Special Education: Strategies, Challenges and Practices

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Special education refers to the education offered to individuals with exceptional needs with the aim of meeting their personal requirements. It entails the use of specially designed and systematically supervised system of teaching.

It also involves the use of resources, modified devices as well as accessible teaching environment to enable the learners with unique needs to realize self-reliance and achievement at school and in their society. For this reason, special education is meant to offer extra support, programs and a distinctive educational setting to meet the needs of the special students.

More often than not, the support of the special programs is offered by both the government and non-governmental organizations.

This essay focuses on special education, and critically analyzes the various cases of special students, the appropriate instruction strategies and the challenges facing special education today. The paper seeks to identify the best practices of handling students with special needs (Jorgensen, 1998).

The History of Special Education

The concern of special education dates back from World War II with the rise of parent-organized groups which advocated for it. Among the pioneer unions advocating for education for the disadvantaged was the American Association on Mental Deficiency. This organization convened its first conference in 1947. Several other parental unions had cropped up by 1950.

These organizations were mostly supported by civil rights organizations such as Muscular Dystrophy Association, The Panel on Mental Retardation by John F. Kennedy and the United Cerebral Palsy Association. At the beginning of 1960, several schools offering special education had been established both at the local and state levels.

The current history of special education in USA can be attributed to the intensive public awareness at that time. It started with the Congressional endorsement of the ‘Education for All Handicapped Children Act’ in 1975.

This act was meant to support local as well as the states to shield the rights of all the children with disabilities together with their relatives (Jerry, 2010). The adoption of this law in 1977, turned out to be the legal basis for financial support for the special education.

The law necessitated that all public schools should offer relevant public education to children with disabilities, such as mental disorders, emotional and behavioral problems, handicaps, speech and visual disorders, as well as other learning problems at no cost in 1983; the decree was expanded to encompass public awareness.

Shortly after, early intervention programs for children at the preschool level were also included. In 1990, the support and eligibility services were developed and the act was named as The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which has been expounded and developed to date.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act stipulates the different kinds of learners who qualify to be in the institutions offering special education (Jerry, 2010).

According to this law, the most critical special needs are autism, physical disabilities, developmental retardation emotional disorders, hearing impairments, mental disorders, speech impairments, visual impairments among others.

Identifying Students with Unique Needs

More often than not, children with the most obvious idiosyncrasies are detected to be having special needs by their doctors. Some of these obvious disorders include visual or hearing impairments, genetic disorders, brain damage, developmental retardation, among others (Pardini, 2002).

However, for the students whose special cases are not easily noticed as in individuals with learning impediments, there are two main ways for detecting such needs. These methods include the response to intervention model and the discrepancy model.

The discrepancy model relies on the instructor to detect the learner’s retarded academic performance. Conversely, the response to intervention model calls for earlier intercession of the learner’s poor academic performance.

The Discrepancy Model

With regards to the discrepancy model, in case a student has a normal intellect and his or her academic performance is below the teacher’s anticipation, the instructor offers specialized educational assistance within the area presenting difficulties.

However, the discrepancy model has encountered severe criticism among scholars. The critics argue that detecting students with learning problems using the discrepancy approach does not determine the degree of success in the treatment (Pardini, 2002).

It is also argued that the model does not consider the difference between the slow learners with a low intelligent quotient from low academic achievers with a normal intelligence quotient (Sharon, 2010).

The Intervention Model

This model entails detecting children who portray learning problems within their early years at school and offering specialized support which include remedial lessons. The manner in which the children respond then establishes if they have learning disabilities.

Children found to have learning problems may then receive extra help. As a matter of fact, offering remedial lessons during the first years at school can considerably reduce the number of children who go through the special program of education.

Establishing Individual Needs

A program for special education ought to be modified in such a way that it looks into the personal needs of all students. The instructors should offer a variety of services, where the special students obtain varying levels of services depending on their personal requirements.

These programs should be tailored in such a way that they are able to attend to the distinctive variety of a student’s needs. While dealing with a student’s individual need, it is appropriate to first determine his/her personal strengths and weaknesses. The environment resources and the goals of a student’s needs are then established.

Adjustment to the normal program may involve alterations within the curriculum, provision of extra equipments, and the supply of specialized physical adjustments that facilitate maximum student participation within the school setting. For instance, in case the evaluation indicates that a student cannot see, the school should consider providing the brail equipment to facilitate completion of schoolwork.

Moreover, in case the educator feels that the normal school activities abstract the other learners then they should consider moving the special learners into a resource room (Jorgensen, 1998).

Instructional Strategies

A wide range of instructional methodologies are employed while dealing with individual special students. These instructional practices can be categorized into two classes; modification and accommodation. Accommodation involves making appropriate adjustments to teaching practices so that the special learners are exposed to similar content with other learners, but in a way that is easily available to the special learner.

