Presented at ISEC 2000

"Just Different": Special Education in an Experimental Setting in Almere

Dorien Hamstra - GION, Netherlands

Abstract

Almere is a new town founded in the polders in 1976. In this young city of about 140. people, there are a lot of children in the age from 4 till 12 (in 1999 about 21.000), but schools for pupils with sensory, physical, mental impairments and/or behavioural problems are lacking. These children had to travel to surrounding cities which resulted long working days, and in limited social contacts in their own environment.

Almere planned building special schools, but the Government regarded this as in conflict with the current integration policy, the so-called "Backpack policy". Instead, Almere was allowed to implement the newly developed policy plans on an experimental basis.

The project started in May 1997 under the name "Just Different". The project formulated an ambitious target: to integrate within five years 50 % of all pupils with special needs.

A research project has been started to describe the development in inclusion in Almere. The paper will address the results of the first two years of the evaluation study. It goes into the observations in the classroom, the experiences of parents, teachers and principals and presents data on pupils' performance.

Introduction

A large group of pupils are having a difficult school career. These pupils are confronted with a bigger chance of developmental and educational problems, repeatedly double and referral to schools for special education backlogs in comparison with their contemporaries. For a part of this group, for example children with severe mental impairments or multiple impairments, placement in a regular school without any extra help or supplies is not very realistic. Traditionally a large group of these children are sent to schools for special education. Since the beginning of this century especially since the fifty's schools for special education have developed to become a fine-meshed part of Dutch educational system.

Inclusion in The Netherlands

Introduction

Placement of impaired children in schools for special education became an important subject of discussion during the sixties. Different considerations lead to the belief that the legitimacy of special education was doubtful. It was pointed out that special education was stigmatised and was never proved to be effective. As a result of this people started to think about an alternative to teach "problem pupils". Guideline was to strive for inclusion: special education would be a full part of regular education. The last decades Dutch Ministery of Education and Science has done a lot to try to achieve a "broad care in primary education". Almost all ideas, proposals and methods were aimed at the relevant improvement of the quality of education. The expectation was that this would automatically lead to the improvement of regular education and to a decrease of the number of children in schools for special education. Unfortunately analyses of the effects of these efforts were disappointing. A "broad care" seemed very difficult to realise (Reezigt, Pijl & Harskamp, 1994).

In 1985 Dutch government developed a regulation for peripatetic teaching to increase the number of children going from special education to regular education. It also became possible for children in regular education to receive extra support in order to avoid going to a school for special education. In 1988 the regulation "fixed formation" started. By freezing the growth of the number of teachers in special education, Dutch Ministery of Education and Science hoped to embank the costs of special education. This method was soon to be found illegal.

The Backpack

Introduction

A discussion about financing parts of special education (the so called 2/3-schools) was started after the releas of the report "Backing support" (Commission pupil bounded financing in special education, 1995) ("Een steun in de rug" Commissie Leerlinggebonden Financiering, 1995). This report introduced the idea of the client bounded budget, known from health service, into education. The idea was to go from a supply oriented financing to a demand directed financing for a part of special education. In their next report Dutch Ministery of Education and Science used a lot of the ideas of the commission. They admitted that the existing regulations did not foresee in a structural financing of impaired pupils in regular education. The facilities which were there, were temporarily and should be requested for annually. Sometimes pupils did not get this kind of financing because of the number of requests and the limited amount of money available. In the report it was concluded that this situation did not agree with the ideas of inclusion and emancipation of people with an impairment. Out of this situation the so called "Backpack" came to the fore.

The Backpack

The Backpack is a metaphor for pupil bounded financing. This means: "a system designed for the financing and organisation of special facilities". In other words: an impaired child who wants to go to a regular school, gets his own backpack full of money. In this way the regular school does have the possibilities to take care of the child for example by buying extra adjusted materials, hire extra teachers and so on. The pupil bounded financing has the following characteristics:

The central point made here is that parents have the opportunity to make their own choice between regular or special education. This freedom of choice is determined by law. Much more clear than in the present supply oriented financing, pupils and their parents are involved in getting a pupil bounded financing and spending it. By making the choice between special and regular education any financial arguments may not be relevant; the budget stays the same. Of course the choice has to be realistic. Most schools are not yet ready to take care of an impaired child either pedagogic didactic nor materialistic (Weber, 1997).

