What is Special Education?

Current literature defines Special Education as Individually planned, systematically

implemented, and carefully evaluated instruction to help exceptional children achieve the

greatest possible personal self-sufficiency and success is present and future environments

(Howard,2003).

Individually planned Instruction- the law on Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

requires that an individualized education program (IEP) be developed and Implemented for every

special education student between the ages of 3 and 21.

The basic requirements of IDEA for all IEPs include statements of: (1) the child’s present level

of performance, academic achievement, social adaptation, prevocational and vocational skills,

psychomotor skills and self-help skills.

(2) annual goals describing the educational performance to be achieved by the end of each school

year.

(3) sort-term instructional objectives present in measurable, intermediate steps between the present

level of educational performance and the annual goals

(4) specific educational services; and (5) needed transition services from age 16 or earlier before

the student leaves the school setting.

Systematically implemented and evaluated instructions. Each type of children with special

education needs requires particular educational services, curriculum goals, competencies and

skills, educational approaches, strategies and procedures in the evaluation of learning and skills.
Personal self-sufficiency. An important goal of special education is to help the child become

independent from the assistance of adults in personal maintenance and development, homemaking,

community life vocational and leisure activities and travel.

Present Environment. Refers to the current conditions in the life of the child with disability. The

present environment includes the family, the school, the community where he/she lives, the

institutions in the society that extend assistance and support to children and youth with special

education needs such as the government, non-government organizations, socio civic organizations

and other groups.

Future Environment. Is a forecast of how the child with a disability can move on the next level

of education, from elementary to secondary school and on to college or vocational program, and

finally, to the workplace where he/she can be gainfully employed.

Special Education includes learning disabilities such as dyslexia, communication disorders (such

as ADHD), physical disabilities, developmental disabilities and many other disabilities.

Students with these kinds of disabilities are likely to benefit from additional educational services

such as different approaches to teaching, the use of technology, a specifically adapted teaching

area, or a resource room.

Who Are Exceptional Children or Children and Youth with Special Needs?

The term exceptional children and youth covers those with mental retardness, giftedness and talent,

learning disabilities emotional and behavioral disorders.

 There are four point of views about special education (HEWARD2003)

1. Special education is a legislatively govern enterprise.

2. Special education is part of the country’s educational system

3. Special education is teaching children with special needs in the least restrictive environment.

WHO- the exceptional children or the children and youth

WHAT- access to differentiated and modified curricular program

HOW- tough adaptively skills and basic academic.

The basic terms in Special Education: Developmental Disability, Impairment or disability,

handicap and at risk

Developmental disability refers to a serve, chronic disability of a child five years of age older that

is:

1. Attributable to a mental or physical impairment or a combination of mental and physical

impairments.

2. Manifested before the person attains age 22

3. Likely to continue indefinitely

4. Results in substantial functional limitations in three or more of the areas of major life activities

such as self-care, language, learning, mobility, self-direction, capacity for independent living and

economic self-sufficiency and:

5. Reflects the person need for a combination and sequence of special care treatment or other

services that are lifelong or of extended duration and are individually planned and coordinated.

IMPAIRMENT OR DISABILITY • Refers to reduced function or loss of a specific part of the

body or organ. A person may have disabilities such as blindness or low vision, deafness or hard of

hearing condition, mental retardation, learning disabilities, communication disorders, physical and

health impairments and severe disabilities. These disabilities or impairments limit or restrict the

normal functions of a particular organ of the body. In case of the sensory disabilities-blindness and

deafness- vision or sight and audition or hearing do not function normally and restrict the person’s

seeing and hearing. The speech mechanism is impaired in communication disorders and causes the

person to have problems, improper rhythm and timing in speech and even stuttering. The skeletal

and nervous systems are impaired in cases of physical and health impairments and severe

disabilities. Impairment and disability are used interchangeably.

