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Definition of Special Education

Special education involves designing and delivering teaching strategies tailored to students with disabilities or learning difficulties, whether they are enrolled in regular schools or not. These students may have impairments like hearing or vision loss, physical or intellectual disabilities, learning difficulties, behavioral or emotional disorders, or speech issues. Some students have multiple disabilities. Most regular classrooms include students who require some form of special education. As acceptance and resources for special education in Papua New Guinea grow, more students with special needs will attend regular schools. Therefore, all teachers must develop effective special education skills to ensure all students, including those with special needs, learn effectively.

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1K views3 pages

Definition of Special Education

Special education involves designing and delivering teaching strategies tailored to students with disabilities or learning difficulties, whether they are enrolled in regular schools or not. These students may have impairments like hearing or vision loss, physical or intellectual disabilities, learning difficulties, behavioral or emotional disorders, or speech issues. Some students have multiple disabilities. Most regular classrooms include students who require some form of special education. As acceptance and resources for special education in Papua New Guinea grow, more students with special needs will attend regular schools. Therefore, all teachers must develop effective special education skills to ensure all students, including those with special needs, learn effectively.

Uploaded by

Maridel Mugot-Duran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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introduction

Special Education is the design and delivery of teaching


and learning strategies for individuals with disabilities or
learning difficulties who may or may not be enrolled in
regular schools. Students who need special education
may include students who have a hearing impairment or
are deaf, students who have vision impairment or are
blind, students with physical disabilities, students with
intellectual disability, students with learning difficulties,
students with behavior disorders or emotional
disturbance, and students with speech or language
difficulties. Some students have a number of disabilities
and learning difficulties.

There are students who require special education of


some kind in most elementary and primary school
classes, and with changing social values, increased
acceptance and tolerance, and growth in the provision of
services and resources for special education across Papua
New Guinea, it is likely that the numbers of students with
special educational needs attending regular schools will
increase rapidly. Consequently, it is essential that all
teachers develop practical and effective special
educational skills so that they may ensure that all
students in their classes, including those with special
educational needs, learn effectively.
Definition of Special Education

A comprehensive definition of special education is


provided by Salend (2011, p. 7) as follows:
Special education involves delivering and monitoring a
specially designed and coordinated set of
comprehensive, research-based instructional and
assessment practices and related services to students
with learning, behavioral, emotional, physical, health or
sensory disabilities. These instructional practices and
services are tailored to identify and address the
individual strengths and challenges of students; to
enhance their educational, social, behavioral and
physical development; and to foster equity and access
to all aspects of schooling, the community and society
.
This indicates that special education is characterized by:

Individual assessment and planning


Specialized instruction
Intensive instruction
Goal-directed instruction
Research-based instructional practices
Collaborative partnerships
Student performance evaluation
Definition of Special Education

The field of special education has evolved over the past 250
years (Lloyd et al. 1991). The first to emerge were schools for
the deaf in the 1760s and for the blind in the 1780s. These
were followed by schools for children with intellectual
disabilities in the 1830s and schools for children with physical
disabilities in the 1860s. Around 1900, many countries
around the world began to require that all children attend
school, which brought children with learning difficulties to the
attention of teachers. This led to Binet being asked to create
a test to identify such children, which later became the first
intelligence test. In the early part of the twentieth century,
these tests were used to select children with moderate levels
of learning difficulties to be educated in special classes within
mainstream schools.

The numbers of these special classes grew in many countries,


including the USA and New Zealand, until the 1980s when the
numbers of these special classes began to decline. For the
past 30 or so years, the policies and practices of special
education in general, and special classes in mainstream
schools in particular, have been challenged by an alternative
approach that has come to be called “inclusive education.”

Reference: Hornby, G. (2014). Inclusive Special Education Evidence-Based


Practices for Children with Special Needs and Disabilities.

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