The plans for a pupil bounded financing are explicitly meant for children with sensorial, physical and mental disabilities. Pupil bounded financing is not meant for children who do not have a demonstrable impairment but "just" have a hard time in school. The possible extra help thèy can get comes from the "going to school together policy" (OCenW, 1996).

Goals for teaching the impaired child are written down in a so called "individual educational plan". Parents can get informed about the possibilities by external experts. Pupil bounded financing will be paid to the school as soon as the individual educational plan is made and signed by the parents.

The starting point of the policy paper "The Backpack" is that impaired children, just like all other children, should be able to go to a regular school. Schools have a social commitment to welcome impaired pupils to their school if parents want to. This does not mean that schools for regular education should include impaired children under any circumstance. It has to be done on the condition that the school is able to provide a good education for the child. If this is really not possible, school can be against inclusion. This decision has to be justified with the inspection of regular primary education.

By increasing the possibility of inclusion, the number of pupils in schools of special education will decrease. As a result of this the existance of some schools of special education can be in danger; besides that can it lead to a loss of expertise. This development is already noticeable for schools for visually and aural impaired.

Up until now, there are ten different schools for special education in The Netherlands. These so called 2/3-schools are divided (according to the agreements about the pupil bounded financing) into four categories:

1. Children with a visual impairment

2. Children who are hard of hearing

3. Children who are physical , mental or multiple impaired

4. Children with a psychiatric or behavioural impairment

Table 1

This current division of different types of schools will be expired and replaced by a division into four "Regional Expertise Centres" after the start of "The Backpack".

Regional Expertise

Centres According to the Dutch Ministery of Education and Science reorganisation of the 2/3-schools into regional expertise centres will have large advantages. These centres give a better guaranty for maintenance and expansion of knowledge and will improve the possibility to exchange experience and knowledge. The cooperating schools make it possible to deal with more complex problems (Weber, 1997).

There will be regional expertise centres for children of all four categories mentioned in the previous paragraph. Also combinations of different centres into one large centre are possible. The expertise centres do get (according to the 2/3-schools) a more broad set of tasks to deal with. Next to the care for teaching, they will carry out diagnostics, support "problem children", advise schools for regular education and continuously develop their own expertise.

A regional expertise centre can use different educational locations, scattered over the region. In this way the accessibility of all children will be guaranteed. Most of the current 2/3-schools consist of fifty to two hundred pupils. According to plans, the expertise centres should have a minimum of three hundred pupils.

Inclusion in Almere

Introduction

Almere is a young still growing city with about 140.000 inhabitants. Approximately 21.000 of them are children between the age of four and sixteen (liable to compulsory education). They attend sixty-one primary schools, four secondary schools, four special schools for children who are learning impaired and four special schools for children who are educable mentally retarded. Other kinds of schools for children with special needs are not available. This means that every day, a lot of children have to go to schools outside Almere which provide learning environments appropriate to their requirements. Several different school boards have asked the Dutch Ministery of Education and Science for permission to found schools for special education. The Ministery turned their requests down, but offered instead to support an experiment whereby inclusion became the number one priority. In 1996 this idea resulted to the agreement that visually impaired children, children who are hard of hearing or deaf, children with severe speaking problems, children with severe learning difficulties, physically impaired children, severely ill children and severe educable mentally retarded children, should be taught within the walls of a regular school. To coordinate all of this, the Foundation "Just Different" (Gewoon Anders) was founded.

The experiment covers a period of ten years and concerns all the children of school age, but limits itself to primary education. The main goal of the experiment is to "realise (a high qualitative level of education and accompanying conditions for the purpose to) maximise the inclusion of impaired children within regular education in Almere. Besides that it extends special education in an experimental situation as an alternative for building new schools for special education (Experimentsvoorstel, p. 14).

Parents of impaired children should be able to choose thát kind of education which goes best with their child's educational requests. To offer the best quality of help, schools are supported by an urban expertise centre. The three most important starting-points are inclusion, freedom of choice of parents and the fact that the centre makes no difference between religions.

Inclusion models

To make sure all impaired children get an education which is suited optimally to their needs, three different kinds of inclusion models have been developed:

Research design

Questions of research

The questions of research deal with the first three years of the experiment. In short they are:

1. How do the three inclusion-models work in practice?

2. What are the experiences of inclusion of all participating subjects?

• Impaired child
• Concerning teachers and their colleagues
• Parents of impaired children
• (Non-impaired) classmates

3. Which factors (positively as well as negatively) influence the way inclusion-models work?

4. How does a group of experts evaluate the way the inclusion models operate? (Pijl and Reezigt, 1997).

In this paper I will only answer the first, second (second and third point) and third research question.

