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This article is about educating students with disabilities or behavioral problems anywhere in the world. For information about educating gifted students, see Gifted education.

Special education is the education of students with special needs in a way that addresses the students' individual differences and needs. Ideally, this process involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials, accessible settings, and other interventions designed to help learners with special needs achieve a higher level of personal self-sufficiency and success in school and community than would be available if the student were only given access to a typical classroom education.

Common special needs include learning differences, communication challenges, emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities, and developmental disabilities. Students with these kinds of disabilities are likely to benefit from additional educational services or different approaches to teaching.

Intellectual giftedness is a difference in learning and can also benefit from specialized teaching techniques or different educational programs, but the term "special education" is generally used to specifically indicate instruction of students whose special needs reduce their ability to learn independently or in a classroom, and gifted education is handled separately.

Provision

The provision of education to people with disabilities or learning differences differs across countries and (in the US, Canada, Germany, and other federally organized countries) across states. The ability of a student to access a particular setting depends on the availability of services, location, family choice, or government policy. Special educators have historically described a cascade of services, in which students with special needs receive services in varying degrees based on the degree to which they interact with the general school population. In the main, special education has been provided in one, or a combination, of the following ways:

PS 721, a Special Education school in Brooklyn, New York
  • Inclusion: Regular education classes combined with special education services is a model often referred to as inclusion. In this model, students with special needs are educated with their typically developing peers for at least half of the day. In a full inclusion model, specialized services are provided within a regular classroom by sending the service provider in to work with one or more students in their regular classroom setting. In a partial inclusion model, specialized services are provided outside a regular classroom. In this case, the student occasionally leaves the regular classroom to attend smaller, more intensive instructional sessions, or to receive other related service such as speech and language therapy, occupational and/or physical therapy, and social work. Full inclusion of students with significant disabilities is controversial and uncommon.
  • Mainstreaming: Regular education classes combined with special education classes is a model often referred to as mainstreaming. In this model, students with special needs are educated with their typically developing peers during specific time periods.
  • Segregation in a self-contained classroom or special school: Full-time placement in a special education classroom may be referred to as segregation. In this model, students with special needs spend no time with typically developing students. Segregated students may attend the same school as their neighbors, but spend their time exclusively in a special-needs classroom. Alternatively, these students may attend a special school.
  • Exclusion: A student who does not receive instruction in any school is said to be excluded. Such exclusion may occur where there is no legal mandate for special education services. It may also occur when a student is in hospital, homebound, or detained by the criminal justice system. These students may receive one-on-one instruction or group instruction. Students who have been suspended or expelled are not considered excluded in this sense.

With increasing experience over the past few decades in the field of special education, the concept is shifting away from the student's level of disability as the prime determinant of physical placement (i.e., the degree of exclusion/segregation s/he experiences) toward the challenge of modifying teaching methods and environments so that students might be served in typical educational environments. In the US, the President's National Council on Disability has called for special education to be regarded less as a "place" and more as "a service, available in every school."

Role of individualization

Special education programs need to be individualized so that they address the unique combination of needs in a given student.

Students with special needs are assessed to determine their specific strengths and weaknesses. Placement, resources, and goals are determined on the basis of the student's needs. Modifications to the regular program may include changes in curriculum, supplementary aides or equipment, and the provision of specialized physical adaptations that allow students to participate in the educational environment to the fullest extent possible. Students may need this help to access subject matter, to physically gain access to the school, or to meet their emotional needs. For example, if the assessment determines that the student cannot write by hand because of a physical disability, then the school might provide a computer for typing assignments, or allow the student to answer questions orally instead. If the school determines that the student is severely distracted by the normal activities in a large, busy classroom, then the student might be placed in a smaller classroom.

Support can be provided for short periods or long-term, and the kinds of support may change over time. For example, a child that required a one-on-one instructional aide for safety reasons while very young might outgrow this need when older.

Differences by location

Europe

In England, the Special Educational Needs Parent Partnership Services help parents with the planning and delivery of their child's educational provision.

In Scotland the Additional Support Needs Act places an obligation on education authorities to meet the needs of all students in consultation with other agencies and parents.

North America

In the United States, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that special needs students be included in regular education activities when appropriate.

Abbreviations

In North America, special education is commonly abbreviated as special ed, SpecEd, SPED, or SpEd in a professional context. In the United States, all special-needs students receive an Individualized Education Program (IEP) that outlines how the school will provide the student with a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) while keeping the student in the least restrictive environment (LRE) that is appropriate for the student's needs and goals.

