Niet
wetenschappelijk aangetoond dat leerlingen met beperking beter presteren in inclusieve
klassen
Woord
Vooraf
Inge
Wagemakers (UA- dep. Ontwikkelingssamenwerking) beweerde deze morgen in De
Ochtend dat wetenschappelijk bewezen is dat leerlingen met een beperking beter
presteren in een gewone klas. Ook in
publicaties van onze beleidsmakers wordt die indruk meestal gewekt. Zo lezen we
in de recentste brochure (verspreid via Klasse): Inclusief onderwijs moet de eerste optie worden. Het M-decret stuurt
ons onderwijs in deze richting. Op basis van twee bekende overzichtsstudies
moeten we tegenspreken dat volgens
onderzoek incusief onderwijs de beste optie is- ook voor leerlingen die voor
een groot deel de gewone lessen niet kunnen volgen. Die studies staan ook op het Internet.
-
Reviewstudie
van Geoff Lindsay
We
verwezen op ons facebook gisteren al op de reviewstudie van Geoff Linsay. De effectiviteit
van inclusief onderwijs is volgens die recente overzichtsstudie van Geoff
Linsay (op basis van meer dan 100 studies) niet aangetoond! De conclusive luiidt:
"The
evidence from this review does not provide a clear endorsement for the positive
effects of inclusion. There is a lack of evidence from appropriate studies and,
where evidence does exist, the balance was only marginally positive. It is
argued that the policy has been driven by a concern for childrens rights. The
important task now is to research more thoroughly the mediators and moderators
that support the optimal education for children with SEN and disabilities and,
as a consequence, develop an evidence-based approach to these childrens
education." (Educational
psychology and the effectiveness of inclusive education/mainstreaming -Reviewstudy
Studie van Geoff Lindsay* Centre for Educational Development, University of
Warwick)
De
onderzoeker betreurt ook dat de meeste studies uitgevoerd werden door vurige
aanhangers van inclusief onderwijs en dus minder betrouwbaar zijn.
(2)
Reviewstudie van Naomi Zigmond
Where Should Students
with Disabilities receive Special Education Services?
Is One Place Better
Than Another? Naomi Zigmond, University
of Pittsburgh (THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL
EDUCATION VOL. 37/NO. 3/2003/PP. 193199
Abstract
1
: The question of where special education students should be educated is not
new. In this article, the authorreviews research studies and research reviews
that address this question. She argues that research evidence on the relative
efficacy of one special education placement over another is scarce,
methodologically flawed, and inconclusive. She also states that Where should
students with disabilities be educated? is the wrong question to ask, that it
is antithetical to the kind of individualized planning
that should be
embodied in decision making for and with students with disabilities, and that
it fails to
specify where, for what, and for whom.
Abstract
2
: 90% van de leerlingen kan de gewone
lessen grotendeels volgen en daar profijt uit halen. For many of the remaining
10% of students, however, a different orientation will probably be needed.
These students need to learn something different because they are clearly not
learning what everyone else is learning. Interventions that might be effective
for this group of students require a considerable investment of time and
effort, as well as extensive support. Special education in a pull-out setting,
with its emphasis on empirically validated practices and its use of data-based
decision making to tailor instruction to the individual students needs, might
be better for teaching these students.
2.1 Conclusions
Derived From the Empirical Research Base
There is no simple
and straightforward answer to the question of where students with disabilities
should receive their special education instruction. The efficacy research
reviewed here, which spans more than 3 decades, provides no compelling research
evidence that place is the critical factor in the academic or social progress
of students with mild/moderate disabilities. There are probably many reasons
for reaching this conclusion, but I suggest only two. The first has to do with
the body of research evidence itself. The second has to do with the
appropriateness of the question.
Explanation 1:
Research Base Is Insufficient
Despite the fact that
the efficacy research literature on the places where special education services
are provided spans more than 3 decades and that dozens of studies have been
reported in refereed special education journals, Murawski and Swanson (2002)
are right to ask where the data are. Studies worthy of consideration in a
meta-analysis or narrative literature review, with appropriate controls and
appropriate dependent measures, are few and far between. Of course, research on
the efficacy of special education placements is very hard to conduct at all,
let alone to conduct well. For example, definitions of service-delivery models
or settings vary from researcher to researcher, and descriptions of the
treatments being implemented in those models or settings are woefully
inadequate. Random assignment of students to treatments is seldom an option,
and appropriately matched (sufficiently
alike) samples of
experimental and control students and teachers are rare. As a result, where special
education occurs is not a phenomenon that lends itself to precise
investigation, and funding for research studies and publication of results in
refereed journals are difficult to achieve.
Methodologically
Flawed Research.