Method

Resource group

Due to the wide design of the research, it was not possible to collect data from all pupils, parents and teachers who are participating in the experiment. Therefore it was decided to carry out a sample. Dutch Ministery of Education and Science had the idea the total number of children registered at the Foundation would grow slowly from eighty-two in the year 98/99, ninety-eight in the year 99/00 till 115 in the year 00/01. However the real numbers were a little bit different. On the first of September 1998, seventy-one children were registered at the Foundation. Thirty-five of them were assigned to the sample.Of those thirty-five parents, twenty-five reacted positively. Six of the remaining parents did not want to give their permission, the others recently moved or had plans to do so. Before the research could start, a letter for permission was sent to al participating parents. In the year 99/00 two children of this group did not receive the extra help and care of the Foundation any more.

On the first of September 1999, a total number of 142 children were registered at the Foundation. After pulling of sixty children who were registered since 98/99 (eleven pupils left the experiment) eighty-two children were left. Of this remaining group thirty-four parents were sent a letter. Three of them did not want to give permission. Eleven parents did not answer at all, even after repeatedly writing to them. This made the total sample of the year 99/00 of twenty.

Table two shows the total number of pupils distributed over the four categories of disabilities and the year of the sample

Table 2

The forty-three pupils are in twenty one schools all over town. Table three shows the total number of pupils distributed over the three inclusion models.

Table 3

For the coming school year (2000/2001) twenty new pupils will be added.

Procedure

For reasons of privacy, it was not allowed to glance through the personal files of the pupils. To get the background information we needed, interviews were held with so called "casemanagers". Each interview was first recorded on tape and later analysed.

In addition to the interviews, all pupils were observed in their own classroom for one morning. These observations were done, not only by the researcher herself, but also by a student of sociology and a student of social psychology of the University of Groningen. Before the observations were done, a short training was given, in order to get acquainted with the observation instrument and to agree on the interpretation of the different categories used. The training consisted of looking at a video tape of a class full of children during a lesson. The behaviour of one of the children was scored. Next the scores of the researcher and the students were compared, until a reasonable degree of agreement was reached.

During the real observations the observers had a place in the back of the classroom with a good view of the impaired child. Of course the child did not know he was observed that morning.

After the observation an interview was done with the teacher and also recorded on tape. Depending on the type and seriousness of the impairment of the child the interview lasted one hour.

Instruments

Introduction

In literature many different ways of how to study children's social interactions, have been presented. De Graaf (1996) interviewed sixteen parents of children with Downs Syndrome. During these interviews the researcher asked about the experiences these parents had with the inclusion of their impaired child in schools for regular education. In their study Guralnick and Groom (1987) divided children into eight small groups. Each group consisted of three normally developed children of three years old, three normally developed children of four years old and two children of four years old both with a small mental impairment. Social interactions between these children were measured with the help of a video camera, which was placed behind a so called "one-way-screen". After the observations were finished the activities of the children were evaluated within intervals of ten seconds. In addition to the fact that all children were videotaped, they also wore specially designed vests. In these vests small microphones were placed. In this way both a visual and an aural record could be made without disturbing of the normal activities of the children.

Scheepstra (1998) used many different methods to collect information about pupils with Downs Syndrome in regular classrooms. She started with interviewing some teachers, principals and parents of these children. With this information she made new questionnaires, which were sent to all the other participants of the project. In addition observations in the classrooms were done during which special attention was given to how well those children could maintain concentration on their tasks, what the quality of their social interactions were and in which way the child with Downs Syndrome performed in accordance with a low and an average achieving child. The focus of the observations however was not to measure the actual performance of the children but of their behaviour in the classroom.

As a result of an analysis of the methods employed so far, a choice was made to develop an observational instrument, which will be used to try to describe the social behaviour of the child in the research group in the most objective way. Also, information concerning the social functioning of the child will be collected from interviews with those people who are in his or her immediate circle of acquaintance.

Observations

Observing the behaviour of people is a complex job. During the course of the day a lot of things happen, behaviours flow smoothly into each other and above all, a lot of events occur simultaneously. It is therefore necessary to split up this flow of behaviours into small components. Dividing two almost similar behaviours into one "overall" category may be useful as well.

