Running head: INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING Inclusive Schooling: Successfully Promoting Inclusion in Secondary Schools Rebecca Young Seattle Pacific University 1 INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 2 Inclusive Schooling: Successfully Promoting Inclusion in Secondary Schools Modern schools today are faced with ever growing challenges and concerns especially within the field of special education. With new laws and regulations, general education teachers and administrators are poised with the task of how to implement these new changes, practically inclusion. General educators in the secondary setting are expected to know their content area, teach it effectively to their students, and also prepare for modifying their curriculums and teaching strategies to include students with special learning needs. Inclusion presents many problems for general education teachers, but there are successful new strategies and methods that are in use in today’s high schools. Taking a look at new methods and ideas should help us better understand how to successfully promote inclusion in the secondary setting. Current federal laws such as the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) establishes the: “right to free, appropriate, public education for all children regardless of the nature or severity of their disabilities” (Laprairie, Johnson, Rice, Adams, & Higgins, 2010, p. 25). With this in affect the term inclusion comes into play. Inclusion is used to describe when students with disabilities are taught in the general education classroom with non-disabled peers for partial or the majority of the school day, this also includes the participation of students with disabilities in extracurricular or non-academic activities (Laprairie et al., 2010, p. 28). With inclusion, students with or without disabilities are given the same education and opportunity to participate in the same clubs, events, and sports. Students with disabilities are given an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) formulated with specific goals and objectives for a student’s academic year (Laprairie et al., 2010, p. 27). The IEP is used by general education teachers to figure out a course of action on how to teacher and include students with disabilities in their classrooms. This presents the greatest challenge for most secondary teachers. INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 3 Creating a classroom or school that successfully promotes inclusion is a tough challenge. Teachers in secondary schools are faced with the challenge of providing content area knowledge while also modifying their curriculum to fit the IEP needs of students with disabilities in their classrooms. Some key factors play into contributing to successful inclusion: meaningful adaptation to instruction and curriculum designed for individualized instruction for students with disabilities, positive teacher and school beliefs and attitudes towards inclusion, and contextual support for general education teachers (Van Hover & Yeager, 2003, p.36). According to Carpenter & Dyal (2007), “successful inclusion requires collaborative and supportive partnerships between faculty, staff, administration, parents, and the community” (p. 345). Collaboration is one of the key ingredients for a successful inclusive school, but it is not the only ingredient needed. Teachers must also have adaptable teaching strategies that allow for accessibility for students with special needs. Alongside a strong support system and adaptable teaching methods, new and current general education teachers need better preparation programs that effectively prepare them for teaching students with disabilities. New teachers need more pedagogical training than ever before if they are to successfully educate all students (Grskovic & Trzcinka, 2011, p. 105). How does a school become an effective inclusive school? The first, step is to provide an overall school setting that supports inclusion. This goes beyond the classroom and requires that every member of the staff, administration, and community make it their goal to promote inclusion. High-performing inclusive schools have shown to have a strong teacher professional community that is characterized by shared responsibility for all students’ learning (Brigharm, Morocco, Clay, & Zigmond, 2006, p.186). Creating an environment that allows for open support of its staff and students is a great first step to creating an inclusive school. Successful inclusive INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 4 schools emit a feeling that the school is a community working toward common goals, where positivity and openness is encouraged among staff and students (Carpenter & Dyal, 2007, p. 346). One way to promote inclusion in secondary schools as a school wide policy is the consultative method. The consultative method by definition is an interactive process that enables people with diverse expertise to generate creative solutions to mutually defined problems (Eisenman, Pleet, Wandry, & McGinley, 2011, p. 92). Here special educators are placed in the role of consultative teacher and provides services to students with disabilities within the general education classroom (Carpenter & Dyal, 2007, p. 345). They are tasked with working with a general education teacher who has the responsibility for providing direct service to a student; this places the consultative teacher in an indirect relationship with the student (Eisenman et al., 2011, p. 92). This allows for the general education teacher to remain the main support for students with disabilities and overall encourages a least restrictive environment. Studies have shown that the consultative method is more effective for students in the elementary level than resource rooms, but in the secondary level collaborative consultation is only as effective if administrators engage in monitoring and promoting the process (Eisenman et al., 2011, p. 92). According to Carpenter & Dyal (2007), “the consultative teaching approach in the secondary classroom requires shared planning time so that the content area specialist and the special education consultative teacher can have meaningful time to plan for the individual needs of all students” (p. 349). With a strong support system, the consultative method can provide a successful inclusive environment within secondary schools. The consultative method shares the ownership of students and creates