Education Theories

[Date of Submission]

Education Theories

Introduction

For this assignment, the article selected is Behavior Modification; Including Children with Autism in General Education Classrooms: A Review of Effective Strategies by Joshua K. Harrower and Glen Dunlap. The article provides an analysis of the strategies based on the data which facilitate the inclusion of students who suffer from autism in the normal educational settings. The article is segmented into two major parts.

It initially reviews the research which is done on the inclusion as a variable which is not dependent on any factors in accordance with the academic and social results. The second part evaluates the strategies of intervention which have been seen to be successful for this inclusion of autistic students with their normal counterparts. Furthermore, the article reviews strategies like delayed contingencies, antecedent procedures, peer-mediated interventions, self-management strategies and multi-component strategies. In the end it has given a recommendation for future research areas for students with autism being included in normal classrooms.

Discussion

Independent Variable

According to the article, there are limited studies that have researched the procedures that facilitate the inclusion of autistic kids in normal schools, however, the author does still consider the limited data available to determine whether or not this independent variable actually does indeed yield positive results or not (Hunt & Goetz, 1997); in this case, the author determined that it indeed does has positive outcomes. Researchers have examined students that have disabilities actually exhibit more social intervention and engagement, get and give more social support, have more friends and possess more developmentally advanced individual based educational goals when mixed with normal students, than those who are taught in excluded environments (Fryxell & Kennedy, 1995; Hunt, Farron- Davis, Beckstead, Curtis, & Goetz, 1994).

Even though the author presents a valid study for each of the point mentioned in the paragraphs, there is still an issue that these studies are quite outdated. Most of the researches are of 1990's, with the current year going in 2010+, these studies are now more than 10-15 years old. There have been drastic changes in this time-frame and modern studies need to be evaluated to further validate these findings.

Still according to the current studies, the inclusion of autistic students have yielded positive or mixed results for instance, the students with disabilities have in some cases been rated as most popular in their class by their peers while some have not (Evans, Salisbury, Palombaro, Berryman, & Hollowood, 1992). Also in the same study shows that the disabled students have received more and more social interactions over the school years, thereby addressing the concern of social behaviors of these students as well (Evans et al., 1992; Hunt et al., 1994).

However, the author acknowledges that this inclusion merely helps with the social challenges of the people with disabilities (e.g., Hunt & Goetz, 1997; Kohler, Strain, & Shearer, 1996), more is needed in order to address their academic concerns. Therefore, a number of strategies have been devised for the teachers to implement in their class-rooms in order to ...