According to recent studies, it has been proven that students with disabilities benefit in various developmental areas when they are included in classrooms with their typically developing peers. In the year Two Thousand, Annette Holahan and Virginia Costenbader conducted a study where they compared the developmental gains of preschool aged children in both inclusive and self-contained classrooms. The study consisted of fifteen matched pairs of students. Students were matched on a variety of criteria including time spent in school, level of functioning, age/gender, and services provided. In each pair, one student was enrolled in an inclusive classroom while the other was enrolled in a self-contained classroom. Inclusive classrooms in this study
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These researchers believed that human development is influenced by a variety of factors that exist at multiple system levels. These included characteristics of the child, characteristics of the family and the child’s environment. The study they conducted consisted of ninety-six preschool aged children with disabilities attending a community based preschool program in New York State. Seventy-one percent of these students were male and eighty-seven percent of them were Caucasian. The average age of a participant was forty-seven months. (Rafferty, Piscitelli, Boettcher 2003). Seventy-one percent of these students were enrolled in an inclusive program while the remaining twenty-nine percent were enrolled in self-contained settings. In the inclusive setting, there were twelve to eighteen students per room. Sixty-five percent of these students were considered to have a disability. The self-contained rooms offered a much smaller class size of six students, all with disabilities. (Rafferty et. al 2003). To measure student development, researchers used a series of standardized tests. These tests were administered in October and May in order to compare the data before and after participating in either an inclusive or self-contained program. The Social Skills …show more content…
The study followed six students who took part in inclusive early childhood programs. Each of these students was diagnosed with autism according to the DSM III (Strain & Hoyson 2000). Additionally, each of these students met other behavioral criteria to ensure the presence of significant needs in the areas of communicative, adaptive, and social functioning. The participants’ entry scores on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale(CARS) placed them in the moderate to severe range of autism (Strain & Hoyson 2000). Initial scores on the Learning Accomplishment Profile, which provides a systematic method for observing children in assessing individual skill development in gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, and language development, indicated that their rate of development was equivalent to approximately two-thirds of their chronological age (Strain & Hoyson 2000). Using the data collected on these six participants, researchers in this study sought out to prove that social skill intervention should be imbedded in early intervention programs in order to yield the most
These researchers believed that human development is influenced by a variety of factors that exist at multiple system levels. These included characteristics of the child, characteristics of the family and the child’s environment. The study they conducted consisted of ninety-six preschool aged children with disabilities attending a community based preschool program in New York State. Seventy-one percent of these students were male and eighty-seven percent of them were Caucasian. The average age of a participant was forty-seven months. (Rafferty, Piscitelli, Boettcher 2003). Seventy-one percent of these students were enrolled in an inclusive program while the remaining twenty-nine percent were enrolled in self-contained settings. In the inclusive setting, there were twelve to eighteen students per room. Sixty-five percent of these students were considered to have a disability. The self-contained rooms offered a much smaller class size of six students, all with disabilities. (Rafferty et. al 2003). To measure student development, researchers used a series of standardized tests. These tests were administered in October and May in order to compare the data before and after participating in either an inclusive or self-contained program. The Social Skills …show more content…
The study followed six students who took part in inclusive early childhood programs. Each of these students was diagnosed with autism according to the DSM III (Strain & Hoyson 2000). Additionally, each of these students met other behavioral criteria to ensure the presence of significant needs in the areas of communicative, adaptive, and social functioning. The participants’ entry scores on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale(CARS) placed them in the moderate to severe range of autism (Strain & Hoyson 2000). Initial scores on the Learning Accomplishment Profile, which provides a systematic method for observing children in assessing individual skill development in gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, and language development, indicated that their rate of development was equivalent to approximately two-thirds of their chronological age (Strain & Hoyson 2000). Using the data collected on these six participants, researchers in this study sought out to prove that social skill intervention should be imbedded in early intervention programs in order to yield the most