RESPONSIBLE INCLUSION FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES by Sharon Vaughn and Jeanne Shay Schum

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RESPONSIBLE INCLUSION FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING
DISABILITIESby Sharon Vaughn and Jeanne Shay
Schumm

• Guidelines for Responsible Inclusion

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1. Putting the Student First

• Consider how well the student with disabilities
  makes academic or social progress in the
  classroom.
• Continued monitoring, placement considerations
  and on-going assessment are crucial components to
  the success of the child.

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Teachers Choose Inclusive Classroom Participation

• Teachers need to be able to self-select their
  involvement in an inclusive classroom.
• Those teachers more skillful at teaching students
  with learning disabilities should be the teachers
  recruited for inclusive settings.

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3. Providing Adequate Resources

• Personnel-additional teachers and assistants
• Physical-computers, books, and materials
• Inclusion should not be implemented as a method
  of reducing the cost of providing services to
  students with learning disabilities.

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4. Developing and Implementing School-based
Inclusive Models

• Inclusion models should be site-specific
  emphasizing the talents of the teachers at the
  school and the needs of the children and families
  that the school serves.
• Though information can be obtained from other
  inclusion programs, inclusion models should not
  be developed at the district or state level.

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5. Maintaining a Continuum of Services

• Part-time pull out services, tutoring, ongoing
  consultation and collaboration, co-teaching
  between special and general educators and
  self-contained placement options should still be
  made available if necessary.
• Not all students will benefit from an inclusive
  setting.

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6. Continually Evaluating/Altering Service
Delivery

• The service delivery model that is established
  must be continually evaluated.
• Instead of blaming the personnel for failure in
  the program, the program should be evaluated to
  determine its effectiveness.

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7. Offering Ongoing Professional Development

• On-going professional development at the
  school-site level is required in order for a
  responsible inclusion program to be effective.
• Professional development should be on-going and
  designed to meet the changing needs of teachers.

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8. Discussing and Developing an Inclusion
Philosophy

• A philosophy should be developed at the
  school-site level.
• This philosophy creates a structure for
  interacting with students and for handling
  changes and refinements to the service delivery
  model.
• See Figure 1 in the article for an example of an
  inclusion statement

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9. Developing and Refining Curriculum Approaches
to Meet All Students Needs

• Instruction that engages all students in the
  classroom should be developed, implemented, and
  evaluated.
• Teachers should consider instructional approaches
  that increase the active participation in
  learning for all students not only students with
  disabilities.