This kind of division can be done in two ways. First the behaviour can be split up into "natural" slices. When this way is chosen, it is possible to give each slice a "value" to determine how often they occur. Also the duration is interesting to know. In this approach the observation is directed by the presence of the behaviour elements. For that reason it is called "event-sampling".

Second, there are some methods of observing in which a clear distinction between the elements of behaviour cannot be made. Therefore it is more convenient to choose for an "unnatural" way of observing, for example with the help of time. Thus the observer notes (at previously decided time intervals) what someone else is doing. In this way a random sample of the behaviour is recorded. This is called "interval sampling" or "time sampling" (van der Sande, 1997).

In this research observations will only take place during the morning. I decided to use the time sampling method. This means that for a period of five minutes the behaviour of a child is recorded. During the following five minutes a description of the events in the classroom is given. This process is repeated during the whole period of observation.

There will be no technical support in the form of a video camera. The reason for this is that the presence of something unusual in the classroom can have negative influence on the children. The observational instrument consists of five themes: activities, content of interactions, setting, behaviour of teacher and/or other pupils and interaction. In the results section a description of all five themes is given.

Interviews

Next to doing observations other ways of collecting data are available like: sending a questionnaire by mail, an inquiry by telephone, a direct (person to person) interview or a combination of the above mentioned. Which one to choose depends on the purpose of the research, the nature of the data to be collected, the costs and the size and characteristics of the research group.

One way to acquire answers to so called "closed questions" is to send a questionnaire by mail. In this way costs remain low. Big disadvantage is that responses are often low too. Besides that it is not possible to go into an answer or to check if a respondent did understand the question correctly.

Interviewing by phone is very good to get answers to "open questions". They give a higher response percentage than questionnaires by mail. Also there is the possibility to go into the answers given. A disadvantage however is that interviews by phone are expensive and take a lot of time. Besides that one can not see someone else's body language and the environment of the person being interviewed.

The most expensive way of doing an interview is the direct way. Advantage here is that the researcher does not need a structured questionnaire. He can have a more "open" conversation. Direct interviews lead to the highest percentage of responses. A tape recorder is an often used instrument by interviews. The presence of such a tool is an element of the interview situation: the recorder "listens". The psychological meaning of this depends on the way in which the researcher uses the tapes. It is of importance to make clear beforehand who will have access to the tapes or a typed out version of it, if one can find out who is talking and how long the tape will be maintained. The person who is being interviewed has a right to know (Emans, 1990).

Results

All results given below give information about the forty-three children out of the sample. Unfortunately it was not yet possible to talk to all teachers and parents. There are several reasons for that. First some teachers did not want to participate in the research. Second it seemed for some teachers impossible to make an appointment. Some parents could not be reached by telephone and did not respond to a repeated writing.

The results given in this section reflect the answers to the second (second and third point) and third question of research:

3. Which factors (positively as well as negatively) influence the way inclusion-models work?

Interviews with teachers

As was explained on page five do those children who attend school using the inclusion models Group In School and Group Coupled To School, often have the same teachers. The following section therefore reflects the opinions of eighteen teachers.

• Individual educational plan: For every school or teacher it can be very different who participates in the making of the i.e.p. Some teachers do it jointly with the casemanager of the Foundation "Just Different", others had the help of a remedial teacher, a class assistance, a speech therapist or any kind of other special education teachers. Most teachers evaluate the plan three or four times a year. In a joint meeting (teacher, casemanager and parents) the educational development of the child is being discussed. It is decided if and positively answered, whát should be changed. The content of the plan is as divergent as the impairment of the children. It depends (among other things) on the type of school and the educational method the teacher works with. Are educational goals always reached by teachers? One teacher claims it is impossible to decide beforehand when a child has reached certain goals. Children always learn those things you did not expect them to do. However the majority of the teachers do not share this opinion, because they claim they control the achievement of the goals themselves.
• Placement of the impaired child Most arrangements concerning the placement of the child deals with the ending of the placement. Those children with a psychiatric impairment go to a school for regular education when all goals of the individual educational plan are reached. In all other cases placement is ended when the child does not fit (social-emotionally) in the current class. It is very important to keep in mind that it always must be realistic both for the child and the teacher to continue inclusion.
• School Most schools use the inclusion model Child In Group. The majority of these schools are very positive towards inclusion provided that together with the child also enough materials and manpower will come into the class. Some schools made the internal agreement that they would only include pupils with a specific impairment; children with other types of impairments will not be placed because it will cost too much time to obtain the necessary level of expertise to be able to offer a well suited educational environment.

