Interviews were conducted to gather advice about integration from general and special education teachers and administrators from 10 schools in five school districts where students with moderate and severe disabilities had recently been integrated into general education schools and classrooms. The study explored not only the educational change process, but general educators' perceptions of factors that had initially created and later reduced their resistance to integration. Qualitative analysis of interview data revealed teachers' perceptions of the success of integration, as well as their advice to others contemplating integration: district administrators, building administrators, special education teachers, and general education teachers.
This ethnographic study investigated the ways general and special educators went about including students with moderate and severe developmental disabilities in five elementary classrooms. Interpretations suggest that all teachers shared a common goal of including the focus students as members of their classroom groups, and had devised an unwritten agreement specifying the modifications that would and would not be made. The modifications made to teachers' roles, classroom routines, and instructional activities are described. Discussion focuses on the assimilationist approach to diversity evidenced by these modifications. and on the implications for facilitating full social and instructional inclusion through teacher collaboration and instructional modifications.
This article describes principles and practices of data collection to evaluate the attainment of meaningful out comes in educational services for students with severe disabilities and serious behavior problems. In contrast to a limited outcome such as a temporary change in one target behavior in a controlled clinical setting, an ex panded definition of effectiveness would require evidence of a range of more meaningful outcomes for child, school, family, and community. Several user-friendly measures to document such outcomes are described, which were field-tested in an educational consultation project serving students with severe disabilities and chal lenging behaviors in integrated schools. The article con cludes with a discussion of the advantages of an empha sis upon both meaningful outcomes and the use of measurement strategies that blend well and have high utility for typical schools while simultaneously increas ing programmatic rigor and general school responsibil ity for what happens to students.DESCRIPTORS: applied behavior analysis, assess ment, behavioral assessment, behavioral management, data collection, decision-making, educational validity, excess behavior, functional analysis, research evaluation
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