Ethical Issues and Challenges Reaction Paper Special Education

SPECIAL EDUCATION

Special Education: Ethical Issues and Challenges Reaction Paper

Disabilities could be mental or physical. It certainly creates a lifelong impact on a child’s social, emotional, and mental health that needs to be addressed during his early years. Parents and teachers are crucial since they are the primary educators for special children. This paper explores the common issues and challenges while working with individuals with disabilities, the methods of overcoming them, and the ethical and legal implications.

Common Issues and Challenges While Working With Individuals with Disabilities

Inclusive classrooms, teacher motivation, dealing with students from different cultural backgrounds, and even managing the mixed abilities students simultaneously, such as slow learners, high achievers, etc., are some of the most common challenges identified while working with students with disabilities.

Rather than excluding a person who is disabled, social inclusion is the concept that emerged with a positive approach so that the removal of social barriers could be encouraged. The participation of disabled people in society is promoted to facilitate such inclusionary steps, in which inclusive classroom is also cited. However, the availability of teachers and even the appropriate training for managing inclusive classrooms is scarce. Teachers are not sufficiently prepared to handle classroom challenges like tackling classroom behavior of disabled students, issues in social interaction with peers, and facilitating lesson plans in which disabled students should be kept at a pace with the other learners (Ahammed, 2021). Continuous adaptation has to be made to suit the needs of disabled students since the curriculum is usually locally produced by the mainstream head offices (Zemba & Chipindi, 2020).

Moreover, it has been explored that mixed ability classrooms already pose a considerable challenge for teachers in the regular classroom since students of different capacities, abilities, and learning paces are to be kept on the same page (Al-Subaiei, 2017). This issue is amplified when it is in inclusive classrooms. Handling diversity concerns struggling teachers with a mixed cultural and racial composition in the classrooms. On top of that, studies further corroborated that teachers have insufficient knowledge to cope with mixed abilities students and those with disabilities within one classroom (Siddiqui et al., 2021). They sometimes lack suitable aid and are even deprived of the training that needs to run such classrooms. They face problems when assembling worksheets for diverse students, whether in terms of racial or mixed-ability diversity. Teachers find marking the assessments of mixed-ability students with the inclusion of disabled ones challenging.

Despite some benefits of a mixed-abilities inclusive classroom for disabled students, such as support of peers who are high learners and performing in groups with gifted learners, teachers still struggle to make lesson plans, assessments, or class materials for such groups (Hove, 2022). Teachers have felt that students with higher talents find it difficult to support those with disabilities and must be constantly motivated. Teachers think they cannot attend to every student’s particular need concurrently, which causes additional pressure of not being able to cope with everyone’s needs (Hove, 2022). The curriculum differentiation might be an unwanted hurdle that teachers think cannot be controlled due to the lack of classroom aids and channeling from the higher authorities (Hove, 2022). Meeting the needs of individual learners when some parents of high achievers discuss that their child feels bored or left out while the teacher is focusing more on disabled students causes stress for the teachers (Hove, 2022). Keeping such students from feeling excluded and not appearing to force them to work with disabled students is a task.

Keeping the morale and motivation of teachers of disabled students is another primary factor stated as an issue. They need to be influenced to work toward providing the basic educational right to disabled students, which mainly comes from salary equity and promotional opportunities (Aziz et al., 2015). Once the teachers know they have professional advancements in those specific fields and are recognized for their hard work to enable a satisfactory output for disabled students, they will be extra willing to assist the needy. If teachers of disabled students are kept dispossessed of the autonomy, control, and empowerment that serve as encouragement and motivation, their job satisfaction would be low. School administrators lay a vital role in this regard, who do not fully understand this element and appear more authoritative themselves (Aziz et al., 2015).