• Social inclusion

Positive

Most teachers are very positive about inclusion. They claim it is good for the impaired child because he learns to deal with "non-impaired" children, he can imitate other children's behaviour and has friends from just "around the corner". Also for the other children in the class it's important because they learn to deal with a child who is "different". Besides they learn that no one is the same and accept each other the way they are. According to teachers the number one condition for successful inclusion is that classes should stay small. As soon as the group becomes too big problems start growing too.

Negative

In some cases inclusion does not work well. Some teachers think the impaired child is being teased. Other teachers wanted the child to have more social contacts with his classmates because at the moment the child is playing more "besides" than "with" the other children.

Some teachers say that time invested in the child is more or less the problem. They have to shift their attention between the child and the others in the classroom. One school is planning to hire a trainee especially for the impaired child so the teacher can spend more time on the others.

Friends

Unfortunately most impaired children neither much friends at school nor at home. Some teachers "accidentally" let these children play in little groups of "social" children to let them become accustomed to one another. A reason for not having friends can be that some children live far away from school. Every day they come to school by bus. After school hours everybody goes his own way so it is very difficult to try to make an arrangement to play together.

• Support of students All teachers claim that the impaired child in their class does get some sort of extra support. Of course this depends very much of the impairment of the child and the availability of support personel. Also the way support is given can differ much from school to school. One school choose to give extra assistance not only to the impaired child but also to some of his classmates. In this way the impaired child does not feel "special", but "one of the group".
• Experiences of teachers The opinions of teachers differ considerably when answering the question if they do or do not think teaching has become more difficult after inclusion of the impaired child. The majority does think teaching has become more difficult. Therefore a minority says they do not think teaching has become more difficult. Some reasons the first mentioned come up with are: the pupil asks for a lot of attention so the teacher has to choose between this child or his classmates; it is impossible to work on the "automatic pilot"; you're always busy watching the kid, working with it; you come to realise the (im)possibilities of those children.
• Support of teachers Most teachers claim they can receive support from the school (board). They can do courses and of course Foundation "Just Different" offers help. Some schools choose to organise a special day for all teachers of the school. During this day a teacher with an impaired child in her class tells about her experiences. Afterwards they can exchange experiences. At another school teachers follow very specific courses specifically for improving their teaching. School adjusted it's policy, because they thought it is very important to have highly qualified teachers.
• Other teachers in school Most teachers say their colleagues do have a positive attitude towards impaired children. Their response to the question: "do you think your colleagues are a source of motivation and support?" is positive. However they do not mean áll their colleagues. One teacher entitles her colleagues as "positively unknowing". With this she means that the others do like having an impaired child in their school but are not personally confronted with them. She does not think her colleagues as a source of experience and motivation.
• Parents Most parents bring and pick up their child to and from school. At those moments there are some opportunities to talk to the teacher. Some teachers prefere to make regular appointments with the parents. In this way they all keep informed about each others ideas and wishes. Most teachers are satisfied with the contacts they have with parents. If they have questions they can always go to the parents and if parents have anything to say they can always talk to the teacher. According to some teachers some parents have difficulties accepting the fact that their child has some kind of impairment. Most of the time they think cognitive goals are the most important. After they see how happy their child can be without a lot of cognitive pressure they change their opinions.

Interviews with parents

The following section reflects the opinions of twelve parents.

• Foundation "Just Different" In what way did you hear of the Foundation? In a lot of different ways parents did get acquainted with the project. Some schools informed the parents of the existence of the project. Other parents read about it in the newspaper. A group of parents (who were participating in a parents' association for parents of children with Downs Syndrome) heard about the Foundation during a meeting. The group asked the Foundation to come and tell something about itself.

How often do you have contact with somebody from the Foundation?

The number of contact moments differs for all parents. Of course does it depend on the type of impairment of the child and whether or not this leads to educational and social-emotional problems. Therefore the frequency is ranging between once every two weeks to once every sixteen weeks. Some parents say they do not have regular appointments with the casemanager; if they want to ask something they feel always free to do so.

How do parents experience their contacts with the Foundation?

Most parents experience the contacts as pleasant. One of the reasons for this is that parents really got the feeling some one is listening to their side of the story. Also they like the fact that the Foundation does not stigmatise and is really open for questions and remarks of parents.

