Inclusion Strategies and Student Performance in Elementary Schools

Introduction to Inclusion in Education

The field of education has long grappled with the question of how to serve a divergent student body. Particularly challenging in this regard is the group of students that has become known as "special needs" students. In the past, these students were generally subject to "pull-out" strategies, in which they received targeted instruction outside of the regular classroom. More recently, however, inclusion strategies have been hypothesized as more effective — not only for promoting the self-esteem of these children, but also for their actual academic performance. According to Robbins (2010), empirical studies in this regard have been far from conclusive and are indeed contradictory. This suggests a need for further study regarding the academic performance of children who are educated inclusively as part of the mainstream classroom.

The literature reviewed here reveals the need for further empirical study, with specific focus on children in elementary school and on outcomes in terms of social environment, effective teaching, student performance, and teacher support.

While O'Brien, Kudlacek, and Howe (2009) focus their attention on inclusive physical education for European students, their framework can also be usefully applied to elementary school education more broadly. The authors identify four integrated areas for investigation: teacher (strategies), students (performance), interaction (social outcomes), and product — the educational outcomes that emerge from teacher-student interaction. These four elements can equally be applied to subject areas beyond physical education.

Social Outcomes in Inclusive Classrooms

Social outcomes in inclusive classrooms can be considered in terms of a reciprocal effect. Investigations may focus either on the effect of the presence of special needs children on their mainstream classmates, or on the effect of inclusion on children with disabilities and their own socialization within the classroom.

Among the various inclusion-related questions addressed by Korenich and Salisbury (2006, p. 10) was the effect of the presence of special needs children on the socialization of their classmates. The authors found that students were generally very positive about having children with disabilities in their classrooms. Notably, this positive attitude increased as the representation of children with disabilities in the classroom grew. At the same time, problem behavior was not significantly affected when compared to less differentiated classrooms. It is also worth noting that the actual social skills and competence of mainstream students were found to be unaffected by the presence of students with disabilities. Overall, student interactions were positive, with negligible levels of negative behavior. The authors found no negative attitudes from non-disabled students toward their classmates with disabilities, despite prior concerns in this regard.

The authors do not report any reciprocal data on the social outcomes for children with disabilities themselves. However, it might reasonably be assumed that, given the positive attitudes and contact they experienced from classmates, children with disabilities had equally positive social experiences. Including data from this perspective would have strengthened the study considerably.

In this context, Robbins (2010, p. 62) points out that scholars such as Lloyd Dunn questioned the effectiveness of pull-out strategies and "special education" as early as 1968 — particularly the tendency of these strategies to create bias not only on the grounds of intellectual ability, but also on the basis of ethnicity and other factors. These strategies were found to be psychologically damaging to the recipients and also ineffective in terms of their intended instructional goals. This concern formed an early basis for the movement toward inclusive classroom practices. Robbins also notes, however, that the debate continues even among contemporary educators.

Instruction by highly qualified teachers had a more positive effect on included children than instruction by less qualified teachers (Robbins, 2010). In their article, Lingo, Barton-Arwood, and Jolivette (2011, p. 6) emphasize that teachers today are held more accountable than ever before for the learning of all children in their classrooms — including students with special needs. To accomplish this effectively, the authors suggest a collaborative approach between general and special education teachers, which would, in theory, produce the same improvement in student performance as that associated with the highly skilled teachers described by Robbins.

Effective Teaching in the Inclusive Environment

According to the authors, measuring the outcomes of teacher collaboration can be relatively difficult, since immediate results are not necessarily reflected in student performance. To address this, it is suggested that teachers conduct comparative monitoring of students in both inclusive and pull-out settings. This remains an area that would benefit from further investigation.

A larger sample size in future studies could also help differentiate results and produce findings with clearer implications for teaching practice. One useful approach is to include collaboration activities involving both general and special education teachers as a variable. It is also instructive to examine studies that focus on the relative success of pull-out strategies, since these can ultimately be compared with the outcomes of inclusive strategies.

One such study is that by Ulring et al. (2012), which is significant given the general favorability now shown toward inclusive classroom environments, especially for children with certain types of disabilities. The authors used a segregated teaching strategy to demonstrate the effectiveness of specific reading and writing instructional practices with students with disabilities. The study focused on a small sample of three elementary students. The justification for the study was grounded in national literacy concerns, with reading and writing identified as crucial skills for employment in the United States.

The specific instructional strategies investigated included flashcards and reading racetracks in a segregated setting. The findings suggest a relative degree of success for all students; lower levels of achievement were linked to poor school attendance rather than to any shortcoming in the methods themselves. Significantly, despite being conducted in a segregated setting, the authors concluded that these methods could be implemented in general education classrooms as well. This would support the inclusive environment for both students with specific disabilities and those who simply struggle with reading and writing. The implications for future investigations across varied settings are considerable.