The Impact of an Invitational Environment on Preschoolers with Special Needs

Abstract

Providing services to special education students has been fraught with controversy concerning the appropriate setting (Yell, 1995). This quasi-experimental study compares the progress of developmentally delayed preschoolers after two school years of schooling in two environments using the Brigance Inventory of Early Development (IED-II) (Brigance, 2006). One of the settings is an environment that is exclusive to disabled peers (a self-contained or pull-out classroom), and the other setting is an environment including both disabled and non-disabled peers (inclusive classroom). Then, this study looks at the school climates to see if more specific environmental factors contributed to the student progress, or lack thereof, using the School Survey-Revised(ISS-R) (Smith & Purkey, 2012).The results from the Brigance Inventory of Early Development (IED-II) standardized assessment revealed that there were two domains with no significant differences and one domain that was significant between the settings. There were no significant differences in the academic or life skills domains; however a significant difference was gained in the social-emotional domain for inclusive classrooms. The Inviting School Survey-Revised(ISS-R) (Smith & Purkey, 2012) was administered to a small sample population to measure the school climates for factors that could have contributed to the gains, but overall, no difference was found.