HANDICAP • Refers to a problem a person with a disability or impairment encounters when

interacting with people, events and the physical aspects of the environment. For example, a child

with low vision or blindness cannot read the regular print of textbooks. The child either read books

that are published in large print or transcribed into braille. A child who is hard of hearing aid and

reads the lips of the speaker. A child who has a physical disability such as a crippling condition

cannot walk normally and uses a wheelchair, braces or artificial limbs. However, it must be

remembered that a disability may pose a handicap in one environment but not in another . A

wheelchair-bound child with a physical disability may not be able to compete with his classmates

in the Physical Education class, but may excel in Mathematics, Science and the other academic

subjects.
AT RISK • Refers to children who have greater chances than other children to develop a disability.

The child is in danger of substantial development delay because of medical, biological, or

environmental factors if early intervention services are not provided. Down syndrome occurs

during the early phase of pregnancy when one parental chromosome fails to separate at conception

resulting in the child’s having forty-seven chromosomes instead of the normal forty-six or twenty-

three pairs. At birth, the infant has abnormal physical characteristics and mental retardation. The

fetus in the womb of a woman who consumes alcohol heavily and chain-smokes, or takes

prohibited drugs is at risk for brain injury that causes disabilities. If a disability runs in the family,

the fetus may inherit it and the infant will be born with a disability. Children may meet accidents,

suffer from certain disease, malnutrition and other environmental deprivations that can lead to

disabilities

WHAT ARE THE CATEGORIES OF EXCEPTIONALITIES AMONG CHILDREN?

-Mental Retardation- refers to substantial limitation in present functioning. It is characterized by

significantly sub-average intellectual functioning. Existing concurrently with related limitations in

two or more of the following applicable adaptive skill areas: communication, self care, home

living, social skills, community use, self direction, health and safety, functional academics, leisure

and work. Mental retardation manifests before age 18.

-Giftedness and Talent- refers high performance in intellectual, creative and artistic areas,

unusual leadership capacity, and excellence in specific academic field (us government). Giftedness
refers to the traits of above average general abilities, high level task commitment and creativity

(renzulli, 1978). Giftedness emphasizes talent as the primary defining characteristics (Feldhusen

1992). Giftedness shows in superior memory, observational powers, curiosity, creativity, and

ability to learn (Piirto, 1994).

-Specific learning disability- means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological

processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest

itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical

calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal

brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and development aphasia. The term does not include the children who

have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, of

mental retardation or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantages.

-The term emotional and behavioral disorders- means a condition exhibiting one or more of the

following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree, which adversely

affects educational performance: (a) an inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual,

sensory, and health factors;

(b) an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers;

(c) inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal under circumstances;

(d) a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or

(e) a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fear associated with personal or school problems.

The term includes children who are schizophrenic. The term does not include children who are

socially maladjusted unless it is determined that they are seriously emotionally disturbed.
-speech and language disorders or communication disorders- exist when the impact that a

communication pattern has on a person’s life meets any one of the following criteria: the

transmission and/or perception of message is faulty; the person is placed at an economic

disadvantage: the person is placed at a learning disadvantage; the problem causes physical damage

or endangers the health of the person.

-Hearing impairment-is a generic term includes hearing disabilities ranging from mild to

profound. Thus encompassing children who are deaf and those who are hard hearing. A person

who is deaf is not able to use hearing to understand speech, although he or she may perceive some

sounds. Even with a hearing aid, the hearing loss is too great to allow deaf person to understand

speech through the ears alone, a person who is hard hearing has a significant hearing loss that

makes some special adaptations necessary.

-students with visual impairment- display a wide range visual disabilities – from total blindness

or relatively good residual vision. There is visual restriction of sufficient severity that t interferes

with normal progress in a regular educational program without modifications (scholl, 1986, cited

in heward, 2003). A child who is blind is totally without sight or has so little vision that he or she

learns primarily through the other senses, such as touch to read braille. A child with low vision is

able to learn through the visual channel and generally learns to read print.

-physical impairments- may be orthopedic impairments that involved the skeletal system – the

bones, joints, limbs, and associated muscles. Or, they maybe neurological impairments that involve
the nervous system affecting the ability to move, use, feel, or control certain parts of the body.

