Deborah L. Voltz

What Matters Most in Inclusive Education A Practical Guide for Moving Forward

Structuring learning environments to promote the inclusion of learners with disabilities is an important responsibility that educators in general and special education share. The physical placement of students with disabilities in general education classes is often overemphasized, while other aspects of developing inclusive environments are neglected. This article describes defining principles of inclusive education and provides important questions to ask in determining whether inclusive environments demonstrate these principles. This article also includes practical strategies for assisting educators in creating educational environments that manifest the defining principles of inclusion.

Preparing Special Education Administrators for Inclusion in Diverse, Standards-Based Contexts: Beyond the Council for Exceptional Children and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium.

Special education administrators must be prepared for their leadership roles in inclusive, culturally diverse, standards-based school settings. These challenges create the need for new skills, required for effective special education leaders in the 21st century. In this article, the authors examine the standards used to prepare special education administrators, and they offer new insights into the knowledge and skills needed to facilitate the inclusion of diverse students with disabilities in standards-based classrooms.

Collaborative Infusion: An Emerging Approach to Teacher Preparation for Inclusive Education.

Abstract Preparing teachers for inclusive classrooms is one of the most important challenges facing teacher education today. Collaborative infusion approaches have been used by some programs as an alternative to or augmentation of single course approaches to the delivery of content related to students with disabilities. This paper presents findings of a national survey of 252 teacher preparation programs, including follow-up interviews with chairpersons of programs that used collaborative infusion approaches. Results indicated that approximately 25% of programs surveyed used collaborative infusion in some form, with the majority of these programs using it to supplement other approaches, such as a separate class. Interviews with those using collaborative infusion indicated that the majority of these persons found this approach beneficial to both students and participating faculty. However, some disadvantages, such as time-intensiveness and lack of congruence with university structures, also were noted.

Challenges and Choices in Urban Education: The Perceptions of Teachers and Principals

The study described in this paper was designed to investigate the perspectives of principals and teachers in urban schools across the country in regard to challenges in urban teaching. The perceptions of these educators were investigated regarding (1) the extent to which challenges commonly cited in the literature on urban teaching were evident at their schools; (2) the extent to which school personnel have the power to favorably influence challenge areas; and (3) the potential for success of promising practices commonly cited in the literature on urban teaching.

Preparing General Education Teachers for Inclusive Settings: The Role of Special Education Teachers in the Professional Development School Context

Despite the widespread growth of professional development schools (PDS), few reports have examined the professional development school context — and the role of special educators within these contexts — as catalysts for the professional growth of inservice and preservice teachers with respect to meeting the needs of students with disabilities. The present study sought to expand the knowledge base in this area by examining the perceptions of special educators in professional development schools regarding their contributions to the preparation of preservice general educators, as well as their perceptions of how the PDS relationship has enhanced their own professional growth.

Weaving Mathematical Instructional Strategies Into Inclusive Settings

In order to facilitate the successful inclusion of students with disabilities into general education mathematics classes, efforts must be made to explicitly examine how the needs of these students can be reconciled with the direction of mathematics reform. This article describes a framework that allows teachers in inclusive settings to interweave together instructional strategies from a variety of paradigms in order to meet individual learning needs in an environment that embraces current reform initiatives. Factors to be considered in the instructional decision-making process are highlighted, and an instructional continuum from more teacher-centered strategies to more student-centered strategies is described.

Collaborative Teacher Roles in Facilitating Inclusion: Preservice Preparation for General and Special Educators.

Abstract Collaboration between general and special education teachers has been viewed as important to the successful education of students with disabilities who are served in inclusive classes. The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the perceptions of a national sample of general and special education teacher educators regarding their perceptions of actual and ideal emphases placed on specific collaborative roles in teacher preparation programs for general and special education teachers. The authors analyzed the data and found significant differences between teacher educator perceptions of the degree of emphasis actually placed on collaborative roles and the degree of emphasis that should be placed on these roles in teacher preparation programs.