Assessment in Inclusive Settings

Assessment is one of the most controversial and challenging aspects of education. While increasing emphasis has been placed on student progress and accountability, effective assessment processes are often overlooked as a critical component of quality instruction. This chapter aims to provide practitioners, educators, and policymakers with an overview of assessment practices that provide information at the classroom and individual levels to drive instructional decision making. A multi-level system of support model is emphasized to illustrate types and administration of assessments needed to make instructional decisions.

Cultivating Communities of Inclusive Practice

Significant disparities in educational outcome, opportunity, and achievement endure for students with disabilities and those from culturally and linguistically diverse groups. A need for effective, responsive, and inclusive practices in schools is imperative. Educators are at the heart of providing the challenging, responsive education that each child and adolescent deserves. Professional development is the lever of change, but can or help or hinder educators in improving instructional and school practices that result in improved outcomes for all students. This chapter examines the evidence base surrounding professional development and inclusive practice. Four approaches to professional development supporting more transformative professional learning and change are featured: inquiry groups (teacher study groups and lesson study); coaching, Professional Learning Communities; and Professional Development Schools. Snapshots to practice are included with each approach to provide integrated descriptive examples of varied inclusive professional development practices.

The Foundation of Inclusion in Federal Legislation and Litigation

The foundation of inclusion in special education law is the least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This federal mandate requires that all students with disabilities receive their education with students without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate. Our purpose in this chapter is to examine the legal basis of inclusion. We first review the historical antecedents of inclusion. Second, we examine the LRE mandate and the student placement requirements of the IDEA. Third, we survey the most important case law rulings regarding LRE and the placement of students with disabilities. Fourth, we consider strategies that have been used to promote inclusive placements and briefly review the literature on these strategies. We end this chapter by offering principles to guide IEP team members in making educationally beneficial and legally correct placement decisions for students with disabilities.

Data System-Embedded Analysis Support's Implications for Latino Students and Diverse Classrooms

Urban school populations are particularly diverse, requiring teachers to see to a broad spectrum of student needs. Latinos are the largest and fastest growing racial/ethnic minority group of students in the U.S., and the majority of Latino students live in urban areas. Data can be a powerful tool when used by teachers to target specific student needs, especially those of subgroups with a history of academic struggle. Latino students are commonly featured in not just one, but three large subgroups that typically struggle academically when compared to peers outside these subgroups: the Hispanic, Socio-economically Disadvantaged, and English Learner subgroups. It is vital teachers use data to better understand and meet these students' needs. However, such data use can only benefit students if teachers understand its meaning and implications. This chapter highlights study findings that can significantly improve teachers' ability to use data to help Latinos and other students in diverse classrooms.

Establishing a Student-Centered Environment to Support All Learners

Within this chapter, technology-enhanced personalized learning is highlighted as a model for supporting all students in an inclusionary setting. Content of the chapter is focused on the birth, development, growth, and the eventual demise of a student-centered-model in one turn-around school district. The chapter focuses on the interplay of teacher methods and expectations; the impact of real-time progress data by students and teachers, and the points of contact where innovation collided with the expectations of traditional education practice. The authors also discuss various political elements that emerged as a result of the turnaround process. Finally, elements of the roles of teachers, technology, data, self-regulated learning, and competency-based education are discussed relative to establishing a student-centered learning environment.

Preparing Critical, Secondary Special Educators

In this chapter the author explores teacher preparation as the logical site for cultivating praxis for secondary inclusive education. The author describes a university course on inclusive education for preparing critical special education teachers. The author offers disability studies in education (DSE) as a theoretical framework for supporting critical thought and creating just and inclusive educational practices for students with disabilities in P-21 settings. The author then outlines two themes that ground the architectural design of the course: re/thinking students (person-first narratives of disability) and re/designing pedagogy (Universal Design for Learning). According to Smith (2009), DSE “sees oppression and prejudice in sociocultural contexts and seeks to address those concerns” (p. 215). In preparing critical special educators it is our job to help students not only “see” the oppression of exclusion, but to provide them with concrete ways to create change and remain resilient.

The Myth of Colorblindness

The United States is becoming a more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse nation. More specifically, in public schools, students of color and those of Native American ancestry are anticipated to represent the majority of the student population in the near future. In contrast to the change in student demographics, the majority of classroom teachers remain White and monolingual. The differences in racial, ethnic, and linguistic experiences of the student and teacher populations could create cultural conflicts between the two groups. In response, this endeavor is purposed to provide an instructional framework for teacher educators who are tasked with preparing culturally competent teachers for increasingly multicultural classrooms.

Creating Inclusive Classroom

From the 1980s, there are three steps to understand and adopt the inclusive education belief and theory in China. In today's Chinese schools, the typical inclusive education is implemented at the classroom level, but with unique context and content compared with the practices in the Western world. Banzhuren, a very special role in Chinese school, has witnessed the development of each child and plays a very important role in student development. Banzhuren creates the inclusive atmosphere for all students, engages every student in the classroom-based activities, and works with other teachers and parents to develop the classroom community. Authors surveyed students in two classes on their experience, values, understanding and expectation on inclusive education in the classroom. Based on the data, the authors found that the banzhurens involved have fulfilled their potentials to achieve the inclusive classroom by multiple ways. The authors discussed the practical application, the limitations of the research, and future research directions about the inclusive classroom in China as well.

The Role of Bibliotherapy and Therapeutic Storytelling in Creating Inclusive Classroom Communities

This chapter reviews the literature of using the bibliotherapy as a strategy to provide empathy and understanding for diverse behaviors and emotions. Since diverse learners may have difficulties in developing social skills and emotional regulation, the development of a positive and respectful social climate is critical in encouraging all students to be more accepting of individual differences and challenges. Using the Lessac bio-dynamic approach and verbal intonation and dynamic articulation of the text, enriches students' experience and allows students with difficulties to recognize the intention of the character and to interactively participate with movements. The unique model of therapeutic storytelling with Lessac Kinestetis is presented as a teaching strategy for the development of the skills of diverse learners, as well all students in the inclusive classroom.

Inclusive Recreation as Part of the IEP Process

Individuals with disabilities have a long history of exclusion from both education and recreation settings. Until the 1970s, parents caring for their child with a disability was a private, isolated activity and an extreme hardship. Today, children with disabilities are usually included in general education classrooms with their typically developing peers. For inclusive education to be successful, the IEP team must focus on the collaborative aspects and possible community-wide solutions for the child's best interests by looking outside the classroom to examine the array of community supports that interconnect with the child's education and long-term transition outcomes over multiple seasons, including summer months. This chapter provides background on inclusive recreation services, including suggestions for how a multidisciplinary IEP team can incorporate existing recreation services and community programs as extended supports within a child's IEP or transition plan, using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems framework.