The current emphasis on individualised intervention programmes for students with special needs may not only be impractical, but also undesirable. This book compares and contrasts special needs approaches with school effectiveness strategies. The author sets out theories about inclusive schooling that arise out of a detailed scrutiny of practice. The link between theory and practice will be welcomed by many practitioners. With extensive examples from the field to illustrate Ainscow's ideas, this is an eminently accessible text.

The current emphasis on individualised intervention programmes for students with special needs may not only be impractical, but also undesirable. This book compares and contrasts special needs approaches with school effectiveness strategies. The author sets out theories about inclusive schooling that arise out of a detailed scrutiny of practice. The link between theory and practice will be welcomed by many practitioners. With extensive examples from the field to illustrate Ainscow's ideas, this is an eminently accessible text.

Richard A. Villa and Jacqueline S. Thousand provide an in-depth, research-based guide for ensuring that your school provides the federally guaranteed "least restrictive environment" for students no matter the severity of the challenges they face. Leading an Inclusive School: Access and Success for ALL Students offers administrators, teachers, and other educators working to promote inclusion a wealth of information about the history and research base of inclusive education in the United States, including pivotal amendments to and reauthorizations of the EHCA, landmark court cases, and the philosophical underpinnings of the movement; essential curricular and instructional practices for inclusive schools, such as heterogeneous grouping, creative problem solving, and co-teaching; powerful organizational structures such as Multitiered System of Support and Schoolwide Positive Behavior Supports to help optimize the benefits of differentiation for all students; and a conceptual framework for coordinating educational initiatives and best practices for educating all students in general education. Also included are vivid personal stories of students with disabilities that illustrate how these students flourish when they learn alongside their general education peers. Educators who are serious about committing to the success of learners at all levels of perceived physical, intellectual, communication, and social/emotional ability will find the examples, advice, and tools in this book indispensable for planning, implementing, and promoting inclusion in their schools.

To create truly inclusive school and classroom environments, educators must be prepared to include all students--including students with intellectual disabilities, who are not always given the opportunity to be full participants in the classroom. This book provides an overview of the history of inclusion, the philosophy underlying inclusion, and the role that curriculum accommodations and modifications play in making inclusion possible. The author discusses four ways to modify curriculum for students working well below grade level: altering content, conceptual difficulty, educational goals, or instructional methods. She then provides 40 curriculum modification strategies, based on Robert Marzano's New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, with directions for implementation and samples of student work.

In this comprehensive resource on inclusive schooling, administrators, general and special educators, and parents explore how inclusive education can support a diverse student body at all grade levels. They show how schools can meet standards and provide a "least restrictive environment" for students with disabilities by using cooperative learning, teaming, multi-age grouping, multicultural education, social skills training, and educational technology applications. And they explain how to facilitate change by using universal design principles and other curricular, instructional, assessment, and organizational practices. The authors examine the prevailing myths and the most frequently asked questions about inclusive education, and they provide an extensive list of resources. Woven through the book are the personal stories of people with disabilities and the educators and parents who work with them. As their voices make clear, inclusion is more than an educational buzzword; inclusion is a way of life, based on the belief that each individual is valued and belongs.

Inclusive education has become a phrase with international currency shaping the content of conferences and national educational policies around the world. But what does it mean? Is it about including a special group of disabled learners or students seen to have 'special needs' (them) or is it concerned with making educational institutions inclusive, responsive to the diversity of all their students (us)? In this unique comparative study, the editors have brought together an international team of researchers from eight countries to develop case-studies which explore the processes of inclusion and exclusion within a school or group of schools set in its local and national context. The study includes classroom observation, the experiences of the school day of students and interviews with staff, students, parents and school governors. Through an innovative juxtaposition of the case-studies and commentaries on them, differences of perspective within and between countries are revealed and analysed. The study arose from a dissatisfaction with previous research, which presents 'national perspectives' or seeks findings that have global significance. This book avoids such simplification and draws attention to the problems of translation of practice across cultures. The editors start from an assumption of diversity of perspective which like the diversity of students within schools can be viewed as problematic or as a resource to be recognized and celebrated.