Special Education Article Review Free Essay Example

Wiener and Tardif (2004) scrutinized the social and emotional status of children with learning disabilities, or LD, in four distinctive special education placements. The four placements are In-Class Support, Resource Room, Inclusion Class, and Self-Contained Special Education Class. In-Class Support and Resource Room placements are for learning disabled students who possess mild to moderate learning disabilities, and were only used for a short period of time each school day.

In-Class Support allowed the learning disabled students to be placed in general education classes for the majority of the day, but included special education teachers in the classroom to assist individual LD students.

LD students placed in a Resource Room were required to be pulled out of the general education classrooms to receive special education in a separate room. The LD children placed in the Inclusion Classes spent the whole day in a general education classroom.

However they received instruction from a special education teacher who works closely with each content teacher. A Self-Contained Special Education Class involves placing a student in at least half of their day in a separate special education classroom, but also was incorporated into the general education classroom on a restricted basis.

At the beginning of the study researchers anticipated that children with mild to moderate learning disabilities would perform superior not only socially, but emotionally with In-Class Supports, than did those in Resource Rooms.

They further concluded that students with more severe forms of learning disabilities would achieve to a higher degree in the Inclusion Classes than those in Self-Contained classrooms.

The research experiment observed 117 students over a two year period in nine different schools. All of the participating learning disabled students were identified by each school’s identification and IQ/achievement test. The varied measures of social and emotional issues were calculated by peer-relations of same-sex friends’ interactions, problem behaviors, self-perception and feelings of loneliness and depression.

The researchers concluded the differences between the placements groups by incorporating a one-tailed T-Test. Their results indistinctly authenticated that learning disabled students did faintly better in inclusion classrooms. Conclusion The authors argue that the placement of LD students, based on their tests, did not show a major improvement in their one-tailed T-Test. The authors argue that based on their research findings there is not a major correlation between the placements of LD students into the different types of learning environments.

However, one could argue that the research experiment is bias, because it only uses a one-tailed T-Test, or they do not have a control group to base their findings against. I would argue that further research would be required to validate or rescind their findings. One cannot base their sole judgment or decision based one this one research study. References Wiener, J. , & Tardif, C. Y. (2004). Social and emotional functioning of children with learning disabilities: Does special education placement make a difference. Learning Disabilities Research And Practice, 19(1), 20-32.

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