Paper Example. Students With Developmental Disorders

Recently in Australia and internationally, there have been enhanced concerns regarding the appropriateness of the traditional support provision methods for young people and children at school with developmental disorders such as autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability. Developmental disabilities encompass role limitations resulting from disorders of the nervous system (Jablensky et al., 2001). When children are assessed and found to be eligible for special education, it is usual for their families to be concerned that they will be put in a separate lecture hall than other children of their age. However, the majority of children with developmental disorders spend most of their time in mainstream learning classes. Most of these classrooms are referred to as inclusive classrooms, whereby special education and general education teachers work as a group to meet all the student's needs. As such, most education institutions recognize and emphasize that students with developmental disorders are the first mainstream education students. In this light, this paper demonstrates that students with developmental disorders such as ADHD, Autism, and intellectual disability in the mainstream classroom carry more benefits than costs.

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Benefits of Inclusion

To begin with, there is a need for inclusive classrooms for all students, which is beneficial not only for students with developmental disabilities but also to other classmates (McCarty, 2006). Thus, including students with developmental disorders in the mainstream classroom is imperative and morally right. There are also several essential motives for incorporating learners with developmental disorders into mainstream education, enhancing the learning outcomes for all students.

Individualized Instructions

One of the principals of inclusive education is that there is a difference in how students learn. Instructors develop support and instructions that are specially designed to help learners achieve progress. These approaches are beneficial to all learners. For instance, children may be permitted to use fidgets or move around, while educators usually put positive behavioural interventions and support in place (Jablensky et al., 2001). Another crucial approach is breaking the learners into small groups. As such, the use of small groups helps the teachers tailor their teaching instructions and support to suit how students learn best, which is referred to as differentiated instruction (McMillan, 2008). Therefore, when students with developmental disorders learn in the mainstream classroom, they enable the tutors to meet all the students' requirements by representing lessons in various methods. They may utilize multisensory teaching. In mathematics, it refers to the use of manipulative skills and visual aids like coloured chips and cubes to assist the children study novel concepts (Hayes & Bulat, 2017). Moreover, several mainstream classrooms may have interactive whiteboards, whereby students can use their fingers to move images around, write, and erase on the huge screen. The instruction tool can be employed to convert learners' work into an engaging and exciting video for children. Therefore, mainstream education for children with developmental disorders brings about innovative and inventive learning models that are beneficial to all students. It also offers learners with disabilities the help they require in a mainstream education classroom.

Therefore, students with developmental disorders challenge educators to collaborate and develop better methods to instruct all children. Further, to provide a successful inclusion in the classroom, tutors need to create an education environment that offers various methods in which learning instructions are engaged with, assessed, and represented. The process helps all students, including those with developmental disorders.

Diversity in the Classroom

Education students with developmental disorders in mainstream classrooms make the classroom diverse. This addition of diversity enriches their lives. As such, cultural diversity gives novel possibilities and ideas that make for a more exciting classroom (McMillan, 2008). Thus, inclusive classrooms are full of diverse students with different strengths and weaknesses. Inclusion in a mainstream classroom provides children with the opportunity to understand how every individual learns in their own way. As such, students with developmental disorders and those without may find or realise that they have more in common with other students than they previously conceived. As such, it helps the students realise that being different is just a usual part of life (McMillan, 2008). Most importantly, it helps the children develop and maintain useful friendships boosting their self-confidence. As such, inclusion in the classroom increases relationships, networks, and social initiations.

New Strengths and Climate of Giving

Students with developmental disorders take different strengths to the class. Regrettably, most people concentrate on what students with disabilities need when they should be paying attention to what they can do better (McMillan, 2008). Every year, new evidence is developing about the various strengths of learners with developmental disorders, including systemic capabilities and excellence with computers among people with ASD, creative thinking in students with ADHD, and human warmth and personal charm with intellectual disabilities (Cosier et al., 2013). Also, special needs students assist in encouraging an environment of giving in the class. Likewise, learners with unique needs can improve any learning environment by relaying a message to other learners that people should help each other.

