Literature Review
Students with special needs have always received additional support more than their normal counterparts. Students with special needs have other common needs with other normal students. They should be first considered as students with all the needs of a student and then as special people. As such, many aspects that make up student should form a fundamental part of their needs. They include personality, resilience, and strength as well as the ability to enjoy life and learn. The support to students with special needs should thus be geared to making sure they are included in the education system as much as possible. It only through the additional support that they can achieve their full potential. Governments legislate and provide policies that ensure the additional benefits to the students with special needs so that they can get the best of their education. However, the beneficial impacts of the additional support remains a hot button issue with different perspectives. This paper reviews the literature on the impacts of additional support to students with special needs.
As per the Government of Montana, (2011), students with special needs find themselves in some problems. For example, up to 14% of the special needs, students have involved in a physical fight over school property with other students in school compared to 8% of normal students. In cases of bullying, 38% of special needs students against 24% of normal students have been subjected to bullying in school in 2011. Also, 255 of special students have deliberately attempted suicide compared to 14 percent of the non-special students. Additionally, 37% of special needs students have had their property deliberately damaged compared to 27% for non-special students. These problems expose the special students to a lot of challenges as compared to their non-special counterparts.
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Providing special needs students with additional support such as well conceived structured programs in English language learning benefits the special needs students by accommodating their unique learning needs. In Boston Arts Academy, the school has adopted a policy that ensures all the adults in school “own” every student with a disability. Consequently, they have provided necessary assistance to the students including a learning center that provides support other than the regular education (Jobs for the Future, 2003).
Dempsey, Valentine, and Colyvas, (2015) explains that additional support to students with special needs rather than be more productive has a negative impact. Regarding educational process when students with a disability are given special needs like grouping them together to learn on their own, their performance go down as opposed to when they are put together with other students. Also, when students with special needs are integrated with their non-special counterparts, they often show good progress in learning and reduced self-esteem while when they are segregated to be provided with special needs their performances dipped and suffered low self-esteem. Dempsey, Valentine, and Colyvas, (2015) reports in their study that students who received additional special education attention recorded lower levels of literacy performed poorly on numerical and pro-social skills and had higher levels of behavior problems as compared to the other group of students that never received such support in 2008. They further contend that the groups of special needs students who receive special needs attention perform substantial poor compared to their counterparts who do not receive such special attentions.
Wang, (2009) points out that inclusion schools are primarily established to help students with special needs with learning and development. He argues that including the special students with the rest so that they are not treated as special by providing additional attention, improves their learning outcomes. Social skills, personal development as well as academic achievement. Wnag, (2009) adds that providing special needs students with additional support differently from their non-special needs denies them the opportunity to be understood. As such their difficulties in learning can not be identified making them consistently remain with their learning problems. The outcome is weak performances in academics. Special students should not be granted additional support to ensure they feel normal as other students (Bryant, Bryant, & Smith, 2016). By so doing their learning skills will be enhanced through both speech and language programs as well as improved community acceptance.
Students with a disability should be granted with the support required so that their education system can be facilitated. According to (McLeskey, Rosenberg, and Westling, 2012), the disability code requires that students with disability should not be treated with favor for reasons relating to their disability. This is an attempt to make the students feel normal as their counterparts and enable them to exploit their potential to the maximum.
The labels that accompany the additional support provided to special students come with stigma (McDonald, 2013). Such students should be handled as normal students and left to interact freely with their non-special counterparts. The general education should just be geared to ensuring that even students with slow learning pace are taken care of to comfortably learn at their pace and improve their cognitive skills (McDonald, 2013). When students with special needs are treated equally with regular students, they feel adequate and begin appreciating their potential. This boost their self-confidence. The special students also gain the spirit to try and compete with their non-special counterparts which make them believe in their potential and work towards excelling by themselves and being independent.