Health impairments include chronic illnesses, that is, they’re present over long periods and tend

not become better or disappear.

-The term severe disabilities generally encompass individuals with severe and profound

disabilities in intellectual, physical and social functioning. Because of their intensity of their

physical, mental or emotional problems, or a combination of such problems, they highly

specialized educational, social, psychological and medical services beyond those which are

traditionally offered by regular special education programs in order to maximize their potential for

useful and meaningful participation in society and for self-fulfillment. Children and youth with

severe disabilities include those who are seriously emotional disturbed, schizophrenic, autistic, and

profoundly and severely mentally retarded, deaf blind, mentally retarded blind, and cerebral

palsied-deaf.

Is it Correct to Use Disability Category Labels?

There are two points of view regarding the use of labels to describe children youth with disabilities

– The First point of view frowns on labeling these children as mentally retarded, learning

disabled, emotionally disturbed, socially maladapted, blind, deaf or physically disabled.

– The Second and less popular point of view is that is necessary to use workable disability

category labels in order to describe the exceptional learning needs for a systematic

provision of special education services.

PROS AND POSSIBLE BENEFITS OF LABELING

 Categories can relate diagnosis to specific types of education and treatment.

 Labeling may lead to “protective” response in which children are more accepting of the

atypical behavior by a peer with disabilities than they would be if that same behavior were

emitted by a child without disabilities.

 Labeling helps professionals communicate with one another and classify and assess

research findings.

Funding of special education programs is often based on specific categories of

exceptionality.

 Labels enable disability-specific advocacy groups to promote specific programs and to spur

legislative action.

 Labeling helps make exceptional children’s special needs more visible to the public.

 POSSIBLE DISADVANTAGE OF LABELING

 Because labels usually focus on disability, impairment, and performance deficits, some

people may think only in terms of what the individual cannot do instead of what he or she

can or might be able to learn to do.

 Labels may cause others to hold low expectations for and to differentially treat a child on

the basis of the label, which may result to a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. For example, in
 one study, student teachers gave a child labeled “autistic” more praise and rewards and less

verbal correction for incorrect responses than they gave a child labeled “normal”.

 Labels that describe a child’s performance deficit often mistakenly acquire the role of

explanatory construct. For example, “Sherry acts that way because she is emotionally

disturbed.

 Labels suggest that learning problems are primarily the result of something wrong within

the child, thereby reducing the systematic examination of and accountability for

instructional variables as the cause of performance deficits.

 A labeled child may develop poor self-concept.

 Labels may lead peers to reject or ridicule the labeled child.

 Special education labels have a certain permanence; once labeled, it is difficult for a child

to ever again achieve the status of simply being ‘just another kid’

 Labels often provide a basis for keeping children out of the regular classroom.

 A disproportionate number of children from diverse cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups

have been inaccurately labeled as disabled, especially under the category mild mental

retardation.

 Classification of exceptional children requires the expenditure of a great amount of money

and professional and student time that could better be spent in planning and delivering

instruction.
 The Individuals with Disabilities Act of America

 Public Law 94-142, the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has changed the

American system education

Six Major Principles (HEWARD,2003)

1. Zero reject- Schools must enroll every child, regardless of the nature or severity of his or

her disabilities: no child with disabilities may be excluded from a public educating.

2. Nondiscriminatory testing- schools must use nonbiased, multifactor methods of evaluation

to determine whether a child has a disability and, if so, whether special education is needed.

3. Appropriate education- schools must develop and implement in individualized education

program (IEP) for each student with a disability. The IEP must be individually designed to meet

the child’s unique needs.

4. Least restrictive environment- schools must educate students with disabilities, with children

who do not have disabilities to the maximum extent possible.

5. Due process- schools must provide safeguards to protect the right of children with

disabilities and their parents by ensuring due process, confidentiality of records, and parental

involvement in educational planning and placement decisions.

6. Parents participation- schools must collaborate with the parents of students with disabilities in
the design and implementation of specia