John and Robbie are nine-year-old students with complex support needs who attend neighboring school districts. Both students have cerebral palsy, cortical visual impairment, and do not use natural speech to communicate. They also love Minecraft™ and the Despicable Me™ movies! Both participate in their state’s alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS). Although these boys are “developmental twins” their educational programs are starkly different.

John spends the majority of his day in a self-contained classroom. The special education bus drops him off right outside a door that leads directly into the classroom. His classmates include five other students with complex support needs and the room is staffed by a special education teacher and three paraprofessionals. A speech-language pathologist (SLP), an occupational therapist (OT), and a physical therapist (PT) come to the classroom several times a week to deliver their services as defined by John’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). Throughout the day John’s teachers and therapists work on pre-academic, developmental, and self-help IEP goals such as dressing, eating, sorting, cleaning, and one-to-one correspondence. John goes out for recess with a fourth-grade class and is wheeled around the playground by a paraprofessional, having only fleeting contact with typical students. He and his classmates eat lunch at a separate table in the cafeteria.

Robbie’s day is very different from John’s. He rides a regular school bus and is wheeled into the building by a classmate. He participates in every typical classroom routine and lesson and his special education and related services are delivered within the context of those routines and lessons. For example, during the Pledge of Allegiance the OT supports Robbie to activate a Bigmack™ communication button switch that plays the Pledge as recorded by another boy in the classroom. During English language arts, his SLP supports him to answer comprehension questions by using his augmentative communication device, an iPad™ programmed with the Tobii Dynavox Compass™ app. In math, Robbie uses manipulatives, an enlarged number line, and a large-button talking calculator to do addition and subtraction problems. And in science and social studies, he participates in large and small group discussions using his augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device that has core vocabulary and light tech communication boards that depict the fringe vocabulary related to specific units in each subject area.

Core Elements of Inclusive Education

Why are these students’ educational programs so different? John’s team subscribes to a prerequisite model of learning that posits that students with complex support needs must progress through early developmental milestones before they are able to learn grade-aligned academic content (Calculator & Jorgensen, 1994). They also put great stock in the psycho-educational assessment that reported John’s IQ as 35. Thus, they do not believe that there is any benefit to John being included in a general education classroom. Aligned with 40 years of research, Robbie’s team has adopted the belief that all students can be successfully included in general education instruction in the general education classroom when key supports are provided. Their beliefs and practices are depicted by the graphic in Figure 1, the core elements of inclusive education. Two of these core elements – presuming students’ competence and team collaboration – are essential to making Robbie’s inclusion more than just his physical presence in the classroom. His inclusion also encompasses valued membership and full participation in academic instruction and typical social interactions.

Source: Adapted from Jorgensen, C. (2018). It’s more than “just being in:” Creating authentic inclusion for students with complex support needs. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Inc. Adapted with permission. Use or distribution separate from this article requires permission from the publisher (contact rights@brookespublishing.com.

Participation in Planning Meetings

While John’s educational team meets as a group only once or twice a year at IEP time, Robbie’s team meets for one hour weekly to plan the supports that he’ll need for full participation. His general and special education teachers, paraprofessional, SLP, OT, and PT discuss the following questions during this weekly meeting:

• What are the learning goals for typical students in the class and how will their achievement be measured?
• What are Robbie’s individualized learning goals for the same academic content and how will his achievement be measured?
• What are the instructional routines that will be used by the teacher?
• What supports does Robbie need for full participation and learning?
• Who will prepare those supports?

To assure that their discussions don’t go off topic, they follow an agenda – depicted in Figure 2 – and record the results of their discussions in templates depicted in Figures 3 and 4. The template in Figure 3 records the learning objectives of the unit for typical students and how they will be assessed, Robbie’s individualized learning objectives and how he will be assessed, the typical instructional routines that the teacher will use, and the general supports Robbie will need throughout the unit in the areas of communication, adapted materials, and vision. The template in Figure 4 records the specific supports Robbie will need in the most frequently occurring instructional routines – in this example, whole class instruction and discussion.

Each week Robbie’s team members rotate meeting process roles of facilitator, timekeeper, and recorder. Each week’s planning templates are saved using the following convention: StudentInitials_AcademicSubject_UnitName_FigureName_monthdayyear. For example, Robbie’s team planned for his participation and learning in an upcoming math unit within the domain of “operations and algebraic thinking” focused on the general standard “use the four operations with whole numbers to solve problems.” Robbie’s individualized learning objective reflected an AA standard that is reduced in depth, breadth, and complexity from the general standard, that is “solve a one-step problem involving addition and subtraction.” These templates were saved as RT_math_addsubtract_LearningPlan_091018 and RT_math_addsubtract_ParticipationPlan_091018.

