Special Education Inclusion: Pros, Cons, and Outcomes

Introduction

The concept of special education inclusion refers to the practice of including students with special educational needs within the regular curriculum and classes alongside non-special-needs students. Initially, the practice inspired objections from educators and other stakeholders who expressed concerns that inclusion might be detrimental to special-needs students, non-special-needs students, and to the general effectiveness of educational programs overall. After several decades of experience with the issues, the consensus among educators is that including special-needs students within the regular curriculum as much as possible is beneficial to both special-needs students and non-special-needs students alike.

The Case Against Special Needs Inclusion

There are two principal objections to the inclusion of special-needs students within the regular school curriculum, both of which reflect intuitive assumptions rather than empirical data or conclusions based on objective evidence. First, there is a concern that the special needs of special-needs students cannot be met by the regular curriculum. That view holds that regular curriculum teachers are not trained to deliver education to special-needs students. According to this view, including special-needs students within the regular curriculum comes at the expense of those students' best educational interests.

More specifically, special-needs students typically require educational materials, resources, and instructional methods designed to provide them with the best possible opportunity to overcome their learning, developmental, or other barriers to optimal academic progress. Similarly, those opposed to inclusion express concerns that special-needs students might be subjected to negative social experiences — such as bullying, ridicule, or other forms of abuse — on the part of some of their non-special-needs classmates.

Second, those opposed to inclusion worry that the obligation to cater to the needs of special-needs students will inevitably come at the expense of the optimal educational progress of their non-special-needs classmates. This concern suggests that the time instructors must devote to helping special-needs students will necessarily reduce the time available for other students and will invariably slow the pace of the entire class while special-needs students catch up.

To a great degree, opposition to inclusion strategies is based on a lack of awareness that inclusion does not necessarily mean that all special-needs students will simply be placed into the regular curriculum without support. Instead, most inclusion approaches rely heavily on learning needs assessments to determine how and to what extent each special-needs student is incorporated into the regular curriculum. In fact, this approach is precisely consistent with federal law on the matter. Specifically, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that educational programs provide an educational environment that is the least restrictive for those students (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009). Therefore, the degree to which any special-needs student is included depends substantially on an analysis of his or her educational and other needs, and on a determination of what is in that student's best interests.

The Case in Favor of Special Needs Inclusion

Educators began collecting evidence as soon as special-needs inclusion was first adopted by American academic institutions. The evidence strongly suggests that there are no detrimental effects of including special-needs students within the regular curriculum. In fact, their inclusion appears to benefit both special-needs students and their non-special-needs classmates alike. In general, special-needs students benefit from the social elements of being part of the mainstream educational experience, while their non-special-needs classmates benefit in at least two ways: they gain from the social experience of helping others and from the degree to which learning is enhanced through the process of helping others learn (Dupuis, Barclay, Holmes, Platt, Shaha, & Lewis, 2007; Suter & Giangreco, 2009).

The inclusion of special-needs students within the regular curriculum is also supported by contemporary educational theorists on a conceptual level that defines education much more broadly than it has been defined traditionally (Mallory & New, 1994). For at least two decades, the modern view of education has been shifting toward appreciating the socio-cultural context of learning and psychological development, and away from the individualistic model of learning and development.

In principle, that shift is part of a much broader realization that learning encompasses far more than the narrow substantive content of academic subjects. Instead, it conceives of learning as a comprehensive process that also includes numerous social and behavioral elements beyond the content of lessons and textbooks (Mallory & New, 1994). Moreover, it regards the modern classroom as an interactive community of learners; it considers learning as a socially mediated set of experiences; it defines the academic curriculum as a problem-based process of contextually relevant ideas; and it emphasizes assessment as having relevance and meaning to every learner individually (Mallory & New, 1994). The inclusion concept is naturally more consistent with this framework for understanding the learning environment than the traditional model of separate educational experiences for special-needs students.

Conclusion

It does not appear that any of the objections to the inclusion of special-needs students in the regular educational environment and curriculum stand up to objective analysis. Both special-needs students and regular-education students exhibit better learning, as measured by their respective test scores, as a result of inclusion programs. Rather than exposing special-needs students to bullying or abuse from their regular-education classmates, inclusion appears to produce exactly the opposite results. Both special-needs students and non-special-needs students report higher self-esteem, greater self-regard, and increased enjoyment of school when they are part of special-needs inclusion programs. In addition to these valuable benefits for all students, the inclusion concept also extends opportunities from available resources, because it increases the work available for paraprofessionals while reducing the workload on the comparatively few dedicated fulltime special education professionals available to school systems.