To successfully reach out to a diversity of learners requires substantial support. The Digest addresses some sources of support intended as a complement to and a scaffold for teachers and administrators who experiment with different ways of meeting a diversity of learning needs. It highlights ways in which classroom teachers and learning center…

This curriculum guide provides classroom organizational guidelines, activities, and lesson plans to promote social interaction and the development of social competence in preschool children with disabilities or at risk for developmental problems or delays. The program is designed to include peers who are either developing normally or have higher…

The Consortium on Inclusive Schooling Practices (1996) developed a framework to analyze state and local policies and their relationship to the development of inclusive schooling practices. The framework focuses on standards-based systemic reform across six major policy areas: curriculum, student assessment, accountability, personnel development…

This paper describes several tools that the regular and special education teacher can use to ensure that modifications for students with hearing impairments in the regular classroom are both available and of sufficient quality. First, the Mainstream Success Index, an aid to interpreting test scores for the purpose of making educational decisions,…

This paper discusses the results from 20 interviews over 10 years with therapeutic support staff members (TSSs) who revealed practices that they successfully implemented while working in inclusionary classrooms with students who had severe behavior challenges. All of the interviewees had Bachelor's degrees in behavior modification. They all worked…

This study examined the perceptions of alienation among special and general education teachers and measured the level of alienation between special education teachers assigned to inclusion vs. self-contained/resource classrooms. Teachers (N=575, 395 general education teachers, 180 special education teachers) in grades K-12 from a metropolitan…

The six stages of the concerns-based adoption model (CBAM) (G. Hall, R. Wallace, and W. Dossett, 1973) are the context for examining how one school sought to implement an inclusive vision of diversity within a gifted school program. The CBAM model informed the leadership style of the principal, but was not actually articulated as the model that…

This paper examines the preventive model in special education and applies it to the assessment of gifted students and the delivery of educational services to them. First, characteristics of the model are identified, which include emphasis on the interaction between the learner and the environment, use of both formal and informal assessments, and…

This paper discusses the preliminary findings of Project DESTINY (Designing Educational Support Teams through Interdisciplinary Networks for Youth with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders), a three-year project designed to evaluate models for school-based service delivery to students with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD). The sample for the…

This set of five guides is intended to help general education teachers facilitate the instruction and inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. Each of these five guides has: a letter to the teacher that introduces the content; a list of 10 guidelines-at-a-glance; a set of the guidelines, each on a separate page, suitable for…

This study evaluated the attitudes and beliefs of 68 undergraduate preservice teachers in the fourth year of a teacher training program at the National Institute of Education (Singapore). The preservice teachers completed a survey of attitudes toward different assumptions of inclusion, perceptions of self-efficacy, and competence. Results suggest…

This study assessed which factors early childhood regular education classroom teachers, grades kindergarten through third, perceive as promoting or hindering the successful practice of inclusion. Three research questions formed the basis of this study: (1) How do early childhood classroom teachers (K-3) describe their perceptions of inclusion? (2)…

This paper describes three classroom settings in which students with disabilities were successfully and fully included. In the first setting, a multi-age classroom has been established for first and second grade students with mild disabilities, students at-risk for academic failure, and typically developing students. A general education teacher, a…

This document clarifies the credentials necessary for people who wish to work in various capacities with young children, focusing on the required early childhood teacher certification and/or licensure for programs under the responsibility of the Ohio Department of Education. The document covers the following areas: selected questions on teacher…

This paper describes a professional development model, which emerged from two projects, that had professional development of teachers as an important component. The first project, Project Lighthouse, was designed to facilitate the inclusion of students with disabilities into general education classrooms. In this project, faculty and staff…