The Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is one of the six elements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The practice, definition, and intention have been debated throughout its history. This study focuses on the elementary school educators' understanding and perspectives on how LRE affects how they support students with…

Historically, students who are identified with a learning disability have struggled with the acquisition of new material. Co-teaching is a model of instruction in which a certified special education teacher works alongside a content teacher to deliver instruction within an inclusion classroom. This research project used a qualitative methodology…

When special education was first introduced into the general education environment, students were served in separate classrooms. Throughout the years, special education services have evolved and students with mild to moderate disabilities are now educated alongside their non-disabled peers. The foundation of the social interdependence theory is…

The education of students with disabilities has been subject to consistent growth and reform within the United States. Federal acts and initiatives continue to pave the way towards increasingly inclusive educational programs. Mainstreaming, the process of providing students in special education access to the same resources as their similar-grade…

Students identified as special education are being placed in general education classes with a plan for modifications and accommodations and expected to achieve academic success at the same rate as their on-level counterparts. However, they still continue to lag behind in literacy achievement by about 3.4 years. The purpose of this study was to…

The current study explores the parental perspectives of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) on the effectiveness of inclusive education in Greek mainstream schools. The participants were 83 parents, whose children had different degrees of ID and all of them were attending mainstream schools at the time of the study. They completed a…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates that all school districts provide a free appropriate public education to students with Individualized Education Plans in their least restrictive environment. Co-teaching in inclusion classrooms is a collaborative effort, with a general education teacher and a special education teacher, to…

New York State adopted regulations that mandate collaboration among ESOL and content teachers in integrated periods where ELLs are mainstreamed into general education classes. We documented trends in elementary and ESOL teachers' co-teaching practices across 3 years of state policy implementation. Findings revealed that even with limited…

Education specialists are strongly advocating the use of collaborative teaching (co-teaching) approaches to facilitate the inclusion of pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in mainstream settings. The current study analysed the impact of co-teaching on the numeracy attainment of students in two, mixed-gender Irish primary classes (N = 45;…

Co-teaching has emerged as a strategy for ensuring that SWDs are taught to the general education curriculum while receiving specially designed instruction within the least restrictive environment (LRE) appropriate to their needs. One of the most important components of co-teaching is the relationship between the two teachers (Kohler-Evans, 2006),…

This study investigates collaborative attitudes and practices in mainstream Italian schools. Research questions are the following: what kind of teachers' and students' collaboration occurs in inclusive settings? To what extent did significant differences exist among general education teachers and support education teachers? To what extent did…

Before there were children with disabilities in typical schools in North America, there was only hope and need. Before the creation of highly specialized plans of education, individualized instruction techniques, methods of differentiating group instruction or regulations mandating the adherence to government regulations, there were only families,…

Heterotopias are complex spaces characterized by the collision of the real (i.e., physical realm--who and what materials are present) and unreal (i.e., abstract realm--socially created meanings and understandings of the "real"; Foucault, 1986; Topinka, 2010). The early childhood classroom is a heterotopia in that it is a knowledge…

This paper presents some of the emerging outcomes from the experiences of a Maltese school that decided to embrace the philosophy of inclusion using a whole school approach based on the social model of disability. This was a qualitative study based on focus groups. A thematic analysis was used within an interpretative approach of hermeneutic…

Purpose: Following recent federal legislation and related policy changes, co-teaching evolved rapidly as a strategy to provide students with disabilities access to the same curriculum as students without disabilities while receiving instruction in the least restrictive environment. It is unclear if co-teaching is an effective instructional…