Not so long ago, it was thought that a child born with a disability should be placed in a special school or even an institution. Blind children in North Carolina were automatically sent to the Governor Morehead's School for the Blind. Children with other disabilities, such as mental retardation, were often labeled unfit for society and locked up in an institution.

In the 1970s, however, the federal government declared that children with disabilities have a right to be educated in the least restrictive environment—generally considered to be the child's home school.

Researchers today believe that inclusion—the integration of children with disabilities into regular classrooms—benefits not only the children with disabilities but also those without. According to Sam Odom, professor of special education, inclusion is gaining popularity across the country. "It follows a broader national trend of deciding to become more accepting of children and other individuals with disabilities," he says.

Led by Odom, a team of Carolina researchers is part of a five-year, five-university research consortium called the Early Childhood Research Institute on Inclusion (ECRII) whose goals are to examine inclusive settings, determine barriers and policies affecting inclusion, and develop strategies for addressing those barriers. After four years of research, Odom and his colleagues believe children with disabilities get some benefits from an inclusive setting that they may not get from nonintegrated special-education settings.

"Inclusive settings allow kids with disabilities to engage in social-cognitive tasks with other kids who are doing things at their typical age level," Odom says. "In special-education classrooms, it's more likely that the peers with whom they would be playing would have developmental delays, so there would be no real indication of where they should be developmentally."

For example, preschoolers with disabilities have a harder time following routines. But by watching their classmates, children with disabilities can learn when it is time to move from one activity to another.

Unfortunately, an inclusive setting does not always guarantee a better learning environment. "A lot of it has to do with the quality of the early-childhood setting," Odom says. "Many families may not have access to high-quality child-care facilities."

That's because there are many barriers such as social and public policies, economic difficulties, and cultural issues, that stand in the way of school systems being able to implement inclusive programs. Public policy, for example, may prevent the use of special-education funds for services involving children who do not have disabilities, making it difficult to integrate classrooms. And even if policy allows integration, a barrier may occur at the classroom level when there is a large number of children with disabilities enrolled in one class and only one teacher to plan and carry out individual learning opportunities.

For the final year of the project, Odom says, "We'll be developing products teachers could use in their classrooms that would support inclusion, and we'll be testing how useful those products are—things like curriculum guides and strategies for supporting community integration for families."

Even with limited resources, Odom says, teachers can help their students who have disabilities acquire the skills they need to move on to the next level. Teachers can use "embedded individual learning opportunities" in activities they plan for a whole class, so that a single child may get needed practice in a specific area. For instance, a child may not easily pick up on the concept of sharing, so while setting up an art activity, the teacher could place only one tube of paste at each table of three or four students. This way, when the child needs to use the paste and another student has it, he will have to use his verbal skills to get it. Likewise, when another student asks for the paste, he will have to learn to give it up—to share.

Despite the obstacles, researchers feel the onus of providing inclusive environments for children with disabilities is worth the effort. There's even evidence that children who do not have disabilities gain a better appreciation of what it's like to have one if they are placed in preschool settings with children with disabilities. "They may well be more accepting of differences with children who have disabilities," Odom says. "And this acceptance can extend beyond the preschool to their attitudes at home and later on after they grow older."

ECRII is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Article by Catherine House.
© Copyright 1998 Endeavors magazine. All rights reserved.

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