instructionally focused collaboration among general educators and special educators which ultimately benefits the students (Eisenman et al., 2011, p. 102). The consultative method helps to INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 5 promote an overall feeling of inclusion in the school, but there are methods that teachers can apply to promote inclusion in their individual general education classrooms. General education teachers are poised with the toughest task of how to educate students with disabilities alongside students without. A critical element to a successful inclusive classroom is for both general and special education teachers to be flexible and quickly adapt to alternative forms of instruction, assessment, and expectations for needs in a diverse classroom (Eisenman et al., 2011, p. 102). In most secondary classrooms, content area knowledge is a must and teachers fear that students with disabilities lack the knowledge necessary for effective learning, but this is not the case when teachers adapt their curriculums to meet the needs of certain students. Success with students with disabilities requires several things of the teacher: differentiate curriculum, provide framework for learning, present information in multiple ways, allow students to demonstrate learning in various ways, practice self-monitoring, provide opportunities for extra practice and application, and adjust work load and/or time requirements (Van Hover & Yeager, 2003, p.38). Differentiating the curriculum involves planning for the success of all students in a class, taking into account the abilities of each student and establishing goals reflecting what all students will learn (Van Hover & Yeager, 2003, p. 38). It is important that curriculum materials emphasize meaningful and concrete applications of content; practical applications of content may help curb below-average skills that some students with disabilities may display (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 2001, p. 266). Alongside modifications to curriculum, general educators should utilize the help of peer tutoring and co-teaching when working with inclusive classrooms. According to Mastropieri & Scruggs (2001), “highly successful inclusive classrooms make effective use of peers” (p. 266). Peer tutoring is a great way to reinforce learning among students with disabilities. It helps INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 6 increase opportunities for response, provides effective learning models, and offers additional explanations and discourse which can be extremely helpful in secondary settings where higher level learning is necessary (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 2001, p. 266). This can also help facilitate inclusion by allowing students with different learning abilities to work alongside one another promoting diversity and acceptance. Another method for promotion of inclusion in the classroom is co-teaching. Co-teaching includes general education teachers and special education teachers, or professional support services, working collaboratively to teach students (Carpenter & Dyal, 2007, p. 347). Together with the consultative method, co-teaching promotes collaboration of staff and allows teachers and special educators to use their own personal strengths to create successful learning environments and provide support for students with disabilities (Carpenter & Dyal, 2007, p. 347). Both peer tutoring and co-teaching require a positive classroom environment to be truly successful as both methods require just as much social activity as academic. Creating a classroom and a school that promotes inclusion is a hard task for administrators and educators to do and this is ultimately due to the fact that general education teachers and staff continually feel inadequate to teach students with disabilities. New teachers, and current teachers, need additional instruction on classroom management strategies, alternative assessment techniques, and the complete IEP process to effectively teach students with disabilities in their classrooms (Grskovic & Trzcinka, 2011, p. 97). Novice teachers are in desperate need of extra preparation and knowledge on how to effectively teach in an inclusive classroom as the number of students with special needs continues to rise (Laprairie et al., 2010, p 30). Continual work and research is needed on whether or not new and current teachers are receiving the proper education on how to teach students with disabilities. With the majority of INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 7 students with disabilities participating in the general education classroom it is ultimately the responsibility of the general education teacher to teach them. How do we expect our teachers to perform with confidence if they are not given the skills necessary to do what is requested of them? Ultimately, inclusion is the way our secondary schools are being handled today. Students with and without disabilities are being taught in the same classrooms and are participating in the same school environment. It is our responsibility, as educators and as a community, to promote inclusion on both an academic and social level. Creating a positive environment where students are viewed as having disabilities instead of being disabled is important to developing young minds around ideas of acceptance and celebration of diversity. There is still much more room for perfecting inclusive schooling, but we are well on our way to creating schools that continue to promote students’ individuality and our acceptance of it. INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING 8 References Brigham, N., Morocco, C., Clay, K., & Zigmond, N. (2006). What Makes a High School a Good High School for Students with Disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 21(3), 184-190. Carpenter, L., & Dyal, A. (2007). Secondary Inclusion: Strategies for Implementing the Consultative Teacher Model. Education, 127(3), 344-350. Eisenman, L. T., Pleet, A. M., Wandry, D., & McGinley, V. (2011). Voices of Special Education Teachers in an Inclusive High School: Redefining Responsibilities. Remedial & Special Education, 32(2), 91-104. Grskovic, J. A., & Trzcinka, S. M. (2011). Essential standards for preparing secondary content teachers to effectively teach students with mild disabilities in includes settings. American Secondary Education, 39(2), 94-106. 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