Special Education and Inclusion Practices

Learning Objectives (Baseline Assessment)

• Different developmental disorders
• Difficulties/needs to be integrated in the classroom
• How to act as a teacher
• Types of activities to display
• Managing complicated situations
• Improving teaching quality
• Teaching without making students feel different
• Teaching in the best possible way

Recent Approaches to Special Education

• Special needs, educational support, and inclusive schooling
• Diversity as an inherent phenomenon in education

Relevance of Human Development as a Starting Point

• What is considered regular/normal?
• When to take action
• Difference between temporary difficulty and disorder
• Role of the teacher, what teachers can do

Educational Inclusion

• Educational inclusion is the set of educational actions and measures aimed at removing learning barriers for all students.
• It considers diverse capacities, learning styles, motivations, interests, personal, social, economic, cultural, and linguistic situations without equating difference to inferiority.
• It aims to encourage maximum personal development potential and abilities.

Visible Thinking Project

• Students choose a color, symbol, or image representing an idea.
• They explain their choice.

Inclusion

• Inclusion is about valuing all students' participation and backgrounds, experiences, skills, abilities, and more.

Special Education Evolution

• Special education has changed during the 20th century.
• Important transformations occurred due to the evolution of special education systems from the ordinary educational system.

Students' Needs

• Learning difficulties
• Personal variations
• Environmental influence
• School responsibilities

In Ancient Times

• Quotes from famous philosophers on the topic of special education

Historical Development of Special Education

• Period 1900-1940: Determinism
• Organic causes and inborn issues for disability.
• Period 1940-1950: Consequences of the previous period
• Discussion about disorders' origin.
• Period 1960-1990: Deep transformations
• New concept of developmental disorders
• New perspective on learning processes
• Review of psychometric assessment
• Teachers training
• Extension of education
• School failure
• Redefining the boundary between normality and impairment
• Assessment of special education schools
• Positive experiences of integration
• Greater sensitivity to disability
• Perspective grounded on educational needs
• Educational integration

Educational Special Needs

• Warnock Report (1978) and LOGSE (1990) in Spain.
• Definition: Students with a learning problem in schooling needing more attention and resources than their peers.

Warnock Report and Conceptual Foundations

• All children have educational needs.
• All children have the right to education.
• No child should be considered ineducable.
• Education aims are the same for every child.
• Special education is for understanding the needs and adapting to them, to achieve common objectives.

Definition Characteristics

• Continuum of learners with varying severity of needs.
• Severity can change over time and depending on the cause.
• Relative and contextual.

Current Terminology

• Specific Educational Support Needs (ACNEAES in Spanish).
• Instead of special educational needs, now we focus on specific support needs.

Types of ACNEAES

• Educational special needs: disability, serious behavioral disorders
• High capacities
• Late integration into the educational system
• Specific learning difficulties
• Personal conditions and school history

Attention to Diversity Measures

• Ordinary measures: affect general center organization.
• Extraordinary measures: significantly alter objectives, contents, and criteria.

Ordinary Measures of Attention to Diversity

• Organization of student groups
• Strategies for universal access
• Different learning rhythms support mechanisms
• Classroom support
• Group splitting and flexible grouping
• Methodological strategies
• Adapting curriculum materials

Extraordinary Measures of Attention to Diversity

• Significant curricular adaptations
• Educational level or stage flexibility
• Basic vocational training.
• Learning and performance improvement programs (PMAR)
• Flexibility of permanence in educational level or stage.

High Intellectual Capacities Students

• Identify and assess gifted students.
• Develop action plans, and curricular enrichment programs.
• School flexibility.
• Teaching content and skills of higher courses.
• Pace and learning style of students

Late Incorporation Students

• Schooling for late entry according to circumstances like knowledge, age, and academic history.
• Specific attention to language deficiencies
• Lower grade schooling for significant curricular gaps.

Diversity in the Inclusive School

• Two ways to respond to diversity: positive (celebrating difference) and negative (discrimination).
• Diversity is a social fact with diverse facets.
• Cultural diversity
• Diversity of capabilities
• Sexual orientation diversity
• Gender diversity
• Socioeconomic diversity
• The school as a welcoming environment with social spaces of belonging, where each student is recognized.

Center Functioning as a Truly Inclusive Environment

• Offer varied, accessible, complementary and extracurricular activities.
• Use technological resources.
• Coordinate support for student development.

Student Needs and Support (Specific Details)

• Special needs: reduction of students per classroom, support from specialized teachers, and flexibility of permanence in educational level/stage.
• High intellectual abilities: adaptation to higher courses, pace/learning style, and curricular enrichment measures.
• Late incorporation students: specific attention to language, lower grade schooling if necessary.

This quiz explores key concepts in special education and inclusive practices in compulsory education. It covers adaptations, support measures for students with learning difficulties, and the role of teachers in creating inclusive classrooms. Test your knowledge on how educational inclusion can be effectively implemented and the challenges faced in the process.