroom practices and events, especiallyregarding at-risk children. Accordingly, she calls for research designsthat will accomplish these objectives and in the process facilitate socialand cognitive development in target populations. References Black, R.S., Sileo, T.W., & Prater, M.A. Findings tended to confirm the benefitsof the instructional strategy, although the fairly high number of chained-task errors highlighted the need for more CBI (often, as in this case,expensive), as well as more preparatory classroom simulations. Teacher Education and Special Education,2l, l74-86. (2 , Winter). Also included are tables showing how specific caseshave been decided since the 197 s. Using cognitive and metacognitive learningstrategies in the classroom. The concept of community-based orcommunity-referenced learning has been introduced into inclusive settingsas a means of fostering social-skills development and a perception ofrelevance for classroom and textbook activity to real-world experience.Kluth (2 ) cites special- and general-education curricula enriched by out-of-classroom activities ranging from special-study field trips to volunteerservice to vocational training, which are aimed at teaching subjects how tofunction in the protocols of businesses or community organizations, and atintegrating, rather than simply labeling and potentially stigmatizingspecial-needs or exceptional populations. (2 , January-February). Lambert, M.A. The authors call for more comprehensive team-teacher training curricula. Exceptional Children, 66, l63-71. Dye, G.A. Based onschema theory, which holds that new knowledge must be linked to retained orstored knowledge, the idea is to use such figures as Venn diagrams, familytrees, frames, and "semantic webs" to set up a coherent cognitive structureinto which teachers, students, and even parents can plug data sets. When itis understood that, as Walker indicates, one controversial issue is how andwhether to design either empirical, psychometric studies of client andpractitioner progress, or more intuitive, though possibly prescriptive,guidelines intended to reach and benefit at-risk students, then it is clearthat the discipline does not have a definitive consensus about how itsknowledge should be structured. To put itanother way: They sought to measure whether special-ed teacher-trainingprograms (i.e., teaching-methods courses) were effective in shapinglearning-environment practics. S., & Lilly, M. Community-referenced learning andthe inclusive classroom. The literature of special education addresses a variety ofaspects, in the context of mandates to both fully include and accommodatespecial-needs students, can be organized around several broad areasExperimental Studies Articles that report the results of empirical tests of specificstrategies and techniques may lend scientific weight to theories oflearning and instructional practice. This is implicit in the fact thatthe authors' article is very much a service piece for practitioners,beginning with an account of case studies of on-the-ground practics, andproceeding to monograph, online, and organizational resource informationmeant to educate the practitioner regarding migrant demographic andcultural contexts.Practical Classroom Instructional Techniques A significant body of research informs the education and training ofspecial-education teachers. Sustainability ofresearch-based practices. Salend, S.J., Taylor, L.S., & Whittaker, C.R. (2 , Spring). The subtext ofliterature reviewed herein is that sine full-inclusion, least-restrictive-environment policies for special-education students have been mandated bythe provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for some 1 years, it isnothing short of urgent to refine research and classroom protocols thatenable optimal and realistic results for affected populations. (2 , Winter). Sullivan, K.A., Lantz, P.J., & Zirkel, P.A. Section 5 4, the Americans withDisabilities Act, and interscholastic sports. The method used in the experimentwas to shape instructional materials and guidance around needs identifiedin a literature review on the same subject. (1998, Summer).Diversifying the special education training curriculum to address the needsof migrant students and families. Kluth identifies benefits tostudents as enhanced teacher-student interaction and social, psychological,and vocational coping skills. At the top of the list is to avoid labelinga student "gifted," which can create social and motivational problems forsuch students. Investigating school-related behaviordisorders: Lessons learned from a thirty-year research career. Institutional, demographic, andprogram-support issues are bound to differ from venue to venue, andconstituencies may arise in concert with them. Walkeremphasizes the benefit of researcher/practitioner/institution collaborationand is biased toward empirical/quantitative research, which can helpmeasure and therefore more reliably apply findings to the project ofpreventing or intervening in at-risk behavior situations at schools. Shorter articles, aimed less at institutional issues affectingclassroom environments than at classroom effectiveness, are highlypractical, highly directive how-to recommendations for classroom practice.Lambert (2 ) describes three cognitive-theory approaches to organizinginstruction in basic communication-skills development and behaviormodification. In other words, she iscalling for research