Creating Successful Inclusion Programs by Henley Martin;

Author:Henley, Martin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Inclusive Teaching

LIKE PROSPECTORS SEARCHING FOR PRECIOUS STONES, educators are always searching for the best way to teach. And educators strive like prospectors to discriminate between fool’s gold and the real thing. Many claims are staked about the best way to teach—whole language, phonics, direct instruction, constructivism, cooperative learning, computer-assisted instruction, learning styles, drill and repetition, multisensory instruction … the list goes on and on. Yet for every teacher who strikes gold with a particular method, there is another one who goes bust.

Several years ago, I attended a meeting of special education college faculty and public school special education administrators. The administrators had some very specific complaints about new teachers. An administrator of a large urban school system was particularly unhappy with preservice training. He said, “Every year I have to train our new teachers in the Orton-Gillingham method. We use Orton-Gillingham to teach our students with learning disabilities, and I’m tired of doing the colleges’ job.” Many of my higher-education colleagues exchanged bemused glances. One instructional approach for that city’s 3,700 students with learning disabilities seemed more like fool’s gold than a shining example of individualized instruction.

Whenever someone asks me what is the best way to teach special education students, I think of the special education administrator who believed so fervently in the Orton-Gillingham approach. The Orton-Gillingham method was developed by a neurosurgeon to teach students with dyslexia. It is based on the premise that phonics is best taught through a combination of multisensory (visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic) methods and systematic teacher instruction—a pretty good approach for some students; however, not all students with learning disabilities have dyslexia, nor do all students with learning disabilities succeed with the Orton-Gillingham method.

With all the claims and counterclaims about the best way to teach, how can a teacher decide what instructional approach is best? The research on this question is clear: Effective teaching methods are judged by the level of student participation (Brophy & Good, 1986). Simply put, students who are actively engaged in their learning succeed; those who are not, struggle. Engaged learning refers to explicit student behavior that indicates that students are thinking. Creative writing, brainstorming, contrasting ideas, creating projects, interacting with other students, and participating in teacher-student dialogue are examples of engaged learning. Although silent reading, oral reading, looking up answers to textbook questions, listening to teacher lectures, independent seat work, copying notes, and doing worksheets are commonplace activities, these are not necessarily engaged behaviors because they require little thought. Figure 5.1 shows methods of inclusive instruction that are more and less effective.

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