For instance, a school may accommodate a child with visual impairment by offering a large-print text. On the other hand, modification may involve altering the content with the aim of simplifying it. Modification also entails adjusting the complexity of the content and the method of assessing the learner.

For instance, an educator may adjust a comprehension task for a student with reading problems by giving a brief and simpler book. Other examples of modification may include omitting some subjects, provision of extra learning aids and provision of extra learning time.

Methods of Provision

Different schools employ different methodologies to avail unique educational assistance to the students with disabilities. These approaches can be categorized into three main groups, depending on the degree of the students needs as discussed below.

The Inclusion Approach

This is where learners with special academic needs spend most of their day time together with the other learners who have no exceptional needs. Since such integration can necessitate considerable adjustment of the broad curriculum, several schools employ it while dealing with students who portray mild special requirements.

Specific assistance is either offered within or outside the usual classroom lessons, depending on the kind of assistance needed.

More often than not, the learners leave the usual classrooms and go to their resource rooms when they need to attend to more demanding activities that may call for specific tools or when they may cause some form of disruption to the other learners as in when giving instructions on physical or speech therapies. This may also happen when the students require privacy, as in counseling sessions (Libby, 1990).

Mainstreaming

This approach involves the system of teaching learners who require specialized attention together with those who do not require the specialized attention within a given time span during the day, depending on their skills, after which they are separated from the others in the other part of the day (Libby, 1990).

Segregation

This is where students with special needs are exclusively put in different classrooms from the non-disabled learners. In this strategy, students who require special attention are isolated from the rest other non-disabled students.

Nevertheless, the isolated students may attend to schools offering ordinary programs, but spend all their instructional time in different classes. In such cases, students with special needs are given opportunities to socially integrate with other students when they are outside their classrooms, for instance while taking meals (Libby, 1990).

Specific Technology Associated with Special Education

Since special education is meant to cater for students who have special educational needs that result from learning difficulties, physical disabilities or behavioral problems, special schools should be specially designed, adequately staffed and properly financed for effective learning. The learning should focus on individual learners and attend to their explicit needs.

Moreover, the teacher-student ratio should be kept as low as possible, depending on the particular needs of each student. These schools should also incorporate special equipments as well as facilities for effective growth of children with special needs. Such amenities may include modified swimming pools, sensory rooms, and adapted play grounds which are essential for enhancing therapies in particular conditions (Sharon, 2010).

Challenges Experienced In Special Education

Special education has had its own share of challenges. For instance, it has been argued that, integrating the special students with those who have no special needs may slow down the overall academic performance in these schools.

On the other hand, some special education programs have been associated with a weak curriculum (Frank, 2004). In addition, some cultures still deny the disabled students access to education. In other cases, the special education programs lack enough finances to support the diverse requirements of the learners with special needs.

Sometimes, the special education programs have overlooked the most fundamental cognitive problems in the students with special needs. As a matter of fact, the main causes of most learning difficulties are not the major disabilities such as visual and hearing defects but rather, a large number of students going through the special education programs have fragile cognitive ability (Frank, 2004).

For this reason, it is of great importance that the educators of these students are able to timely spot and develop these cognitive skills in order to effectively deal with learning difficulties.

In conclusion, education should be accessible to all students regardless of their abilities. For this reason all parents who have children with any special need should ensure that they provide them with relevant education.

The special students should benefit from both modifications and accommodations strategies of instruction in order to access academic content, to access the learning environment and gain emotional realization.

Currently, majority of the children with special needs are increasingly attending ordinary schools with regular programs. However, some cases such as mental retardation cannot be effectively handled within the regular classroom environment and thus calls for a demanding specialized method of instruction as well as resources to offer maximum support.

Thus, such students should go through segregated programs which offer specialized education such as specialized methods of teaching, use of special technology, and a unique learning environment. However, in future, the special education programs should not put too much emphasis on the students’ academic performance but rather to other individual strengths such as sports.

The programs should also encompass the latest technologies in order to assist the students with special needs to achieve their objectives.

Reference List

Frank, B (2004). Making Inclusion Work. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.

Jerry, W. (2010) What the law requires for disabled students: The Oakland Press.

Jorgensen, C. (1998). Restructuring high school for all students: Taking inclusion to the next level. Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks Publishing co.

Libby, G. (1990). Time and learning in the special education classroom. Albany, N.Y. State University of New York Press. p. 122.

Pardini, P. (2002). The History of Special Education. Rethinking Schools. Web.

Sharon, O. (2010). A Struggle to Educate the Severely Disabled. The New York Times. Web.

Click Here To Order Now!