Abstract
Students who are learning English is one of the fastest growing groups of students in U.S. public schools. Evidence suggests that students learning English are often placed in segregated special education classrooms seemingly contradicting the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act mandate for the education of students with disabilities to occur within the least restrictive environment including modifications and adaptations to the general curriculum. Successful inclusive practices for students with disabilities who are learning English highlight and build on the cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths students bring to the classroom. This special issue features a variety of articles focused on collaborative, inclusive practices that build on the cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths of students with disabilities who are learning English. The issue focuses on two themes: (a) instruction and support and (b) collaboration and partnerships.
Students who are learning English make up one of the fastest growing groups of students in U.S. public schools. Bringing a variety of cultural, academic, and linguistic assets to the classroom, this heterogeneous population of students provides multifaceted instructional opportunities for educators. This is particularly true for educators teaching students with disabilities. Nationwide, approximately 11% of students with disabilities enrolled in public schools are categorized as English learners (Wisconsin Center for Education Research, 2017). This unique population of students offers opportunities for educators to establish inclusive educational services in which students’ cultural, linguistic, and developmental strengths are built on to support their success (Garcia & Tyler, 2010).
Evidence suggests that students learning English are often placed in segregated special education classrooms (Artiles & Klingner, 2006), seemingly contradicting the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act mandate for the education of students with disabilities to occur within the least restrictive environment, including modifications and adaptations to the general curriculum. For students with disabilities who are learning English, these modifications and adaptations are reiterated in the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) requirement that students’ English language development be addressed in their instructional programming.
Inclusion is the default approach for educating students with disabilities (Turnbull, Stowe, & Huerta, 2006). Successful inclusive practices for students with disabilities who are learning English highlight and build on the cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths students bring to the classroom. Many of these students not only bring their own family’s cultural heritage, but have interacted with, adopted, or integrated culture from a wide range of other contexts (Herrera & Murry, 2016). Understanding, respecting, and integrating students’ cultural backgrounds not only supports their academic achievement but fosters positive relationships between teachers and students essential to their academic success.
Students with disabilities who are learning English also bring a variety of academic skills and experiences. Given the continuum of services for students who are learning English (e.g., ESL pullout programs, dual language programs), students may have elevated academic knowledge in particular content areas and surprising delays in others. Students may have knowledge in their home language that is missed or overlooked due to the lack of English proficiency to express their understanding. Refugees and migrant students may have interrupted schooling with large gaps in their academic skills and understandings. As such, students’ academic experiences serve as a starting point for providing systematic, scaffolded instruction.
Inclusive practices for students with disabilities treat students’ home language as an asset and resource for learning. Unfortunately, many of these students tend to have instruction only in English compared to their typically developing peers who are also learning English (Zehler et al., 2003). Bilingual programs can support these students’ English and home language learning. Students with disabilities can benefit from the use of their home language even when English is used as the primary language of instruction.
While successful inclusive practices are grounded in asset-based views of students’ cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths, instruction must respond to interactions between second language learning and disability (Klingner, Boele, Linan-Thompson, & Rodriguez, 2014). This approach requires not only effective instruction but also partnerships across educational disciplines and with families (Kalyanpur & Harry, 2014; Kangas, 2017). Essential to the academic success of these students is synergistic instructional planning between second language acquisition and special education specialists with critical, valued partnerships with families.
As educators are challenged to move toward inclusive models of services, students with disabilities who are learning English are spending more time in the general education classroom. Unfortunately, many educators feel ill prepared to plan for and teach students with disabilities who are learning English. How can educators do it? How can educators plan services that are responsive to students’ disability, their English language status, and their culture (Garcia & Tyler, 2010) and consider the interaction between second language learning and disability (Klingner et al., 2014)? How can educators and parents come together to develop high-quality, inclusive planning for students with disabilities who are learning English? This special issue features a variety of articles focused on collaborative, inclusive practices that build on the cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths of students with disabilities who are learning English. The issue focuses on two themes: (a) instruction and support and (b) collaboration and partnerships.
