Mainstreaming, in the context of education, is the practice of placing students with special needs in a general education classroom during specific time periods based on their skills. Definition of mainstreaming, accessed October 11, 2007. Archived 2009-11-01. This means students who are a part of the special education classroom will join the regular education classroom at certain times which are fitting for the special education student. These students may attend art or physical education in the regular education classrooms. Sometimes these students will attend math and science in a separate classroom, but attend English in a general education classroom. Schools that practice mainstreaming believe that students with special needs who cannot function in a general education classroom to a certain extent belong in the special education environment. Mainstreaming: "Special needs students "belong" in the special classroom", accessed October 16, 2007
Access to a special education classroom, mostly called a "separate classroom or resource room", is valuable to the student with a disability. Students have the ability to work one-to-one with special education teachers, addressing any need for remediation during the school day. Many researchers, educators and parents have advocated the importance of these classrooms amongst political environments that favor their elimination.
Oftentimes mainstreamed students will have certain supports they will bring to the general education classroom. A common support is to bring a one-on-one aide to assist them. Other equipment may be tools from their special education classroom that assist them in keeping up with the demands of the general education classroom. This may be a device that helps a deaf student communicate with their peers, a special chair for a student diagnosed with Down syndrome, or a special desk for a student that is in a wheelchair. Some of these students may need accommodations on assignments or tests.
Proponents of both the philosophy of educational inclusion assert that educating children with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers fosters understanding and tolerance, better preparing students of all abilities to function in the world beyond school.IDEA Funding Coalition, "IDEA Funding: Time for a New Approach," Mandatory Funding Proposal, Feb. 20 2001, p. 2. Children with special needs may face social stigma as a result of being mainstreamed, but also may help them socially develop.
There is often much confusion between the terms mainstreaming and inclusion. Often these terms are used interchangeably, but they mean two very different things. Mainstreamed students are part of the special education classroom. When they enter the regular education classroom for certain subjects, this is considered mainstreaming. In comparison, inclusion students are regular education classroom students who receive special education services. The determination of whether a student's education is mainstreamed or inclusive is often based on which setting constitutes the least restrictive environment, as specified in the student's individualized education program (IEP). Dr. Kenneth Shore comments on the least restrictive environment by claiming, "Determining what is the least restrictive environment for a particular student requires balancing the need for the child to learn to integrate socially with his non-disabled peers with the need for the child to receive instruction appropriate to his abilities."
Advantages
Benefits to students with disabilities
Higher academic achievement: Mainstreaming has shown to be more academically effective than exclusion practices.Special Education Inclusion For instance, the National Center for Learning Disabilities found that the graduation rate for students with learning disabilities was 70.8% for the 2013-2014 year, although this report does not differentiate between students enrolled in mainstreaming, inclusive, or segregated programs. Access to a resource room for direct instruction has shown to be effective in increasing students' academic skills and thus increasing the abilities applied by students in a general education setting. Compared to full-time placement in a special education class or special school, both part-time and full-time placement in the regular classroom have been shown to improve academic achievement in students with mild academic disabilities, as well as to improve their long-term behavior. Better social skills: Any kind of inclusion practice, including mainstreaming, allows students with disabilities to learn social skills through observation, gain a better understanding of the world around them, and become a part of the "regular" community. Mainstreaming is particularly beneficial for children with autism and ADHD. By interacting with same-aged non-disabled children, children with autism were observed to be six times more likely to engage in social relations outside of the classroom. Because children with autism spectrum disorders have severely restricted interests and abnormalities in communication and social interaction, the increased interaction with typical children may be beneficial to them. The same 1999 study showed that students with Down syndrome were three times more likely to communicate with other people.
Mainstreaming also benefits other children. It opens the lines of communication between those students with disabilities and their peers. If they are included into classroom activities, all students become more sensitive to the fact that these students may need extra assistance.
Benefits to non-disabled students There is research that suggests that educating non-disabled students and students with disabilities together creates an atmosphere of understanding and tolerance that better prepares students of all abilities to function in the world beyond school. Students without disabilities who engaged in an inclusive physical education program reported increases in self-concept, tolerance, self-worth, and a better understanding of other people. The students also reported that the inclusion program was important because it prepared them to deal with disability in their own lives. Positive aspects that come from inclusion are often attributed to contact theory. Contact theory asserts that frequent, meaningful, and pleasant interactions between people with differences tend to produce changes in attitude.
Disadvantages Although mainstreaming in education has been shown to provide benefits, there are also disadvantages to the system.
Tradeoff with non-disabled students' academic education One potentially serious disadvantage to mainstreaming is that a mainstreamed student may require much more attention from the teacher than non-disabled students in a general class. Time and attention may thus be taken away from the rest of the class to meet the needs of a single student with special needs. The effect that a mainstreamed student has on the whole class depends strongly on the particular disabilities in question and the resources available for support. In many cases, this problem can be mitigated by placing an aide in the classroom to assist the student with special needs, although this raises the costs associated with educating this child.Manzitti, Edward T.; The added cost of an aide in a classroom to meet needs of special education students can be offset by not funding a teacher in a wholly separate classroom when mainstreaming does not occur.
Teachers are encouraged to teach the entire class differently. This includes being less abstract and more concrete in content, changing lighting, simplifying the design of the classroom, and having a predictable structure and routine rather than novelty.
Harm to the academic education of students with disabilities Some research has suggested that teachers who are not aware of students' special needs, later may choose not to adopt the required modifications. More so, they develop higher resistance to having these students in class.Joyce, B.,& Weil, M. (1986). Models of Teaching (3rd ed.) Boston: Allyn & Bacon. This however can lead to regression of the students with disabilities as well as an overall decrease in classroom productivity.
Teacher–student interactions It has been seen that general educators provide 98.7% of their teaching time doing whole class interactions. Students with disabilities have been known to require a significant more amount of individual attention with the classroom teacher. Children with disabilities spend twice as much time in whole-class activities as in one-to-one activities due to the amount of whole-class teaching, yet these students are half as likely to engage in whole-class learning activities such as writing, reading and participating, showing that whole group activities do not meet the needs of students with disabilities as much as individual work would. It is reported that mainstreamed students receive a larger proportion of the classroom teachers' total time than regular education students. However this did not result in an increase in academic instructional time. Mainstreamed students in low-ability classes receive more nonacademic correction from the classroom teacher compared to mainstreamed students in average and above-average classes or regular education students. Resulting in students with special education needs (SEN) spending 25% of their time working outside of the classroom, and a reduction of teacher interaction in a whole class setting from 30% to 22%. Therefore, mainstreamed students will spend time in a resource room where they can receive more individualized attention from teachers. In contrast, there has been an increase of the number of teaching assistants (TAs) in mainstream primary settings to assist the learning and inclusion of students with SEN. Interactions with TAs has become an integral part of educational experience for students with SEN, resulting in TA interactions comprising up to a fifth of all observations students with SEN experience. Observations show that the higher the level of student SEN, the more likely it is that the student will interact more with a TA than their classroom teacher. A survey conducted in the UK (2000), composed of 300 teachers found that two-thirds of students with SEN were regularly working with TAs for an average of 3.7 hours per week. Therefore, the use of TAs to support students with SEN has become an established part of academics in a mainstream setting, and interactions with TAs comprise a key part of their day-to-day classroom experience. The survey concluded that TAs were used as alternative to teacher support, which has shown to result in unintended and troubling consequences for students with SEN. It is suggested that the inclusion of TAs in the mainstream classroom to support students with SEN has resulted in the educational experience of these students diverging from the non-SEN student, which then raises concerns about how schools choose to provide support for students with SEN.
Social issues