AllAreWelcome:InclusionintheClassroom

purpose: to inform the audience of what inclusion is and what the benefits and drawbacks of inclusion
audience: teachers, school officials (such as principals, special education directors etc) ??
thesis: While inclusion may seem to fluctuate on a case by case basis, the benefits of a mixture of
students with and without disabilities in the same classroom tend to outweigh the negatives in most
situations.

1. inclusion defined & how its implemented:

a. defined: the practice of students with disabilities learning alongside their peers in
general education classrooms (Gilhool, 1989)
b. different kinds of implementation:
i. mainstreaming:
1. readiness for general education
a. lasses structured like general education, but the students are
segregated from one another (Almazan, Bui, Quirk, & Valenti,
2010)
ii. integration:
1. requires special educational systems in a public school for students with
disabilities to ensure that they can prove themselves capable of a
general education setting before being placed into one (Walker, 1999)
iii. Inclusion:
1. SWD being educated like their general education peers and that is the
physical placement of children with and without disabilities into the
same classroom, unlike both mainstreaming and integration
2. Full:
a. no special education classrooms period
3. Partial:
a. a separate system for students with disabilities
b. providing opportunity for those students to participate in
general education classes
i. elective classes
iv. definition for disability:
1. an individual having limits to their physical, mental, cognitive, or
developmental capability (Merriam-Websters, n.d.)
a. Disability. n.d. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved March 29, 2017,
from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disability
2. defining a disability clarifies what is put into consideration when a child
is recommended for an IEP and helps with my thesis because the
definition of disability doesnt include a limit to an education and
supports inclusion in the classroom and how these students should get
an education.
c. legislation:
i. IDEA: individuals with disabilities act
1. formally the Education for Handicapped Act, in part B outlines
education for students with disabilities
 2. chapter 2, section 1
a. disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no
way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or
contribute to society
(https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/idea.pdf)
3. PART B
a. explains grants (who grants them, maximum amounts, and
regulations)
i. sec. 611, (a)
1. age 3-21 is covered by this act
d. Implementation:
i. co-teaching
1. two teachers working together
2. collaborative teaching
ii. differentiated instruction
1. different students get different accommodations
iii. peer instruction
1. students teaching other students in small groups
2. advantages of inclusion for special education students:
a. development of positive social-emotional skills
b. acquire more kills with language and communication as well as literacy skills
c. display more appropriate behavior to meet their own needs
i. Imitate the behavior of the general education student
d. become more self-sufficient and adaptive
e. strive towards new goals and achievements
i. obtaining new levels of abilities not achieved in segregated special education
classrooms
f. Improvement of IEP quality
i. age appropriateness
1. acting more towards physical age
ii. functionality
1. FBA: Functional Behavior Analysis
a. process that describes a student's disruptive behaviors, looks
for the reasons behind the behaviors and offer interventions
that teach new behaviors
iii. Generalization
1. the ability to use skills that a students has learned in new and different
environments--skills to be used in multiple environments
g. more instructional time
i. study of nine elementary schools SWD in both special and general education
settings in general ed classrooms has 65% instructional time while
self-contained special needs classrooms only had 42%
3. advantages of inclusion for general education students:
a. learn how to react to peers with disabilities
 b. identify how to engage those peers
i. circle time, crafts, playground
c. increase own self-esteem, as well as own autonomy
i. experts on topics in the classroom
1. challenge themselves while teach others
ii. take more initiative in the classroom
1. take on more classroom roles like line leader and helping other children
with more responsibility in the classroom
d. the advantages of inclusion relate back to my thesis because that is mainly what my
thesis is completely structured around and pulling in more specifics will help tailor it to
show the strength of inclusion and what specific aspects of inclusion make it so
successful.
4. disadvantage of inclusion for special education students:
a. harder to push inclusion for students with more difficult disabilities
i. parents play a huge role in deciding this
b. lack of quality classrooms and trained teachers
5. disadvantages of inclusion for general education students:
a. keeping the prestige and pace of a general ed. classroom
b. Studies have shown a decrease in academic achievement among general education
students because the lack of attention they receive from the teachers (Spence, 2010)
i. however refutation: (pawlowicz, 2001) other studies have no correlation
between dropped academics and inclusion
c. including the disadvantages of inclusion help show the downfalls of the idea, while
being able to use other specific facts to refute it in order to strengthen my argument in
my thesis that there are more pros to inclusions than cons.