Inclusion in the Classroom: The Teaching Methods
Melady A. Sherrill
ENG 102
07/10/2011
Heidi Ashbaugh

Inclusion in the Classroom: The Teaching Methods

Inclusion is the best way to meet the needs of all the children involved in a classroom setting. A teacher’s role and teaching methods need to change in an inclusion classroom. Inclusion provides the diversity of processing special education children in with the mainstream children to enrich the learning environment. Inclusion means the act or practice of including students with disabilities in regular school classes (Merriam Webster, 2011). Although research on the long term effects of inclusion may be sketchy, there is some evidence of the positive effects of inclusive education on the students who are not disabled.

When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandated that children with disabilities be educated with the children who did not have a disability, education in the United States changed (ED.gov). Before this act, few classrooms included students with disabilities. As late as the middle 1970s, an estimated one million children with disabilities did not even attend school (Inclusion Confusion, 1999). Special education changed with the passage of the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and its 1997 amendments. This legislation moved children with special needs from their separate rooms into regular classrooms. To meet the demands of the IDEA, schools must provide students with a chance to be in a mainstream classroom environment before placing them in a special education classroom.

Recently there was a reform movement passed by Congress that requires schools to a level of standards by the school year of 2013-2014. This legislation passed is called “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB). The No Child Left behind Act was a massive revision to the Elementary and