Inclusive Education In Schools: A Case Study

According to Westwood (2013 pg. 11), inclusive education is ‘the practice of teaching disabled students alongside their non-disabled peers in regular classroom settings, instead of segregating them in special classrooms’. It is founded on a belief that all children, regardless of labels, have an equal right to participate in every aspects of school life. This belief is reinforced by fundamental philosophies articulated in many important documents, including the Convention on the rights of the child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989) and the influential Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994) which asked all governments to provide the utmost priority to making education systems inclusive, and to adopt the principle of inclusive education as

Given that inclusion is not new, it cannot be taken for granted that all teachers know what inclusion entails and what it requires. The success or failure of a policy depends on how teachers interpret and understand the concept as that affects its execution (Barton & Armstrong, 2007). Ideally, both the GE and the SPED teachers should be aware about inclusion, and work towards making the environment inclusive because is facilitate a sense of ‘belonging’ for the students. In addition to awareness about inclusive practices, strong knowledge is also required to effectively implement these practices, as skills and ideas are required to make adaptations to meet individual needs (Florian, 2000). Teachers also need to be adept at utilising a variety of innovative and flexible teaching strategies so as to accommodate pupils with diverse needs (Armstrong,

Without adequate training, teachers will not be able to implement inclusive practices in reasonable and appropriate ways. For example, if the teachers respond inappropriately to challenging behaviour, they may cause the behaviour to escalate, or allow the behaviour to manifest which results in continuing difficulties and eventually more severe consequences. Students with ASD undoubtedly are among the most challenging population to include in mainstream classes and teachers are faced with the daunting task of determining strategies that will help students under the spectrum succeed in the classroom. Therefore, teachers need to learn and utilise new strategies to tackle behavioural problems that appear to consistently emerge as the most difficult obstacle to inclusion. The following are examples of three notable strategies that have been documented as successful in supporting students with autism in inclusive education classrooms (Harrower & Dunlap, 2001).

1. Antecedent procedures that have been used specifically for students with autism in general education classrooms include priming, prompting, and picture