Special education programmes offered in universities and other institutions of higher learning prepare teachers to handle students whose special needs adversely affect their ability to learn. They will learn to identify and handle students in the classroom with emotional disturbances or developmental challenges. The field of special education also covers working with students who have physical difficulties such as being blind or deaf-mute.
There are four broad categories that schools providing special education services use to handle special education students:
1. Inclusion
This approach has students of special education spend all or at least more than half the school day with the rest of the students that do not have special education needs. This approach requires a substantial modification of the curriculum in order to ensure that the pace of learning for either type of student is not affected. Hence, schools use it only on selected students with mild to moderate special needs.
2. Mainstreaming
Special education students under this setup are also integrated into classes with non-disabled students on specified time periods based on their skills or deficiencies. For the rest of the school day, special education students are then placed in separate classes exclusively taught for their group.
3. Segregation
This model places special education students exclusively in separate classrooms apart from the non-disabled students. Although special education students may study in the same school as non-disabled students, students in the two groups are not placed with one another in the same class. However, social interaction is still possible outside the classroom such as in the playground or school cafeteria. As an alternative, segregation can also be done by enrolling the special education student in a special school which does not cater to non-disabled students.
4. Exclusion
In this approach, the special education student is totally excluded from attending school altogether. This occurs in situations such as when a student is in a hospital, his or her parents do not have enough money to afford schooling, or he or she is detained in prison or rehabilitation facility. The special education that these students get are from one-on-one or group instruction.