Ethical and Legal Aspects of Issues/Challenges Identified

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 states that individuals with disabilities should not be excluded from social participation and would be tried under the law if such individuals are denied their right to do so (IDEA, n.d.). The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 states a similar clause that discrimination against disabled individuals is strictly prohibited, mainly in public schools, as this population has the right to overall Federal financial assistance (IDEA, n.d.). The Act was enacted to guarantee that individuals with disabilities have the same societal, educational, national, religious, and ethnic rights as regular citizens. The rights to use public transport, have job opportunities, and for their children to get quality education were some of the main aims of this Act which were no different than that of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act IDEA.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is specially designed to ensure the right of disabled students to be eligible to appropriate public education by keeping in mind the above two laws (IDEA, n.d.). The indicated challenges in the previous section have to be aligned with IDEA since discrimination in terms of race, culture, or learning capacity, especially regarding inclusive or mixed-ability classrooms, is sternly forbidden by the law.

Discussion of Laws and Their Impact on Supporting or Hindering Those Issues

Children with disabilities were mostly segregated, which does not depict an all-inclusive approach in the light of IDEA and ADA. The barriers and obstacles were the administrative mindsets for inclusion, working together with a professional approach, including parents at every step, and a complete paradigm shift.

The reason for such barriers could be the belief in the myth that inclusive classrooms are expensive (Hayes & Bulat, 2017). However, a segregated system would be more costly concerning the separate classrooms, separate instructional aids and materials, separate transportation, and surplus costs for infrastructure. Studies have shown that costs of exclusion determine a country’s economic growth since lower employment in exclusion-based schools has been observed along with lower opportunities for teachers for professional advancements (Hayes & Bulat, 2017). Children with disabilities and their parents play a major role in economic contribution. Further results were found interesting for other departments of the country where improved health and nutrition at school for these children was witnessed so that better family planning and management of medical costs could be certified (Hayes & Bulat, 2017). It is a bonus for the economic burden management as citizen participation was fruitful when individuals with disabilities were taken into the education system.

With the law enforcement of IDEA and ADA, it was observed by national surveys that increased awareness and acceptance were emerging for individuals with disabilities (Hayes & Bulat, 2017). Students with disabilities gained favorable responses from teachers and were no longer isolated by their peers with correct encouragement from teachers within the classroom climate. Regular students’ attitudes were seen changing towards diversity and its acceptance, and an international community was witnessed developing with less discrimination against race, religion, or disability (Hayes & Bulat, 2017).

The intensity with which the laws are enforced varies from state to state as the commitments are shaped accordingly. The harmony that needs to be created with laws and the inclusive education demands need to be synchronized since general education planning is not enough to meet the special needs of disabled students. The policymakers must seriously consider the outputs, activities, and resource allocations so that higher authorities of inclusive schools and their higher management facilitate the teachers. Particular provision of supporting classroom aids and time need to be given to teachers to effectively create a classroom environment where diverse students belonging to different cultural and social; classes, mixed abilities students with high achievers and slow learners, and students with disabilities who have distinct emotional needs must be amalgamated together smoothly.

Personal Reflections, Thoughts, Ideas

Teachers are the primary enablers of education for disabled students who need to be adequately trained and equipped with accurate resources for fulfilling their special needs. Their motivation plays a vital role in creating cooperation that needs to be maintained and sustained for inclusive classrooms (Athanasiadis & Syriopoulou-Delli, 2010). They observe students daily and know what needs are present within the classrooms. Rather than parents imposing extra burdens on the teachers to teach their disabled child accurately, the parents should act as collaborators as they are one of the major stakeholders in the process. In my opinion, they should be continuously included in every activity of their child to make their useful information available to the teachers. Rather than keeping high expectations of the teachers alone and putting all the stress over their shoulders, it would be better that parents cooperate with teachers for a collaborative methodology towards inclusivity.

Also, I think teachers should be appropriately trained and prepared for mixed ability or differentiated classrooms. It would mainly encompass the establishment of a mindset that goal of educating disabled students is easily achievable. The first impression of teaching such students is challenging as it has become a stereotype that they demand extra effort. The reflection of perfuming as a group with team-based thinking would help the teachers overcome the psychological barriers that hinder their motivation.