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WEB PROVIDES HANDBOOK AND OTHER INCLUSION GUIDANCE FOR GENERAL ED TEACHERS

November 18, 1999

If the inclusive classroom is a maze for some general education teachers, the Internet might be considered a map store, offering various resources to help educators navigate that maze. The University of Alberta, for example, hosts an online Inclusion Handbook, partially funded by the Canadian government, to answer questions, guide general ed. teachers through the inclusion process and help successful teachers share their stories. The U.S. government takes a more staid approach, with the Department of Education publishing academic papers and statistics on inclusive education but leaving the step-by-step guidance duties to other web resources and book publishers.

The Inclusion Handbook's developers call it "an entire book composed for cyberspace," with chapters on building community support for inclusive classrooms, setting up an inclusive classroom and making that classroom effective and organized by using various learning strategies, evaluating students and teaching social skills. The site's "Field Notes" section features more than 100 interviews with teachers in the United States and Canada who have set up inclusive settings for a variety of subjects and educational goals on the elementary, middle school and high school levels.

The Inclusion Handbook also maintains an e-mail discussion list educators can subscribe to for feedback and to discuss various inclusion issues. The site is funded by the Alberta Association for Community Living, the Clifford E. Lee Foundation, the Disabled Persons Participation Program, Tohaventa Holdings Inc., Sutherland Productions and SchoolNet, Industry Canada's initiative to extend use of the Internet for educational purposes.

The U.S. Department of Education has an extensive listing of statistical reports and other government papers that make at least a passing reference to inclusive education. The list includes articles such as "Ten Policy Issues Influencing Preschool Inclusion," by Susan Janko and Alice Porter, of the department's Early Childhood Research Institute on Inclusion. The department's most recent statistics on inclusion come from "The Inclusion of Students With Disabilities and Limited English Proficient Students in Large-Scale Assessments: A Summary of Recent Progress," published in July 1997 and available for download from the National Center For Education Statistics web site.

Also of note, the department's Blue Ribbon Schools awards program features information on schools such as Edna Mae Fielder Elementary School, in Katy, Texas, and Buttonball Lane School in Glastonbury, Conn., that have successfully implemented inclusive education programs for special ed. students. They are not categorized within the Dept. of Education site as inclusive schools, however, so the best way to find them may be to use the site's search engine and the keyword "inclusion."

Several other organizations have also posted information on inclusive education online. The Consortium on Inclusive Schooling Practices, for example, focuses on collaborative efforts to improve state and local education agencies' inclusive education programs in the schools and the community. "The focus of the project is on systemic reform rather than changes in special education systems only," the group says. In addition, many education-related Internet sites and special education advocacy groups feature information and additional Internet links on inclusive education.

While the web includes a variety of inclusion information, several printed books on the subject are also available. Dr. Linda Hill and the Cowichan Valley Independent Living Resource Centre in Canada recently published "Discovering Connections: A Guide To The Fun Of Bridging Disability Differences." The book, published by Building Bridges, "is a hands-on, participatory workbook bringing diverse people together through the universal language of fun," the publisher says. The book is available directly from the publisher and from major booksellers.

While Building Bridges publishes books and videos on a variety of educational issues, another publishing company focuses entirely on inclusive education. Appropriately named Inclusion Press, the company calls itself "a small independent press striving to produce readable, accessible, user-friendly books and resources about full inclusion in school, work, and community." Inclusion Press titles are often used in academic courses and conferences, but they are also available for individual use.8