This article presents a critical analysis of the principle of the least restrictive environment (LRE). The article begins with a review of the origins of LRE in professional writings and law and moves next to a discussion of how LRE has been operationalized in terms of a continuum of residential, educational, and vocational services. Building on…

This article presents a critical review of Steve Taylor's Caught in the Continuum. Steve Taylor describes the flawed thinking associated with the "least restrictive environment" (LRE) principle and the related continuum model of human services that linked severity of disability with segregation, and required improvements in skills as a…

Study aim: To compare the National Core Curriculum (NCC) and the special education curriculum regarding how much they are suitable for children with disabilities in the field of physical education and sports. Material and methods: Content analysis of Hungarian NCC and of 5 special schools curricula was employed to obtain information on specific…

For this article we aimed to understand the emergence of English as a second language for a newly immigrated Mexican student, a native speaker of Spanish, enrolled in a mainstream kindergarten classroom, who was undergoing the "silent period" (Krashen, 1981). Applying ecological approaches that emphasize learners in relationship with their…

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at a significant risk for experiencing failure in school. The School Supports Checklist (SSC) helps to identify potential classroom-based supports for children with ADHD in elementary school. The checklist can be used to support planning and overcoming barriers for increasing access…

The need for school-based collaboration has increased over the past decade, and with mandates from the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, this need will continue. The IDEIA requires that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum and…

This article describes efforts at the University of California, San Diego in the Education Studies Program to develop and field-test a teacher preparation program that combines best practices in bilingual education and deaf education. The training curriculum designed for this program relies on research that finds a correlation between ASL fluency…

Research Findings: Quality of care for preschool children in inclusive and noninclusive classrooms was examined in two studies. In Study 1, comparisons across a large sample of classrooms (N = 1, 313) showed that inclusive classrooms were higher than noninclusive classrooms in global quality as well as on two dimensions of quality…

In this article, Klaus Wedell, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, looks back over 35 years of developments in the worlds of special and inclusive education. He engages directly with the complexities--for example, the tensions between the standards agenda and policy on inclusion--that have led some commentators…

In this article, the author presents a summary of a one-day conference organized by Save the Children. The conference aimed to offer a platform from which to identify key issues and barriers to inclusive practice within schools in Northern Ireland, and discussed methodologies to approach these issues through looking at best practice from Britain…

The "Multidimensional Attitudes toward Inclusive Education Scale" (MATIES) was developed to effectively measure affective, cognitive and behavioural aspects of attitudes, within the realm of inclusive education that includes physical, social and curricular inclusion. Models within Item Response Theory and Classical Test Theory were used…

When students are struggling to be successful in the general classroom, collaborative efforts should include planning for academic and social needs. Students with disabilities may display significant social difficulties such as establishing friendships or feelings of isolation and loneliness. Because peer relationships in childhood play a…

We have moved from a period of institutional and facility-based thinking in which people were seen as patients, through an intermediary phase in which these individuals were seen as citizen with disabilities, but who share with all other citizens the potential for, and the right to, full community participation and integration. The movement of…

This book offers support and practical techniques for teachers who work with children with Asperger Syndrome (AS). Based on the successful experiences of classroom teachers, and written from a teacher's perspective, this book provides creative and easy-to-apply strategies that support and encourage AS students in the mainstream classroom, from…

In Britain, since the 1980s, the term "equality of opportunity" has been a major theme at the heart of the government's agenda. Centralisation via the National Curriculum documents has strengthened the idea of "education for all". In terms of many linguistic minority children, mainstreaming and the English as an Additional Language (EAL) provision…