Instruction and Support
Instruction for students with disabilities who are learning English requires integrated pedagogical approaches from special education, second language acquisition, and multicultural education. The question arises, how can teachers provide high-quality, research-based instruction that is culturally and linguistically responsive to ensure students’ success in the inclusive classroom? This collection of articles highlights the importance of specialized, systematic, and scaffolded instruction building on students’ cultural, academic, and linguistic strengths. First, the article by Linan-Thompson, Lara-Martinez, and Cavazos discusses intersections between evidence-based practices and culturally and linguistically responsive practices. The authors describe four culturally and linguistically responsive practices and provide exemplary vignettes that contrast typical and culturally and linguistically responsive practice. Throughout the article, the authors provide guiding questions for readers to reflect on their current practices. Specific examples of how educators may begin implementing culturally and linguistically responsive practices are also included.
The second article within the theme of instruction and support for students with disabilities who are learning English is from Cárdenas-Hagan. This article discusses the role of students’ oral language development in both the home and second language on literacy and learning. The author discusses how teachers can tap cross-language connections to support literacy for students with disabilities who are learning English. The author provides examples of explicit and systematic instruction to support students’ phonological, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic development. Procedures for collecting language samples to plan individualized instruction are detailed.
Continuing with a focus on the critical role oral language plays in the academic achievement of students, the third article, by Spies and Xu, presents strategies to support 21st-century collaboration and communication skills through scaffolded academic conversations. The authors highlight the power of academic conversations in the development of communication and collaboration skills while presenting instructional supports for students who may struggle with content or vocabulary recall, organizational, or discourse structures. An instructional sequence is provided to scaffold academic conversations for students with disabilities who are learning English.
Collaboration and Partnerships
Cross-disciplinary and family-professional partnerships are essential to supporting success for students with disabilities who are learning English. Oftentimes, students’ learning experiences are fragmented because individual educators are not qualified to simultaneously address students’ disability, their language development, and culturally-responsive practices. (Garcia & Tyler, 2010). Moving toward asset-based inclusive practices, the knowledge and expertise of second language acquisition specialists, special education teachers, and parents must come together. The voices of each party must be heard, valued, and considered essential in successful educational programming for students. This theme questions, how can educators effectively collaborate to ensure that students with disabilities who are learning English have equitable support for their academic, second language acquisition, and cultural needs in inclusive classrooms? In the fourth article, Kangas delineates how service providers (e.g., bilingual education, English as a second language, general education) can break out of traditional roles to collaborate in the design and development of individualized education programs (IEPs), which include accommodations and supports for students developing English proficiency. The author provides approaches to institute consultation among specialists as well as specific strategies to navigate the co-construction of IEPs.
Similarly, parent-professional communication and partnerships lay a foundation for student success. We ask, how can educators promote effective parent-professional communication and partnerships, particularly when parents and other family members may not speak English well, for students’ success in inclusive classrooms? Cheatham and Lim-Mullins, in the final article, challenge educators to understand parents and their language skills while dialoging in English via research-based adaptations to support communication and partnerships. The authors present marginalizing discourse as a dangerous consequence of deficit ideologies and move readers toward positive ideologies leading to supportive discourse. Reflective questions and discourse adaptations are provided to support the development of effective parent-professional communication.
As the number of students speaking a home language other than English increases across U.S. public schools, there is no question that some of these students also will need special education services. While on the surface the needs of students with disabilities who are learning English seem complex and daunting, in reality these students’ strengths provide tremendous opportunity in the programming of high-quality inclusive education. Serving the unique needs of students with disabilities requires building on student and family strengths. The task of ensuring equitable education for these students rests on the implementation of research-based strategies. Across the two themes of this special issue, the articles provide key strategies for successful inclusive services for students with disabilities who are learning English.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.