• 

  CREST | Research

  IES awards College researchers $4.8 million/5 years to create a new doctoral training program for educational scientists

  MORE

• 

  CIRGE | Research

  CIRGE has been busy: its 5-Years Out study drew wide attention and it has hosted three int'l workshops on PhD education...

  MORE

•  

Application Deadlines

Scholarships & Funding

Courses

At A Glance

Calendar

Giving

home > research > rtm_08

Research

That Matters

For many preschool teachers, the challenges of attending to all of the children in their care seem magnified when they realize that their class includes several children with disabilities. How can a preschool teacher address each child’s special needs and still provide a rich learning environment for the other children in the classroom who don’t have disabilities? Isn’t it someone else’s responsibility — the speech therapist’s, the behavioral specialist’s — to ensure that the children with disabilities receive the attention they deserve?

UW researcher Susan Sandall, associate professor in special education at the College of Education, understands teachers’ frustrations. “The preschool teacher may have fifteen children actively engaged in free-choice time, and suddenly someone painting at the easel needs more paint, and someone playing with tabletop toys sends the Legos flying and the teacher thinks, ‘Oh, yeah. I’m also supposed to be helping this other child use prepositions in his language.’ ”

But individualized instruction for children with disabilities, Sandall points out, does not have to mean interrupting regular classroom lessons for one-on-one instruction. When young children with disabilities arrive at preschool, they come with a plan. Forged by parents and early service providers, the federally-mandated Individual Education Program (or IEP) includes goals carefully tailored to the child’s individual needs. With careful planning on the teacher’s part, a child’s IEP goals can be embedded in daily classroom activities.

Co-author of a book entitled Building Blocks for Teaching Preschoolers with Special Needs, Sandall has helped develop practical classroom solutions for meeting the needs of all students within the natural framework of inclusive classrooms — classrooms where children with developmental disabilities and other special needs work and play alongside typically developing peers.

A national survey shows that 70 percent of early childhood programs include children with disabilities. Such integration can build empathy in children who don’t have disabilities, and boost academic and social skills in the kids who do. “We’re not sure why it works, but we have our hunches,” says Sandall. “We think it may enhance motivation, because the children with disabilities are using real materials; it’s a real classroom where there’s a need to use skills in real situations and their peers are nearby.”

However, simply placing children with disabilities in general education settings does not ensure success. In one study of inclusive primary classrooms, researchers found four out of twelve young children with special needs received no instruction on their IEP objectives. The other eight received instruction on less than half of their individualized goals. Children with special needs require more support.

“Children with disabilities almost by definition don’t learn naturally, even in an engaging environment. They don’t know what is important to pull from it,” says Sandall. “We have to ask what typically developing children are accomplishing, then find out how we can help the kids who aren’t able to do that automatically.”
The key is to find ways to meet a child’s specialized needs without significantly altering the nature of daily instruction and activities. The Building Blocks book shows how this embedded instruction works, using effective, evidence-based methods, team problem-solving, careful planning and intentional teaching to help all children meet their learning objectives.

Modifying classroom materials and settings is a first step. For a child with physical disabilities who can’t hold onto crayons and markers, wrapping a layer of foam around these drawing supplies can aid her grasp and help her meet her goal of manipulating objects. Working with specialists, a teacher may decide to give a restless, fussy child a favorite stuffed toy to cuddle at the beginning of circle time. Slowly, he begins to settle down and participate in this socializing classroom routine. The barely verbal child with autism who always plays alone may boost his language and social skills by working alongside an assigned peer play buddy.

None of these modifications alters classroom routines.

More complex is the task of identifying classroom activities that provide specific learning opportunities for a child with disabilities and embedding short, repeatable teaching episodes within those activities. If a child’s goal is to learn to label objects, this might mean naming items of clothing during a playground game of Simon Says, then repeating the names of colors during an art activity and listing names of foods during snack time.

To design such embedded learning opportunities, teachers break down big goals — improving hand-eye coordination, learning to follow directions — into smaller steps and write specific tasks on a planning form: “Drew will demonstrate five new play skills during free-play on three different occasions for at least ten minutes.” Record-keeping is essential.

Children with more severe disabilities need to have their learning monitored most closely. “They may not know what to do with a block or toy car. You have to teach them very directly,” states Sandall. “Once they’ve mastered some of these foundational skills, you can expand on the skills in more general activities.”

Studies show that weaving individualized instruction into daily activities makes it easier for preschool teachers to meet the diverse abilities of children within an inclusive classroom. But few preschool teachers receive the kind of training necessary to master these skills, nor do most get the support of special-education specialists. “Creating truly inclusive classrooms is more difficult than we thought it would be,” says Sandall.

She is now working with colleagues to develop sustainable materials for early childhood educators that include multi-media toolkits, evaluation procedures, videos, coaching and follow-up strategies. The professional training materials are based on research that shows the effectiveness of embedded instruction, and the fact that it is rarely used consistently in inclusive classrooms.

“What we saw during observations is that a teacher may get one to two planned practice times in, but it is hard to get fifteen to twenty, and a child with cognitive disabilities may need that many more repetitions,” says Sandall.

“Our goal is to provide preschool teachers with the skills they need in order to genuinely include all children in their classrooms.”

For more information about this model for classroom practice see:

Sandall, S. R., Schwartz, I. S., Joseph, G. E., Horn, E. M., Chou, H.-Y., Lieber, J., Odom, S. L., Woley, R. (2003). Building blocks for teaching preschoolers with special needs. (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Paul Brookes.