recommendations, which will continually be subject torefinement, but which can at least be attempted in practice. Is it relevant to real-world experience? Effectiveness of the full-inclusion model and strategies forimplementing it are increasingly the subject of special-education research.Tichenor, Heins, and Piechura-Couture (2 ) conducted a survey of parentalattitudes toward a full-inclusion, team-teaching classroom comprising 4thand 5th grade children, some disabled and some not. Classroom-based interventions: Evaluatingthe past and looking toward the future. But anelement that all special-needs or exceptional students share is some uniquefactor that intrinsically sets them apart from the mainstream studentpopulation. TeacherEducation Quarterly, 27, 87-1 8. They advocate moving away from the blamemodality and toward more comprehensive study of the conditions under whichresearch-based classroom practices are best maintained. By and large, they note, the tendency ofathletics associations, which are interscholastic-sports-governance bodies,to prevail to exclude disabled students from certain levels ofparticipation has been upheld by the courts. Shore, K. Learningjournals, self-reflection, and university students' changing perceptions.Action in Teacher Education, 2l, 7l-89. (2 , Winter). Awareness of the approachingstorm of information and advocacy may not be a sufficient coping mechanismfor theorists or practitioners, but it is undoubtedly a necessary one.Conclusion Whether one approaches the learning environment of special educationas a potential laboratory for testing cognitive theory or as a workshopgeared for developing exceptional children's skill sets that will provide astudent with increased ability to function in a complex world, it is clearthat much is unclear about how best to accommodate special needs while alsofacilitating general needs. But theoretical development often proceeds apacewithout much practitioner input, let alone collaboration, with the resultthat linkages between research and practice can be difficult to achieve.The authors cite blame-the-teacher and blame-the-researcher criticisms oflinkage failure, the former referring to teachers' failure or refusal toimplement new practices and the latter referring to theorists' limitedappreciation of real-world classroom dynamics and difficulties associatedwith maintaining complicated instructional protocols without appropriateteacher training or support. Hemmeter (2 ) cites this trend, but says that simplyplacing exceptional children in a mainstream classroom is fruitless unlessthere is authentic peer-to-peer integration of activities, by way ofinstructional methods, or interventions, designed for the purpose. In no other area of education do theseimplications seem to arouse such intensity of feeling than in venuesoutside the classroom, after school hours, dealing with interscholasticsports. In a retrospective look at his award-winning career as a special-education researcher into identifying and intervening with at-risk studentpopulations, Walker (2 ) cites the importance of designing research aimedat solving learning-environment problems and of strategically planning astudy, sometimes in a school setting, so as to enable its results to betranslated into useful classroom practice over the long haul. Introduction This research examines the applied learning environment and special-education classrooms. The controlling theory of theevaluation is that the curriculum requires functional and long-termrelevance for independent-living skills. Principal, 79, 37-9, 42. Therehave been exceptions on both sides of the issue, of course, which havefostered ambiguities in governing case law. Nevin,Thousand, Parsons, and Lilly (2 ) sought to measure the long-term impactof teacher training on classroom practices of the trainees. Tichenor, M.S., Heins, B., & Piechura-Couture, K. Morse, T.E., & Schuster, J.W. Remedial and Special Education, 2l, l9-26. Teaching ExceptionalChildren, 32, 72-6. Diversity--of abilities, personalities, and curricular content--isimplicated in the inclusive-instruction model of special education, andteachers and schools are still to some extent feeling their way through themost effective instructional modalities. (2 , January-February). (2 , March). At the local school-districtlevel, however, there has been a tendency to insist on districtaccommodation of disabled students' participation in sports programs. The Journal of SpecialEducation, 33, 258-67. Parentperceptions of a co-taught inclusive classroom. But teachers also cited their relative lack of familiaritywith such issues as the vagaries of institutional politics and cultures,employee relations, professional communications skills, finance shortfallswithin a school, and the sociopolitical, psychoemotional, and demographicrealities of special-ed clients. Dye (2 ) takes the visual-cue idea even further, advocating the useof bold graphics to help organize key information for exceptional childrenaround that they can organize their thinking and/or behavior. The authors emphasize the needfor school officials to understand and comply with the sometimes complexfederal regulations, to be alert to creative accommodation strategies thatmay help resolve or avoid disputes arising from claims of their liabilityunder IDEA/ADA, and to be aware that definitive case law in this area isstill in the process of evolving. Walker, H.M. Use ofgraphical cues is