"Inclusion is a process, not an event: successful problems and solutions evolve rather than occur."
Tim Hobbs and David L. Westling ("Promoting Successful Inclusions" The Council for Exceptional Children)
1. Most students tend to learn better in inclusive settings. In the past, tracking, ability grouping, and special education pull-out programs were thought to be the way to provide for individual needs of most students. By contrast, in inclusive settings, which provide appropriate instruction and support, students tend to learn more than they do in segregated or tracked classes.
2. Inclusion promotes the growth of self-esteem. No student wants to be singled out or identified as "different" or less worthy to be part of mainstream activities. By including all students, the negative effects which tracking and pull-out programs create, are eliminated.
3. It helps all students learn, first hand, the meaning of equal worth and equal rights. As long as a single student, who has not broken any laws, is excluded from mainstream school life and opportunities, all students become vulnerable to discriminatory treatment. Inclusive schooling can help all students learn to be aware, sensitive, and tolerant of differences. It helps them learn that all people have abilities and disabilities and that they need to work together to survive and be happy.
Contributed by Pat Welter, Assistant Principal, and Gil McCabe, Special Education Department Chair, in "News and Views," Winter, 1990.
Teachers who have taught or are teaching in an inclusive classroom say the philosophy of inclusion hinges on helping students and teachers become better members of a community by creating new visions for communities and for schools. Inclusion is about membership and belonging to a community.
Dr. Chris Kliewer, assistant professor of special education, taught second grade in an inclusive school in Syracuse, New York for four years. Based on this experience, he explains:
"Inclusion involves all kinds of practices that are ultimately practices of good teaching. What good teachers do is they think thoughtfully about children and develop ways to reach all children.
"Ultimately good teaching is a relationship between two people; teachers get good results because they enter into that relationship. Inclusion is providing more options for children of ways to learn. It's structuring schools as communities where all children can learn. But there's no recipe for becoming an inclusive teacher or an inclusive school. It's not a mechanized format."
"Inclusion is based on the belief that people work in inclusive communities, work with people of different races, religions, aspirations, disabilities," according to Dr. Susan Etscheidt, professor of special education. "In the same vein, children of all ages should learn and grow in environments that resemble the environments they will eventually work in," she explains.
"Inclusive education is nothing more than good teaching practices. As we share the knowledge to meet needs of kids with challenges, we improve the quality of education for all children in that classroom."
Dr. Sandra Alper, head of the UNI Department of Special Education, says you can't talk about the philosophy of inclusion without talking about teaching functional skills or collaborating as a team with regular education teachers, principals, parents, and special ed teachers. On the other hand, she states, "I disagree with people who say full inclusion means all children being in the regular classroom every day, all day. There are several groups of students that this will not work for - students with aggressive behaviors, and those secondary students who need to learn community and job skills. But I'm also not sure if being in the same classroom every day all day is the best way to educate any child."
"Inclusive education operates from the assumption that almost all students should start in a regular classroom, and then, depending on individual needs, move into more restrictive environments," states Melissa Heston, assistant professor of educational psychology, specializing in early childhood development. "Research shows that inclusive education helps the development of all children in different ways. Students with specific challenges make gains in cognitive and social development and physical motor skills. They do well when the regular environment is adjusted to meet their needs. Children with more typical development gain higher levels of tolerance for people with differences. They learn to make the most of whoever they're working with. When we exclude people, it ultimately costs more than the original effort to include them."
Taken from: Inclusive Education Web Site, Renaissance Group http://www.uni.edu/coe/inclusion/index.html
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