Of course some parents do have some negative experiences with the Foundation. One parent had the idea that when the contract with the Foundation was signed they would take account of education of their child. Especially in the first year the Foundation did not involve the parents in this process. Some decisions about the child were made without consulting the parents beforehand. Luckily all of this changed for the better and everything is all right now.

• School

All parents claim to be very happy with the contacts they have with their child's school. All say that whenever they feel like talking or just want to ask something they can do so. The majority of the parents thinks schools do have a positive attitude towards inclusion of impaired children. One school already gave it's permission for placement of the child even before the contract with the Foundation was signed. Also, most schools are open to all kinds of tips and pieces of advice.

Some schools came up with several ideas to try to make inclusion work successfully. In one school it is very usual for the impaired child to visit the teacher of the next grade for a week at the end of the school year. In this way they both can become used to each other. In another school even the teachers of the brothers of the impaired child are actively involved. They handle the impairment very well. If the impaired child has to go to the hospital, the boys do not have to go to school either. One couple said that in the beginning of the school year they had a "to and fro" notebook. After a while they did not use it anymore because everything went so well they did not know what to write any more.

• Social relations

Satisfied

About fifty percent of the parents say their child has some friends. Those children are classmates as well as children out of the neighbourhood. Sometimes the child has friends with the same impairment as himself. A number of children play sports in a special sports club for children with some kind of impairment.

Not satisfied

Logically the other fifty percent of the parents are not satisfied with the social contacts of their child. One of the reasons is that there are not that much (young) children living in the neighbourhood. Some parents even want to move to a new housing development so the family as a whole can built a social network with the other inhabitants. Another reason for not having any friends can be that the family lives too far away from school so it is very difficult for two children to organise playing together.

Most parents think their child is not as social as should be. They actively try to stimulate contacts as much as possible. One parent even makes appointments for her son and than tries to guide the process.

• Inclusion

There are a lot of positive aspects of inclusion parents come up with. An enumeration is given below:

- child is much more happy

- child learns a lot from other "non-impaired" kids

- child has become more boldly, much more "free"

- inclusion is good for the child's classmates. The child does not get extra support all alone but the other children too, so they learn from it too

- child enjoys the fact that he's at home during lunch break

- child does not have to travel that much anymore

- child has friends living in the same neighbourhood - classmates are the same age the child is

- child does not behave "special" anymore, he wants to be like the others

- his confidence and social skills have grown. He learnt to accept the fact that he's got an impairment.

- child copies behaviour of other children, she tries to be as normal as possible

- child does not feel any different than his classmates.

• Individual educational plan

All parents state they had something to do with formulating the i.e.p. However the amount of time spent on it varies a great deal. Some parents made the plan in consultancy with the casemanager of the Foundation. Others only glanced the plan through and signed it.

As well the casemanager, the teacher as the parents (and in some cases the principals) check on the gain of the goals set in the plan. Logically cognitive goals can be tested. The casemanager and the teacher decide together if social goals are reached.

• Placement

Every "i.e.p." has it's own part which deals about placement. A few specific agreements:

If parents do not agree with the appointments as formulated by school and the casemanager they always have the freedom to refuse signing the plan. In this way it is impossible for schools to work with a plan with which the parents do not agree.

• Parents

Stimulating learning at home

A group of parents do stimulate learning at home but they do this in a very playful manner in some cases by using the computer. Another group of parents does not stimulate learning at home at all because school advised against it. The child must play at home and not get the feeling his exercise book is laying ready for him as soon as he gets out of school.

Interest group

Fifty percent of the interviewed parents are not a member of some kind of interest group specifically for the impairment of their child. Some reasons why parents did not became a member:

- the problems of the child are not seen as an impairment. You should not make problems where there are not any

- there is no interest group for the problems of the child

- one of the parents did read a lot about the impairment of the child, but did not find any interest group that really corresponded with her child's needs.

Those parents who are a member of some kind of interest group are very actively involved in it as well locally as nationally. One mother states she was a member of an interest group a long time. Nowadays the problems of her daughter are much better so she does not want to talk about them all the time.

Financing

Most parents do not have to pay anything extra for their child's education. Almost all the extra support is being paid by the Foundation (which receives the money from Dutch Ministery of Education and Science). The transport of the impaired child to and from school has to be paid by the parents themselves. Besides that of course all the extra support outside school hours.