Brains of People with development disorders develop powerful neural connections in a richer learning environment (Jablensky, 2001). A study involving rodents in the 1960s at the University of California showed that rats living in a more and richer inclusive environment had more branches or dendrites spreading out of brain cells and linking with other neurons than in isolated or excluded environments (Kalambouka, 2007). This study has been applied to humans establishing that students, including those with special needs, greatly benefit from an optimal learning environment offered in inclusive classrooms. For example, ASD students have been identified to have a gripping interest in a particular learning area. Giving them time during class to share with others helps him develop much required social skills, which provides greater opportunity for interactions.

Support Provision to All Students

In more conventional students with the disability learning environment, most children are pulled out in a special classroom for related services such as speech therapy (Odom et al., 2001). However, an inclusive classroom usually brings reading specialists and speech therapists in the class. These specialized experts offer suggestions and information to assist all learners. Ideally, there are learners in the class who are not eligible for special education but still need additional help that they cannot get informally. As such, they tend to benefit when specialized professionals visit the classroom. Therefore, educating students with development problems in the mainstream education classroom helps in providing beneficial support for all students.

High Expectations for All Students

In mainstream education classrooms, student's goals are founded on the educational criteria in their State. These standards set out what the learners are supposed to study in reading, science, math, and other disciplines by the end of the academic year (Cosier et al., 2013). Therefore, collaborative teaching and differentiated instruction in mainstream education classrooms make it simple for learners’ standards-based individualised education programme to be instructed similar lessons as their peers. Learners with developmental disorders perform well when in a setting where more is expected from them. According to Hayes (2017), when instructors expect more from learners, their achievement goes up. When students are excluded from the mainstream classrooms, the potential for self-condemnation, stigmatisation, and ridicule are increased, and tutors tend to treat these learners as less able in comparison with students without development disorders (Cosier et al., 2013). Therefore, special needs students are regarded as normal enough to learn in a classroom setting in a mainstream education classroom. They are motivated by their classmates' positive performances and perform better due to higher expectations from teachers (Wilson & Michaels, 2006). Hence, there is an increased achievement of the IEP goals.

Increased inclusion in Future Environments

Students with developmental disabilities are more likely to pursue higher education and jobs after graduating from high schools. According to McMillan (2008), students with special needs tend to behave more suitably in the inclusive classroom compared to when they learn in isolation with other learners. Therefore, they learn how to behave appropriately in diverse environments by being surrounded by their classmates without disabilities (McMillan, 2008). Moreover, their classmates’ benefits too in that they become more tolerant and comfortable with the differences increasing positive self-confidence and caring, diverse friendships.

Cost of Inclusion

Students with developmental disorders normally present special challenges to teachers and schools who find it difficult to meet their needs. Hence, every student is special, and their needs are differently reflected.

Teacher Training

Instructors are the most potent resource in all educational settings, and the significance of building their skills and knowledge cannot be overemphasised. As such, inclusive education requires mainstream educators to train how to handle students with developmental disabilities. There are no instructional training and standards in schools or states to help and support special needs teachers. The curriculum usually does not involve training associated with the nature of the disabilities and approaches for working with special needs students (Hates, 2017). Therefore, there is a serious shortage of instructors who can effectively meet the learners' personal requirements since inclusion is inadequately addressed and neglected in the teachers' training. Furthermore, regular education tutors must collaborate with special teachers. Therefore, the cost of hiring additional special needs teachers is high. These barriers can cause anxiety, depression, and stress among special needs students.

Mainstream education Classroom

Despite many schools agreeing to the inclusion principles, the regular education classroom is not well equipped to accommodate special needs students. Most tutors are concerned with maintaining and conforming to routine rather than addressing personal differences (Kavale, 2002). There is an increased demand for teachers in an inclusive environment in the class. Therefore, most tutors find it comfortable to employ nonspecific and generic teaching strategies that are not likely to meet students' special needs with disabilities. Thus, most students with disabilities prefer the pull out programs over those inclusive in the general education environment.

Lack of Support Staff

An inclusive classroom requires more staff to support the regular education teacher. Therefore, schools are required to hire many paraprofessional teachers to help students with developmental disorders; they play a central role in the tuition of students with disabilities, more so in an inclusive environment.