Page 209 - DEDU506_SPECIAL_EDUCATION_ENGLISH

Unit 28: Inclusive Education and Mainstreaming

based reform would be paid for. While educators acknowledge that schools classify disabled students Notes
in many different ways, there is little information on how these local decisions are actually made. In
addition, families of disabled students are often overlooked and more models are needed for using
families in educational planning.

Inclusive education is of great interest internationally, and as of 1997, some 24
countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were
conducting studies on restructuring special education.

Self Assessment
3. State whether the following statements are True or False:
(i) By the late 1980s, after additional observation and research many educators and parents
favored the merging of special and regular education into a comprehensive school system.
(ii) The special education student does not spend most of the week in a regular classroom.
(iii) Education have experimented with different systems of grouping special needs children by
grade level or by degree of disability.
(iv) Mainstreaming was not seen as a moral imperative.

28.5 Summary

• The `process' of inclusion denotes the ways in which the system makes itself welcoming to all.
In terms of inclusion of disabled children, it means the shift in services from `care of the disabled
child' to his `education and personal development'.
• The governments have to give the highest policy and budgetary priority to improve their
education systems to enable them to include all children regardless of individual differences or
difficulties.
• The governments have to adopt as a matter of law or policy the principle of inclusive education,
enrolling all children in regular schools unless there are compelling reasons for doing otherwise.
• Mainstreaming is an inclusive form of education in which students are taught in a comprehensive
school system. Special education is available for students with special needs, but the goal is for
the majority of students and those with special needs to learn in the same classroom whenever
possible.
• By the late 1980s, after additional observation and research, many educators and parents favored
the merging of special and regular education into a comprehensive school system.
• An overview of the guidelines shows that for a student to be eligible for special education, he
or she must have a disability that can only be helped by special education. Special education
can be used only when education in a regular classroom does not work.
• The trend is for school districts to appoint support facilitators who help regular teachers with
resources and equipment.
• Forced educators to reexamine the practice of mainstreaming to see whether it could be improved.
• Researchers studying special education issues point to the importance of considering a range
of options for each special needs student.
• Educators have developed many strategies for providing a mixture of regular education and
special education.
• The special education student spends most of the week in a regular classroom and is pulled out
for individualized or small-group instruction three to five hours a week.
• School systems that experimented with grouping severely disruptive special needs students in
one small classroom found there were advantages as well as drawbacks. The disruptive students

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 203