Observations

In this section I will try to answer research question number

1. How do the three inclusion models work in practice? Said in other words: to what extent does the social inclusion of the impaired child differs compared to that of a "non-impaired" child (the control group)?

The presented observational data are divided into two main cohorts: 1998/1999 and 1999/2000. Subsequently the cohorts are divided into observations of the impaired child and observations of a control group. An overview:

1) second observation 98/99 control group second observation 98/99

2) first observation 99/00 control group first observation 99/00

As was said at page eight of this paper, the observational instrument is divided into five categories. For every group of observations those categories will be discussed. X is the impaired child. The control group consists of a randomly picked (non impaired) child of the same gender and out of the same class as the impaired child. In the following tables no representation is given of the first observation of cohort 98/99. The reason for this is the lacking presence of a control group at that time.

All the valid percentages given below represent mean percentages of the categories over 25 pupils of cohort 98/99 and 23 pupils of cohort 99/00. For example: in table 4 a percentage of 1,6 (cohort 98/99 second observation, left upper corner) means that of the total sum of activities done by all 25 impaired children 1,6% consisted of the children working together with a classmate.

Table 4

The differences between cohort 98/99 and it's control group are not very noticeable. Only a few (more or less striking points) can be made. One is that the percentage of the control children doing the same assignment as the rest of the class is almost 10% larger as it is of the impaired children. Consequently the percentage of the impaired child doing something else as his fellow pupils is a little bit smaller. Although the percentages are low, the impaired children work twice as often with a (special) teacher as their non-impaired classmates.

There are no eye catching differences in cohort 99/00. All changes are very small. It shows that also in this cohort the impaired children are spending more of their time on a different assignment than the other pupils in the classroom and the non-impaired children more often do the same assignments.

Table 5

As a very small comment it can be said that in both cohorts the impaired children do talk a little bit more with the teacher than their (non-impaired) classmates, whether this is for asking a question of just for a social talk. In cohort 99/00 the non-impaired children do have more social interactions as their classmates (in cohort 98/99 this is the other way around).

Table 7

Table 8

The main difference between the second observation and the control group of cohort 98/99 is that the percentage of help the impaired pupils receives is somewhat higher than the percentage of help the control pupils receives. In cohort 99/00 the percentage of impaired children getting help from their teacher is already gone down (this goes also for the control group). Still in cohort 99/00 the impaired child does get more help (as well from the teacher as from the other pupils).

Table 9

Although the percentages are very low, it can be seen that in both cohorts teachers do show more initiative for starting a conversation with an impaired child as with a non-impaired child. Also for both cohorts do impaired children talk more to teachers than their control pupils, but they talk less to other pupils than their control pupils. In cohort 98/99 also classmates do take more initiative for a conversation. In cohort 99/00 this does not make a difference.

Discussion

For answering the first research question "how do the three inclusion models work in practice?" we have to look to the observational data. In general there are not that much differences between the impaired children and the control group. However this conclusion can not be drawn too soon. Although the differences are small, there are some distinctions. For example the amount of time the impaired child is doing an individual assignment which is different of what the rest of his classmates is doing, is almost twice as often mentioned for both cohorts. Another point made is that the impaired children in both cohorts almost have twice as much social contacts with the teacher in comparison to their classmates in the control groups.

A third striking point is that the number of times teachers help the impaired pupils is also almost twice as much as the number of times the teacher helps the child of the control group. This is striking because the number of times the impaired child asks for help is not that much more frequent than his "non-impaired" classmate. So it seems the case that teachers automatically expect the impaired child to need more help, although this is not always the case. This is strengthened by the fact that teachers in both cohorts take three times more initiative themselves to start a conversation with the impaired children as with the children of the control group.

The following can be said to answer the second research question "what are the experiences of inclusion of teachers and parents of the impaired child?". In general teachers and parents are satisfied with the way inclusion works in practice. Of course there are some problems noticeable like the lacking of friends for some children, the communication between parents and teachers which is not always going fluently, teachers who do not have the feeling they receive support from their school board and/or colleagues, the shortage of teachers who can supply extra support etcetera.

Luckily there are also a lot of positive sides of inclusion. The impaired child learns a lot from his "non-impaired" classmates, want's to be like them, his confidence grows and he is more often at home during lunch brakes and after school hours. Also classmates can learn from the extra support the impaired child receives. Besides that, they learn that it is normal to be "just different".

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Index