Research designs used
to explore the effectiveness of different service-delivery models often employ
prepost treatment group designs. The limitations of these research designs for
studying the efficacy of special education have been reported in numerous
previous research reviews, most notably in Kirk (1964) and Semmel, Gottleib,
and Robinson (1979). Some studies use control groups, often samples of students
experiencing traditional
programs (sometimes
referred to as business as usual programs) in nonexperimental schools. In
some studies, the researchers manage to achieve random assignment of students
to treatments, but most use intact groups of students assigned to the teacher
or the school building who volunteered to participate in the experimental
treatment program. Often the experimental treatment is well described, although
degree of implementation is not. Descriptions of the control treatment and its
degree of implementation (if indeed a control group is used) are rarely
provided. Most often, replication is hindered by inadequate descriptions of the
treatments and insufficient monitoring of treatment implementation. Thus, even
if reliable achievement changes are demonstrated in one research study,
difficulty in identifying critical treatment variables makes replicability
impossible in virtually all cases. Achievementgains, or lack there of, cannot
be related to replicable interventions, and the fundamental question of whether
Place Ais better than Place B cannot actually be answered.
Inconclusive
Research.
The accumulated
evidence to date has produced only one unequivocal finding: Languishing in a
general education class where nothing changes and no one pays you any attention
is not as useful to students with mild/moderate learning and behavior disorders
as is getting some help, although it does not seem to matter for students with
mild mental retardation. All other evidence on whether students with
disabilities learn more, academically or socially, and are happier in one
school setting or another is at best inconclusive. Resource programs are more
effective for some students with disabilities than are self-contained special
education classes or self-contained general education classes, but they are
less effective for other students with similar disabilities.
Fully inclusive
programs are superior for some students with disabilities on some measures of
academic or social skills development and inferior for other students or on
other measures. The empirical research not only does not identify one best
place but also often finds equivalent progress being made by students with
disabilities across settings; that is, the research reports nonsignificant
differences in outcomes. Interpreting nonsignificant findings can be tricky. Do
we conclude that the proverbial cup is half full or half empty? Do we
acknowledge that it does not matter where students receive their special
education services and allow parents or school personnel wide berth in making
choices? Or do we proclaim that one setting is preferred over another for philosophical
or moral reasons with empirical evidence that it doesnt hurt?
2.2 Explanation 2:
Efficacy StudiesHave Been Asking the Wrong Question Failure to
Specify Best for Whom?
Special education
has evolved as a means of providing specialized interventions to
students with disabilities based on individual student progress
on individualized objectives. The bedrock of special education is
instruction focused on individual needs. The very concept
of one best place contradicts this commitment to individualization.
Furthermore, results of research on how groups of students
respond to treatment settings does not help the researcher or
practitioner make an individualized decision for an individual
students plan. A better question to ask, if we dare, is best
for whom? or best for which individual students with which
individual profiles of characteristics and needs? Answering this
question requires that we abandon the rhetoric in which we call for all students
to do this, or all students to learn that, or all students
be educated in a certain place.
Special educators
understand about individual differences.
Special educators
understand that no matter how hard they try or how well they are taught, there
are some students who will never be able to learn on the same schedule as most
others, who will take so long to learn some things that they will have to
forego learning other things, or who will need to be taught curricular content
that is not ordinarily taught. Special educators understood this when they
fought hard for the legal requirement of the Individualized Educational Program
for children with disabilities, to permit formulation of unique programs of
instruction to meet unique individual needs. By continuing to ask, What is the
best place? we are ignoring what we know.
Restating the
question as best for whom? would also require new research designs and data
analysis. A first step in that direction might be to reanalyze group design
data at the individual student level. For example, Zigmond et al. (1995)
collected achievement test data for 145 students with LD in three full
inclusion programs and for many of these students nondisabled classmates.
Rather than reporting average growth of the students with LD, the researchers
reported the number and percentage of students with LD who made reliably
significant gains (i.e., gains exceeded the standard error of measurement of
the reading test) during the experimental year. They also reported on the
number and percentage of students with LD whose reading gains matched or
exceeded the average gain of their grade-level peers. Finally, they reported on
the number and percentage of students with LD whose achievement
status (i.e., their
relative standing in the grade-level peer group) had improved during the school
year. These analytic techniques allowed for exploration of setting effects at
an individual level. Waldron and McLeskey (1998) followed this same tactic.
Unfortunately, neither group of researchers took the final step of describing
individual participants in enough detail to permit generalization of the
findings or extrapolation of the findings to the individual case. Nevertheless,
this approach seems more promising than the traditional approaches that have
been used to date in terms of answering the question best for whom?
2.3 Failure to
Specify Best for What?
Different settings
offer different opportunities for teaching and learning. The general education
classroom provides students with disabilities with access to students who do
not have disabilities; access to the curricula and textbooks to which most
other students are exposed; access to instruction from a general education
teacher whose training and expertise are quite different from those of a
special education teacher; access to subject matter content taught by a subject
matter specialist; and access to all of the stresses and strains associated
with the preparation for, taking of, and passing or failing of the statewide
assessments. If the goal is to have students learn content subject information
or how to interact with nondisabled peers, the general education setting is the
best place.
