Collaboration
...inclusion of students with disabilities in the mainstream of general education remains one of the most contested topics in public education today (Fitch, 2003, 233). Inclusion involves putting students with disabilities into a classroom with their typically developing peers. Research has gone both ways with inclusion, some researchers feel that inclusion is the best environment for students with disabilities and others feel that disabled students do not get the correct curriculum in a regular setting classroom. According to Fitch (cited in Vaughn and Klinger, 1998, 86), “the important lesson is that no one educational model will meet the needs of all students with learning disabilities: thus there is an advantage to providing a range of educational models”.
One of the debates about inclusion is the general education teachers abilities to teach disabled students. A lot of people feel that the general educator is not qualified in taking on disabled students in their classrooms. Usually the teachers and principals are the people who work together with families and related service providers to identify the support the disabled student will need (Foreman, Kelly, Pascoe, & King, 2004, 184). General Education majors are having to take courses that deal with special education and learning how to teach disabled students. Most classrooms are filled with children who have a wide range of abilities, and most teachers try to create an environment in which all children, those with and without special needs, thrive (Greenspan, 2005, 58). A teachers goal is to promote “functional-emotional” skills, which is the ability to attend, relate, gesture intentions, problem solve, develop and express creative ideas, and think logically. Teachers are becoming more and more well equipped to provide students with these skills. Teaching the students is not the only thing the teacher is...
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