Special education concepts and practices

Environmental Science -- Literature Review

Students who struggle with learning disorders deserve to be offered the most appropriate strategies available to help them gain traction in a world that seems for them to be beyond their capacity. The themes that emerge from the various approaches -- and empirical studies -- that are brought to light in this paper provide a solid context for workable, worthwhile interventions for children with special needs -- in particular, children struggling with autism spectrum disorder. One strong theme that emerges relates to the supportive roles that parents can play in working with teachers vis-a-vis their autistic children.

Teachers in special education classes -- and those teachers that work with learning-disabled students -- generally do not have a great deal of time outside or within the classroom to interact with parents. The demands placed on teachers -- including staying abreast of the most effective teaching approaches for children with special needs, working with the school administration to make decisions about which students should be integrated with regular classrooms, grading homework and preparing curricula and daily lesson plans, and more -- are substantial. Those demands also create stress, tension, and in some cases teachers of children with special needs simply burn out and need relief.

So it is understandable that many teachers in the above-mentioned genre don't reach out to the parents of their students perhaps as often as they should. But published scholarly, peer-reviewed research is available that reports there can be successful outcomes for teachers and their learning disabled students when embracing parents as part of the intervention process to help bring these needy students to a higher place in their learning.

For example, an article in the Journal of Autism (Solomon, et al., 2007) reflects the success that a program called PLAY Project Home Consultation (PPHC) can be effective when the parents of autistic children are brought into the project for intensive interventions. The article reflects the details of the intervention: the parents of 68 students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) offered to participate in a training program that lasted between eight and twelve months. Parents were fully engaged with this program and were asked to provide up to 15 hours per week of involvement with their children in a school-sponsored intervention (Solomon).

The intervention used videotape technology (blind raters used the Functional Emotional Assessment Scale, FEAS) in this intervention and the results reflected that nearly half (45.5%) of the children showed "…good to very good functional progress" towards their development. Moreover, there was a 90% satisfaction rate reported by the parent participants (Solomon).

Another successful intervention involving the parents of autism spectrum disorder, published in the journal Pediatrics (Dawson, et al., 2009), employed the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM). In this research the children were toddlers, which is a response to the fact that researchers and scientists have for years urged schools, psychologists and parents to intervene early in life with those children struggling with ASD.

In this study, 48 children with ASD -- ages 18 to 30 months -- were divided into two groups. One was a group led by parents and trained therapists using ESDM strategies; special education professionals in the community led the second group. The results showed a "documented success" rate -- in IQ, adaptive behavior, and autism diagnosis -- for those parents and toddlers that embraced the ESDM model. It offers hope for parents of children with ASD, if those parents are willing to participate in a comprehensive program that involves up to two years of involvement.

Bringing children with special needs into a mainstream classroom is not a new idea, but has in fact been employed in myriad educational settings -- with various levels of success. An article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Learning Disability Quarterly (Bakker, et al., 2007) -- a study from Holland -- relates how a study of 1,300 students with learning disabilities were involved. Of those students, 861 were integrated into mainstream classrooms. Interestingly, those students with "general learning disabilities" (GLD) were more often rejected in the attempt to bring them into contact with non-disabled students than students with "specific learning disabilities" (SLD), according to the authors.

The published results also show that female students with special needs that had been placed in a general education setting were less satisfactorily integrated than the males, Bakker explains. Why general education students rejected girls in this context requires additional research, according to the authors. On the other hand, this research in no way should be interpreted as negative regarding the concept of mainstreaming students with special needs.

M.J. Reid and colleagues write in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (2007) that the "Incredible Years" program -- another strategy using parents and placing students with special needs into mainstream classrooms -- has shown some success. In this research, some students were placed in general education classrooms and others were part of a program designed to enlighten and train parents of children with special needs. The results show that when mothers receive training from the schools, children showed "less externalizing problems and more emotional regulation" than the general classroom integration produced.

Meanwhile an article published in the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research (McIntyre, 2008) alludes to a study in which twenty-five families -- their children were considered "at risk" individuals -- got involved with interventions that required two-and-a-half hour sessions each week for twelve weeks. The results from the strategies (including developmentally appropriate play, praise, and rewards) showed that "negative child and parent behaviors" were reduced significantly. Once again, parental involved with their children's education activities proves to be significant boost to the child's chances for success.

In a study published in the Journal of Applied Behavior (Chaabane, et al., 2009) the results showed that though a special tactic (picture exchanges as a means of special communication), mothers would play an important role in helping their autistic boys. Another research piece (Journal of Educational Research, Sanders, 2008) shows that school districts should engage in cooperative activities with parents and community members in terms of providing growth opportunities for teachers, parents, and students that are at risk.