Additional support beyond the ordinary students' support is not good for special students for it denies them the chance to be confident in themselves as individual with an ability to do that which they want and achieves that which they yearn for (Hodkinson, 2015). As they interact freely and feel normal, they build some confidence necessary in approaching issues that confront them in life. However, when supported, such individuals become dependent and doubt their ability to achieve what may look to them as impossible (Hodkinson, 2015). How students with special needs are treated affects their growth and development. When overly supported, they become dependent and grow up expecting favors. Consequently, they get oriented to believe that they are unable to do anything by themselves but have to rely on others for support (McDonald, 2013). The implication would raise an overly dependent person who looks up to the people around them for favors. Also, Hanushek, (2016) contends that there is no healthy relationship between students academic outcome and school resources. It, therefore, implies that adding more resources to students with disability will not result in increased education outcome
Students with special needs may have more than learning barriers. According to CentrefFor Parent Information and Resources, (2010), the critical success factor for the academic performance of students with disability lies within having an appropriate adaptation. As such, the students should be able to adapt to their learning environment and make the most of their ability to cope. Perhaps such students may have a modification in the learning based on their needs to ensure they are well integrated into the learning process. Such changes should take into considerations their learning weaknesses to ensure that they benefit from the learning as much as their non-special students. Other support like accommodation may be necessary. However, it is not obvious that such accommodations or modifications would benefit the students with special needs. The unique needs of the child could be met by the additional support of modifying the instruction techniques to suit the needs of the special students. In that case, the additional support becomes of importance significantly to the learning outcome of the students. The most important part to be emphasized is the adaptation aspect. More than anything else students with special needs need to be resilient to adapt to their environment and compete favorably with other non-special students, that way, they can make good use of their abilities their abilities.
According to Dev and Haynes, (2015), Students with disabilities are often more likely to succeed when put in inclusive classrooms with teachers skilled in different instructions and have the capability to manage their behavior challenges. According to the study carried out by Dev and Haynes (2015), three factors were, however, necessary for the success of students with a disability in an inclusive setting. They include education of the pre-service teachers in inclusive settings, the attitudes of the teachers toward the inclusive setting and sufficient administrative support to enable both general and special instructors or teachers plan effectively for the entire class.
However, Moreira, Bilimória, Pedrosa, Pires, Cepa, Mestre, Ferreira, and Serra, (2015), explains that students with a special education need teachers support for learning. More than just inclusion, instructional factors will contribute to overall students academic performance. Moreover, they should be integrated and treated the same as the nonspecial students who are their classmates.
In conclusion, students with special needs experience a lot of challenges in learning. They may range from accessibility to learning difficulties. Other that relate to physical disability may include movement, susceptibility to abuse and physical attack including stealing. For such students, their learning experience may be very different from those that are non-special. It is for this reason that institutions of learning come up with policies to ensure their equally benefit from thew education to have a better future.
References
Bryant, D. P., Bryant, B. R., & Smith, D. D. (2016). Teaching students with special needs in inclusive classrooms . Washington DC: SAGE Publications.
CentrefFor Parent Information and Resources. (2010, September). Supports, Modifications, and Accommodations for Students. parentcenterhub.org . Retrieved from http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/accommodations/.
Governement of Montana. (2011). Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Students with Special Needs. A Health Risk Behavior Comparison of Montana High School Students Based on Special Education Assistance , 1-7.
Hodkinson, 2015. Alan. Key issues in special educational needs and inclusion . Washington DC: SAGE Publications.
Dempsey, I., Valentine, M., & Calyvas, K. (2015). The Effects of Special Education Support on Young The Effects of Special Education Support on Young. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education. , 271-292.
Jobs for the Future. (2003). Creating Schools thaat Work: Lessons for Reform from Successful Urban High Schools . Boston, MA: The Center For Collaboartive Eduacation.
McDonald, R. P. (2013). Test theory: A unified treatment . London: Psychology Press.
McLeskey, J. M., Rosenberg, M. S., & Westling, D. L. (2012). Inclusion: Effective practices for all students . London: Pearson Higher Ed.
Wang, H. L. (2009). Should All Students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) Be Included in Mainstream Education Provision? A Critical Analysis. Journal of International Education Studies , 154-161.
Hanushek, E. A. (2016). Assessing the Effects of School Resources on Student Performance: An Update. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis , 141-164.
Haynes, P. D. (2015). Teacher Perspectives on Suitable Learning Environments for Students with Disabilities: What Have We Learned from Inclusive, Resource, and Self-Contained Classrooms? The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences: Annual Review , 53-63.
Wang, H. L. (2009). Should All Students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) Be Included in Mainstream Education Provision? - A Critical Analysis. Journal of International Education Studies , 154-161.
