The Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is one of the six elements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The practice, definition, and intention have been debated throughout its history. This study focuses on the elementary school educators' understanding and perspectives on how LRE affects how they support students with…

This article examines contextual factors that impact inclusive education in the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, United States. Based on the analysis of teachers' narratives, the study concluded that teachers perceive inclusive special education as a student's right primarily grounded in the social justice context of education. While…

Although Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975, barriers remain to successful inclusive classroom models, including the special education legal literacy of general education teachers. Responsibility for educating students with disabilities has shifted from special education teachers to general education…

This case demonstrates how school administrators' development of intersectional competence can disrupt racial inequity in special education. Intersectional competence refers to educators' preparedness to recognize how schooling is implicated in multiple, intersecting systems of oppression, collaborate with relevant stakeholders who themselves…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are frequently included in regular music classrooms, yet little is known about teachers' and students' classroom experiences. We sent a 35-question survey to all members of the National Association for Music Education who had identified themselves as elementary music teachers. We received a total of 569…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) states that students with disabilities should receive instruction in the general education classroom as much as possible. This move has resulted in Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students spending more of their time in the general education classroom which has increased the need for collaboration…

In summary, the problem this qualitative interpretive descriptive study addressed was to investigate what elementary general education teachers see as the success of the implementation of inclusive instructional practices. Perception of the success of implementation of inclusive instructional practices can impact the fidelity of the implementation…

The passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975 was the summation of many years of advocacy for students with disabilities in the United States. Many school personnel face challenges implementing the act's inclusion mandate, which requires that all students be educated in the least restrictive environment that provides the…

Shared reading is a powerful literacy intervention for the development of early communication and literacy skills. For students with extensive support needs who are beginning communicators, shared reading has the potential to support the development of initiation and expressive symbolic communication skills. This descriptive, multicase, mixed…

It is imperative to understand how teachers are prepared for their role as co-teacher. The purpose of this study was to investigate how general education and special education teachers in one elementary school in Georgia are trained in the instructional practice of co-teaching and their perceptions on how prepared they feel to implement the…

Purpose: Administrative support and accurate perceptions are believed to facilitate the use of speech-language services that are integrated into the classroom (i.e., integrated classroom-based services [ICBS]). The purpose of this study was to compare elementary principals' and speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') perceptions of ICBS in three…

The 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandated that students with disabilities be educated with their nondisabled peers in the least restrictive environment. In a large urban district elementary school in the U.S. southwest inclusion classrooms were created to address this mandate. The problem for this study was that 3rd to 5th…

Within teacher education programs, the preparation of general and special educators has often been separated due to differences in the skills each is expected to master (Pugach, Blanton, & Boveda, 2014). With the mandate of inclusion in the IDEA (20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5)(A)), as well as the increasing implementation of inclusive practices in…

Elementary school teachers struggle to collect and use reading progress data to make instructional decisions. Collecting and interpreting reading progress data when making instructional decisions allows districts to identify and support students who need early reading intervention and may protect districts from Free Appropriate Public Education…

Introduction: Educators in public schools are required to serve students in their least restrictive environment. While many evidence-based practices (EBPs), defined as practices and strategies shown by research to have meaningful effects on outcomes for autistic students are documented in the literature, less is known about EBP use among educators…