meant to facilitate data retention and prioritization andenhance skills development both inside and outside the classroom. Topics in Early Childhood SpecialEducation, 2 , 56-61. Noting the growth of case law in this area, they provide achronicle of cases brought pursuant to those laws relating to participationof and accommodation for disabled students in extracurricular activities,primarily athletics. ButHemmeter explains that systematic, classroom-based approaches toidentifying student needs and interests on one hand and selectingappropriate methods to address on the other have themselves rarely beenidentified in the research. The concept is that astandard and a special-education teacher make lesson plans together andshare teaching duties, with the special-education teacher available toassist exceptional students as necessary, while other students continuewith studies. Graphic organizers to the rescue:Helping students link-and remember-information. The fact that, in the context of such buzz words asmulticulturalism and diversity migrant families with exceptional childrenare very likely to have multiple cultural and linguistic identities andtraditions, and complex needs to go with them, suggests that institutionaland government support for both research and implementation experiments islikely to be required if meaningful progress for meeting educational needsof exceptional children is to be made. Lambert emphasizes the need for direct instructionand for reinforcement, by visual cues in the classroom, such as mnemonics,and by way of student notebooks, of each step in the think-organize-actprocess. ExceptionalChildren, 66, 151-61. As the information- and technology-drivenglobal culture becomes more complex, children identified as exceptional,disabled, or gifted compared to their "typical" counterparts may becomeboth socially and educationally marginalized if those whose profession itis to identify and implement methods of blurring the distinctions betweenmainstream and margin cannot do so in the expectation of being supported bythe institutions in which and according to the discipline protocols underwhich identification and implementation is to take place. Complicating such intensity of feeling is that issues ofparticipation, inclusion, exclusion, and exceptionalism seem to make itinto court with some regularity, although there is limited uniformity aboutwhether a given court decision will come down on the side of (say) astudent plaintiff or a school defendant. Parents of both general-education and exceptional studentswere generally positive about their children's reaction to the classroom,the team teaching, the benefits to social skills, self-esteem, andscholastic performance. But there are both tacit and manifest acknowledgments thatspecial-education research and practice are making their way through whatlooks to be a bottomless well of highly variable educational needs. For example, is it realistic to expect thatclassroom strategies applicable to children of migrant farm workers whotravel from Texas to Minnesota every year will also apply to the childrenof suburban Bethesda or San Francisco? Teaching elementarystudents with moderate intellectual disabilities how to shop for groceries.Exceptional Children, 66, 273-88. As Vaughn, Klingner, and Hughes explain (2 ), arelated challenge is finding practical correlation between cogent special-ed classroom theory and implementation of theoretical principles ininstructional practice. On the other hand, there is also evidenceof a persistent disconnect between research theory, study-specific results,and application of theory and instructional praxis in all institutions, byall teachers, in exactly the same way, without regard to institutional ordemographic idiosyncrasies. Based on the view that, just as special-needs/disabled childrenrequire special instructional attention, gifted children should not be leftto "make it on their own" and may in their way also require specialattention, Shore (2 ) offers teachers 15 suggestions for keeping giftedstudents motivated and engaged. The research reviews recent literatureon the subject, and discusses implications of existing research with a viewtoward forecasting possible lines of experimental and practitionerdevelopment.Review of Literature The big picture of special education literature is that it resistseasy classification. Over the course of training, journal entries oftrainees were collected, read, evaluated according to data type (diary,dialogue, notebook, integrative, evaluative), and selective scoredaccording to a statistical model designed to measure effects of journalwriting on personal and professional growth, including increasedsensitivity to myriad factors informing teaching of at-risk students.Theory and Practice The ADA and IDEA have helped shape theoretical, institutional, andpractitioner responses to the needs of exceptional children. Most other suggestions involve encouraging challenging,independent study inside and outside the classroom and being attentive topossibly destructive social or psychological pressures on gifted studentswho experience marginalization.Implications The evidence of this literature review is that both researchers andpractitioners of special education have in recent years attempted to bespecific about how diagnosis and instructional intervention can proceed foroptimal result. (2 , Winter).
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