DIMENSION KEY TERMS

1. A Sense of Community and Social acceptance, belonging, enjoyment, freedom,

Acceptance friendship, safety, valuing
2. An Appreciation of Student Diversity appreciation, differences, opportunities,
recognizing, sensitive
3. Attention to Curricular Needs curriculum, needs, student’s learning
4. Effective Management and Instruction classroom management, techniques and
strategies, support
5. Personnel Support and Collaboration collaboration, general and special education,
support, teachers

DESCRIPTION/SUPPORTING STATEMENTS FACTORS & CONSIDERATIONS

 Every student is valued and nurtured.
 Students with special needs are truly
included in their classroom communities
only when they are appreciated by their
teachers and socially accepted by their
classmates.
 Diversity simply means recognizing the
group of individual differences that we see
in our students.
 Students learn tolerance and the ability to
accept differences in each other, as well as
having opportunities to benefit from
cooperative learning and other alternative
instructional strategies.
 “What the student needs to learn?”
 Teachers must seriously look at the
curriculum and ask what students are
learning and how students with disabilities
 Promote an environment in which all
members are seen as equal, all have the
opportunity to contribute, and all
contributions are respected.
 Caring and nurturing places.
 Diversity is being valued.
 The needs of all students should be
addressed.
 Teacher’s critical role that includes teacher
attitude, teacher expectations, teacher
competence, teacher collaborative skills,
and teacher support.
 Are students with disabilities
disproportionately teased by other
students?
 Do students with disabilities seem to enjoy
being in the general education classroom?
 Do students without disabilities voluntarily
include students with disabilities in various
activities?
 Do students without disabilities seem to
value the ideas and opinions of students
with disabilities? And the other way
around?
 Do students with disabilities consider the
general education classroom to be their
“real class”? Do they consider the teacher
to be one of their “real teachers”?
 A teacher needs to understand each
individual in the classroom.
 Teachers must be sensitive to the cultural,
community, and family values that can
have an impact on a student’s experience.
 Racial and ethnic diversity
 Gender and sexual orientation
 Religious diversity
 Physical, learning, and intellectual
differences
 Linguistic differences
 Behavior and personality diversity
 If the individual curricular needs of a
student are not being met, the curriculum
must be modified or the educational
placement must be reexamined.
 can access the curriculum.  A student’s learning and life needs should
always be the driving force in
programmatic efforts and decisions.
 Curricular concerns: (1) content that is
meaningful to students in a current and
future sense, and (2) approaches and
materials that work best for them.
Four elements provided by teacher to meet the
wide range of needs of students:

 Successful Classroom Management –  Effective classroom management is

including physical, procedural, required if students are to benefit from
instructional, and behavior management. any form of instruction, especially in
inclusive classrooms where students
display a wide range of diversity.

 Effective Instructional Techniques – key  Teachers must feel comfortable using a

elements of effective instructional wide variety of instructional techniques to
practice: daily review, specific techniques meet the needs of diverse classrooms.
for presenting new information, guided
practice, independent practice, and
formative evaluation.

 Appropriate Accommodative Practices –  The use of assistive technology.

“supported education”; supports include
accommodations and modifications to
enhance learning and acceptance in the
general education curriculum.

 Instructional Flexibility – must be able to  The ability to respond to unexpected and

handle behavior problems, provide extra changing situations to support students
support during instruction, modify with special needs.
assessment techniques, and orchestrate
social interactions.
 Students with special needs require
personnel supports to allow them to
benefit from placement in inclusive
settings.
 Collaboration occurs when more than one
person works voluntarily toward a
common goal, frequently related to the
success of students.

Types of Collaborative Efforts:

o Collaboration-Consultation – general o A critical skill in collaboration is effective

education teacher requests the services of communication.
the special education teacher to help
generate ideas for addressing an ongoing
situation.

o Co-Teaching – general and special o It requires extensive planning.

education teachers work together in
providing direct service to students.
o Co-teachers perform many tasks jointly,
including planning and teaching,
developing instructional accommodations,
monitoring and evaluating students, and
communicating student progress.
o Co-teaching requires individuals who are

o Teacher Assistance Teams – teams provide
support to general education teachers.
o Peer Support Systems – Two general
education teachers work together to
identify effective solutions to classroom
situations.
willing to give up some control and accept
positive, constructive criticism from
colleagues.
o Provide a forum where problems are
raised and discussed, and solutions are
developed.
o Enables educators to bring a diverse set of
skills and experience to bear on specific
problems.
o Students with disabilities in general
education classrooms receive social or
instructional help from their nondisabled
peers.