Pull-out settings
allow for smaller teacherstudent ratios and flexibility in the selection of
texts, choice of curricular objectives, pacing of instruction, scheduling of
examinations, and assignment of grades. Special education pull-out settings
allow students to learn different content in different ways and on a different
schedule. A pull-out special education setting may be most appropriate if students
need (a) intensive instruction in basic academic skills well beyond the grade
level at which nondisabled peers are learning how to read or do basic
mathematics, (b) explicit instruction in controlling behavior or interacting
with peers and adults, or (c) to learn anything that is not customarily taught
to everyone else.
If educators value
education that is different and special and want to preserve that feature of
special education, it is legitimate to ask whether the general education
classroom can be transformed to support this desire. Or, as Fuchs and Fuchs
(1995) asked, Can general education become special education? (p. 528) Their
experience (and mine) strongly suggests that the answer to this question is
no. Attempts to transport teaching methods that were developed and validated
in special education to general education settings have not been successful.
Instructional
practices that focus on individual decision making for individual students and
improve outcomes of students with severe learning problems are not easily
transposed into practices that can survive in a general education classroom.
General educators will make instructional adaptations in response to students
persistent failure to learn, but the accommodations are typically oriented to
the group, not to the individual, and are relatively minor in substance, with
little chance for helping students with chronically poor learning histories
(Zigmond & Baker, 1995).
Over and over again,
researchers and staff development personnel have come to recognize that general
education teachers have a different set of assumptions about the form and
function of education than do special educators. General educators cannot
imagine focusing intensively on individual students to the extent that different
instructional activities for different students are being implemented at the
same time. This is simply impractical in a classroom of 25 to 35 students.
Moreover, special educations most basic article of faith, that instruction
must be individualized to be truly effective, is rarely contemplated, let alone
observed, in most general education classrooms. Mainstream teachers must
consider the good of the group and the extent to which the learning activities
they present maintain classroom flow, orderliness, and cooperation. In
addition, they generally formulate teaching plans that result in a productive
learning environment for 90% or more of their students. General education
settings are best
for learning what
most students need to learn. For many of the remaining 10% of students,
however, a
different orientation
will probably be needed. These students need to learn something different
because they are clearly not learning what everyone else is learning.
Interventions that might be effective for this group of students require a
considerable investment of time and effort, as well as extensive support.
Special education in a pull-out setting, with its emphasis on empirically
validated practices and its use of data-based decision making to tailor
instruction to the individual students needs, might be better for teaching
these students.
2.4 Conclusion
As early as 1979,
federal monitoring of state programs was put into place to guard against not
only too much segregation of students with disabilities but also inappropriate
mainstreaming (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1979, p. 39).
Although most would agree that students with mild and moderate disabilities
should spend a large proportion of the school day with peers without
disabilities, research does not support the superiority of any one
service-delivery model over another. Furthermore, effectiveness depends notonly
on the characteristics and needs of a particular student but also on the
quality of the programs implementation. A poorly run model with limited
resources will seldom be superior to a model in which there is a heavy
investment of time, energy, and money.
Good programs can be
developed in any setting, as can bad ones. The setting itself is less important
than what is going on in the setting. Reflecting on the 35 years of efficacy
research on the settings in which special education is delivered that I have
reviewed in this article, what do we know? We know that what goes on in a
place, not the location itself, is what makes a difference. We know that you
learn what you spend time on and that most students with disabilities will not
learn to read or to write or to calculate if they are not explicitly taught
these skills. We know that some instructional practices are easier to implement
and more likely to occur in some settings than in others. We know that we need
more research that asks better and more focused questions about who learns what
best where. In addition, we know that we need to explore new research designs
and new data analysis techniques that will help us bridge the gap between
efficacy findings and decision makingon placements for individual students.
In response to the
query of what is special about special education, I can say with some certainty
that place is not what makes special education special or effective.
Effective teaching strategies and an individualized approach are the more
critical ingredients in special education, and neither of these is associated
solely with one particular environment. Educators must also remember that
research has shown that typical general education environments are not
supportive places in which to implement what we know to be effective teaching
strategies for students with disabilities (e.g., Zigmond, 1996).
Considering the research
evidence to date, it is clear that placement decisions must continue to be made
by determining whether a particular placement option will support the effective
instructional practices that are required for a particular child to achieve his
or her individual objectives and goals. The search for the best place in which
to receive special education services has tended to be fueled by passion and
principle, rather than by reason and rationality. Until educators are ready to
say that receiving special education services in a particular setting is good
for some students with disabilities but not for others, that different
educational environments are more conducive to different forms of teaching and
learning, that different students need to learn different things in different ways,
and that traditional group research designs may not capture these individual
differences in useful ways, we may never get beyond the equivocal findings
reported here. We may even fail to realize that, in terms of the best place to
receive special education and related services, we have probably been asking
the wrong questions.
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