Inclusive education

While classroom teachers report alarming rates of unpreparedness, and even
unwillingness to include diverse populations in the classroom, our nation is continuing
along a trend started in the 1990s to include students with disabilities (SWD) in general
education settings. This quasi-experimental research study uncovered the impact of
completing the required continuing education course in teaching SWD course mandated
by Florida Senate Bill 1108 ([SB1108]; The Florida Senate, 2013b), which amended
Florida Statute 1012.585 (3) (e) (Process for Renewal of Professional Certificates, 2017)
on perceived teacher ability to implement inclusion practices. An online version of the
Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices (TEIP) scale developed by Sharma, Loreman,
and Forlin (2012) was utilized, along with demographic and experiential factors for
classroom teachers in the study district to examine their self-efficacy toward inclusion.
Analysis of the data indicated statistically significant differences in mean TEIP scale
scores for exceptional student education (ESE) and general education teachers. Data analyses revealed that almost half of the teachers had a negative view of and
did not perceive any benefit from the course. While ESE and general education teachers
had similar preparation needs, they also reported areas of concern specific to their subset.
Overall, the course did not provide enough continuing education in the areas most needed
by the participants. SB1108-mandated course completion was also not found to be an
indicator of higher teacher self-efficacy for the majority of teachers. Analysis of the
differences in TEIP scale scores found that only elementary school teachers benefited
from completing the course, while it had the opposite effect for general education high
school teachers and no significant effect for ESE teachers. Differences in TEIP scale
scores from demographic and experiential factors accounted for 13% of the variance in
the population and was not significant for the ESE teacher subset. One percent or less of
the variance was attributed to completion of the required continuing education course.
Implications include reviewing the legislation’s effectiveness for teachers in
different areas and grade levels, hiring and evaluation decisions based on TEIP scale
scores of applicants and employees, and designing more meaningful continuing education
courses. Recommendations for state legislatures, school administrators, designers of
continuing education courses, and for future research regarding improvement of teacher
self-efficacy for inclusive practices are offered.

Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome are entering institutions of higher education at an increasing rate. However, they may not be prepared to meet the academic and social demands of the postsecondary environment. Although studies have evaluated the impact of academic and social interventions for children and adolescents with Asperger’s Syndrome, little research has been conducted on the college population. The current study utilized a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the effectiveness of a writing learning strategy on the writing performance of three college students with Asperger’s Syndrome. Results indicated that the quality of the writing performance improved following strategy instruction. In addition, participants were able to generalize the use of the strategy to content specific writing tasks.

The teaching of writing has become a major research focus in the field of education. In general education classrooms, the teaching of writing is increasingly being taught as a process, in which students write for authentic purposes and develop a community of writers. This study was designed to investigate the effects of teaching students with learning disabilities (LD) writing using four different instructional approaches. These approaches included a process-writing approach called Writers' Workshop, writing strategies, Writers' Workshop/strategies, and a skills-based model. This study also focused on the educational setting in which the student with LD was taught. A pull-out resource room (PO) or a self-contained classroom and an In-Class Direct (ICD) model called inclusion that provides educational services for students with disabilities in a general education classroom with their peers without disabilities. A total of 99 fourth grade students with LD from 15 different elementary schools in the Beach County, Florida School District participated in this study. Forty-three students were in the PO service delivery model and 56 were in the ICD delivery model. Twenty-seven students received strategies instruction, 24 received Writers' Workshop instruction, 21 received skills-based instruction and 27 received Writers' Workshop/strategies instruction. All subjects wrote a response to a narrative prompt from the Florida Writes! assessment for a pretest and posttest measure. The results of this study were analyzed using an ANCOVA design; the pretest score was the covariate. The instructional program was significant at the selected alpha level of.05; F\ (3)=5.022,\ p.05 and the interaction of educational setting with instructional program was non-significant, F\ (3)=2.109,\ p>.05. A Scheffe analysis was conducted and pairwise differences indicated that Writers' Workshop/strategies instructional program made a significant difference in the writing products of the students in this study. There was a significant difference in the results of the subjects who participated in the strategies model and the subjects who participated in the skills-based model.

Although metacognition is an area that has been receiving considerable research interest in recent years, few studies have been concerned with metacognitive knowledge about reading. An even fewer number of studies have included students with learning disabilities (LD) as part of the subject pool. This reality is cause for concern. Increasingly, students with LD are receiving their reading instruction in general education classrooms. Because little is known about the effects of method of reading instruction on students with LD in general education classrooms, the purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference between the metacognitive awareness about reading of fourth-grade students with LD and without LD (NLD) taught by code-based (CB) and meaning-based (MB) instruction in inclusion classrooms. Further, the study was concerned with determining if there was an interaction between learning condition (LD, NLD) and instructional approach (CB, MB). A total of 88 fourth graders from seven elementary schools in a large south Florida school district participated in the study: 38 were students with LD; 50 were students without LD. Forty-five of the students received their reading instruction in CB classrooms and 43 were taught reading in MB classrooms. All students were given the silent reading section of an informal reading inventory, a metacognitive interview, and a metacognitive questionnaire. Results revealed that although there is a significant difference between the metacognitive knowledge about reading between students with and without LD, this difference did not appear to be influenced by their method of reading instruction. Students with LD consistently scored below students without LD, whether they were in code-based or in meaning-based classrooms.

Since the passage of Public Law 94-142 (The Education of All Handicapped Children Act) which is currently called the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), there has been a movement to service students with disabilities in more inclusive environments. The Broward County School District had been involved in the State of Florida's effort to reform the special education funding model and the delivery of services to students in more inclusive environments since 1994. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of three delivery models, resource room, co-teaching, and support facilitation, on the reading and math achievement of students with mild to moderate disabilities. The subjects of this study consisted of 231 students with mild to moderate disabilities enrolled in 29 schools and serviced in one of these three delivery models. Their achievement was measured during the 1998--1999 school year based upon the results of a nationally normed achievement test. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) as well as an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was performed using the spring of 1998 test scores as baseline data or covariates and the spring of 1999 scores as dependent or criterion variables. The independent variable was the type of delivery model. The results did not reveal any statistically significant differences in the achievement of the students in any of the three models thus indicating that in this study, the type of model did not have a significant impact on the achievement of these students. Implications based upon limitations as well as recommendations for further study are presented.