Introduction
Following the studies showing that there is isolation and discrimination of students with intellectual disabilities, this article attempts to evaluate and assess the effect of new instructional model, with the aim of enhancing the performance of these students. The discrimination and isolation of the students with intellectual disabilities is a great social problem because it has significant impacts on the overall educational performance.
The enactment of the Individual with Disabilities in Education Act has lead to the enhanced focus in finding ways and models of ensuring that optimum number of students with the intellectual disabilities can have access to the general curriculum. The research questions of this study are to determine how the high school students with the severe intellectual disabilities can perform in the general curriculum basing on the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction, and determine how and the extent of their incorporation into the general curriculum.
The Instructional Models
The current instructional models are based on two instructional levels: the adaptation and augmentation of the curriculum. The adaptation of the curriculum involves the changing the way of conveying the content of the curricular for instance reciting rather than reading, while the curriculum augmentation involves “meta-cognitive or executive processing strategies for acquiring and generalizing the.standard curriculum”(Agran, Cavin, Wehmeyer & Palmer, 2006). The best approach of teaching the students with the intellectual disabilities is the augmentative curriculum, but this model requires the inclusion of self-determination strategy.
The authors are proposing the use of Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction in the analysis and the evaluation of the augmentative strategy. A number of students with varied intellectual disabilities were assessed for personal hygiene, following instructions, task performance and there was significant improvement in their learning. Agran et al. (2006) describes this model as “…incorporates the principles of self-determination and student-directed learning to form an instructional model and involves teaching a student to learn and apply one or more curriculum augmentative strategies.” This model entails a process of making a student to set goals, plan on how to attain the goal and then refine the plans of achieving the goal.
The model targets the high school students with the intellectual disabilities. The three high school students with varied disabilities were subjected to the learning model. These students were observed for any improvement for a period of about three months during which their progressive data was collected and recorded. The students were monitored for short term as well as long-term effects of the model in their learning.
The Findings
The authors analyzed and summarized their findings using table and graphs. The findings data addressed the research questions as according to Agran et al. (2006), “…students with moderate to severe disabilities can utilize student-directed learning strategies – specifically, the goal setting, self- monitoring, and self-instruction – to promote their access to the general curriculum.” The findings proved that students with mild to severe disabilities could develop significant academic skills that are consistent with the general curriculum.
The findings have provided a plausible basis for the harmonization of the special curriculum to that of general curriculum thus improving the educational status of the students with the intellectual disabilities. Despite the getting prospective findings, the study is limited because the number of students with intellectual disabilities studied was very few to warrant generalization and extrapolation of the findings. The research also did not provide for the effect of the model on the students with severe intellectual disabilities in that they cannot use non-symbolic language.
Conclusion
The intellectual disability has led to segregation of the students with intellectual disabilities from the general curriculum. Realization that these students can equally improve and perform like other students, the government has set up legislations to provide for their incorporation into the general curriculum. The stakeholders in the education system are developing instructional models to achieve this and their results are robust in that, realignment of the specialized curriculum into the general curriculum is possible and necessary. What I find interesting in the article is that the researchers are very passionate and sensitive about the intellectual needs of the students with intellectual disabilities and I recommend and comment that further comprehensive research needs to be done by all stakeholders.
References
Agran, M., Cavin, M., Wehmeyer, M., & Palmer, S. (2006). Participation of Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities in the General Curriculum: The Effects of the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction. Research & Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities 31(3), 230-241.