In England and Wales the initialism SEN for Special Educational Needs denotes the condition of having special educational needs, the services which provide the support and the programmes and staff which implement the education. In England SEN PPS refers to the Special Educational Needs Parent Partnership Service. SENAS is the special educational needs assessment service, which is part of the Local Authority. SENCO refers to a special educational needs coordinator, who ususally works with schools and the children within schools who have special educational needs.

In Scotland the term Special Educational Needs (SEN), and its variants are not official terminology although the very recent implementation of the Additional Support for Learning Act means that both SEN and ASN (Additional Support Needs) are used interchangeably in current common practice.

History

Beginning in 1952, Civitans were the first to provide widespread training for teachers of developmentally disabled children.

In the United States of America, students with disabilities were frequently not allowed to enroll in regular public schools until the passage of the federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975 which was reauthorized in 1990 and 1997, the law was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and spawned the delivery of services to millions of students previously denied access to an appropriate education. According to the Department of Education, approximately 6 million children (roughly 10 percent of all school-aged children) receive special education services.

Criticism

  • Beneficial classrooms designed for special education students, sometimes called resource rooms, are targets for those who seek to include a heterogenous group of students without consideration of the myriad of learners. Students with disabilities require individualized instruction--as mandated by an IEP--and thus full inclusion or "push in" servicing is not viable for school districts.
  • Special education as implemented in public schools has been criticized because the qualification criteria for services are extremely variable from one education agency to another. In the United States, all Local and State Education Agencies must use classification and labeling models that are aligned with the federal definitions, outlined the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
  • At-risk students(those with educational needs that are not associated with a disability) are often placed in classes with students with disabilities. Critics assert that placing at-risk students in the same classes as disabled students may impede the educational progress of people with disabilities.
  • Special education classes under the mainstreaming model have been criticized for its watered-down curriculum.
  • The practice of inclusion has been criticized by advocates and some parents of children with disabilities because some of these students require instructional methods that differ dramatically from typical classroom methods. Critics assert that it is not possible to deliver effectively two or more very different instructional methods in the same classroom. As a result, the educational progress of students who depend on different instructional methods to learn often fall even further behind their peers without disabilities.
  • Parents of typically developing children sometimes fear that the special needs of a single "fully included" student will take critical levels of attention and energy away from the rest of the class and thereby impair the academic achievements of all students.
  • Some parents, advocates, and students have concerns about the eligibility criteria and its application. In some cases, parents and students protest the students' placement into special education programs. For example, a student may be placed into the special education programs due to a mental health condition such as OCD, depression, anxiety, panic attacks or ADHD, while the student and his parents believe that the condition is adequately managed through medication and outside therapy. In other cases, students whose parents believe they require the additional support of special education services are denied participation in the program based on the eligibility criteria.
  • An alternative to homogenization and lockstep standardization is proposed, using the Sudbury model schools, an alternative approach in which children learn at their own pace rather than following a chronologically-based curriculum. Proponents of unschooling have also claimed that children raised in this method do not suffer from learning disabilities.

See also

References

  1. What is special education? from New Zealand's Ministry of Education
  2. Student teachers' attitudes toward the inclusion of children with special needs. Educational Psychology, Hastings. R.P., & Oakford, S. (2003), page 23, 87-95
  3. Mainstreaming to full inclusion: From orthogenesis to pathogenesis of an idea. International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education, Kavale, K.A. (2002), page 49, 201-214.
  4. Attitudes of elementary school principals toward the inclusion of students with disabilities. Exceptional Children, Praisner, C. L. (2003), page 69, 135-145.
  5. National Council on Disability. (1994). Inclusionary education for students with disabilities: Keeping the promise. Washington, DC: Author.
  6. Swan, W.W., & Morgan, J.L. (1993). Collaborating for comprehensive services for young children and their families. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
  7. Rainforth, B., York, J., & Macdonald,C. (1992. Collaborative teams for students with severe disabilities. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
  8. Stainback, W. & Stainback, S.(Eds.) (1990). Support networks for inclusive schooling: Interdependent integrated education. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
  9. Gaylord-Ross, R. (Ed.) (1989). Integration strategies for students with handicaps. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
  10. ^ Goodman, Libby (1990). Time and learning in the special education classroom. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press. p. 122. ISBN 0-7914-0371-8.
  11. Special Education Inclusion
  13. Armbrester, Margaret E. (1992). The Civitan Story. Birmingham, AL: Ebsco Media. pp. 74–75.
  14. History of special education, accessed May 15, 2009
  15. watered-down curriculum, accessed June 8, 2009
  16. Greenberg, D. (1992), Education in America, A View from Sudbury Valley, "Special Education".
  17. Greenberg, D. (1987), Free at Last, The Sudbury Valley School.
  • Wilmshurst, L, & Brue, A. W. (2005). A parent's guide to special education. New York: AMACOM.

External links

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