Student: Blank___________________ Date: Blank_____________________

Facilitator: Blank_____________ Notetaker: Blank____________ Timekeeper: Blank____________

In attendance: Blank______________________________________________________________

1. “Good News” Story (2 minutes)
2. Announcements (5 minutes)
3. Results of Last Week’s Instructional Planning (10 minutes)
   1. How did the student do last week? Look at work samples.
   2. Did we deliver supports accurately and consistently?
   3. What would we do differently next time to enhance the student’s participation and learning?
4. Instructional Planning: (35 minutes)
5. To Do’s: (4 minutes)
6. Evaluate the Meeting (how well the team collaborated during the meeting): (4 minutes) - What worked? What didn’t? Ah-ha’s?

Source: Adapted from Jorgensen, C. (2018). It’s more than “just being in:” Creating authentic inclusion for students with complex support needs. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Inc. Adapted with permission. Use or distribution separate from this article requires permission from the publisher (contact rights@brookespublishing.com).

Student: Robbie

Subject: Math

Unit: operations and algebraic thinking - 4 operations with double digits

Week of: September 10, 2018

Part A. Learning Objectives, Homework, and Assessment (Samples)

Learning Objectives for Typical Students	Learning Objectives for the Focus Student	Homework & Assessments for Typical Students	Homework & Assessments for Focus Student
Vocabulary: Operation, Unknown, Estimate, Rounding, Algebra	Vocabulary: Add, More, Subtract, Less, Equals	Twenty multiplication facts and three word problems per night End-of-week test: five word problems; written explanation of how student used mental computations and estimation	Three addition and subtraction problems per night End-of-week test: five addition and five subtraction problems

Part B. Daily Instructional Routines (Samples)

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Whole class instruction Whole class discussion Small group discussion/problem-solving Individual seatwork Math problem-solving	Whole class instruction Whole class discussion Small group discussion/problem-solving Individual seatwork Math problem-solving	Small group discussion/problem-solving Math problemsolving	Whole class instruction Whole class discussion Small group discussion/problem-solving Individual seatwork Math problem-solving	Whole class discussion Test

Part C. Vocabulary for Augmentative Communication (Samples)

Target vocabulary words	Is it already on the device?	Will student use this vocabulary for general communication after the unit?	What existing words can be used?	Should target word be programmed on to device?	Sentence starters?	Light tech format?
Add More Subtract Less Equals Unknown	All are on the math page sets	Yes	n/a	n/a	The operation I need to use is…	n/a

Part D. Accessible Instructional Materials (Samples)

	Text	Worksheets	Tools/Equipment/ Technology/Software	Graphic Organizers
Class	Chapter 4 in math book	Math problems	Pencils	n/a
Focus Student	Digital version text-tospeech on iPadTM	Scan into GoWorksheetTM and adapt to reflect addition and subtraction problems only	UnifixTM cubes AAC device Large talking calculator Large number line	Math schema for solving addition and subtraction problems

Part E. Cortical Visual Impairment Supports (Samples)

1. Color	Use neon UnifixTM cubes against black background on felt board.
2. Movement	Use movement of teacher’s hand or pointing wand to get visual attention.
3. Latency	Allow wait time between presentation of materials and response.
4. Visual fields	Present material no more than 45 degrees from midline.
5. Complexity	Remove extraneous objects from Robbie’s desk except for black felt board and AAC device.
6. Light	Use lighted wand to draw Robbie’s attention to the UnifixTM cubes against the black felt board.
7. Distance	Ensure that all math materials are within 12 inches of Robbie’s face.
8. Visual novelty	Subtraction sign is new to Robbie, so it must be explicitly taught.
9. Visual motor	Provide hand-under-hand support when Robbie is reaching for the UnifixTM cubes or his AAC device within his visual field.

Source: Adapted from Jorgensen, C. (2018). It’s more than “just being in:” Creating authentic inclusion for students with complex support needs. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Inc. Adapted with permission. Use or distribution separate from this article requires permission from the publisher (contact rights@brookespublishing.com).

Collaborative Teaming

Six specific supports and practices help make the collaborative teaming that supports Robbie’s inclusion effective and efficient. They are described below.

Including Parents and Caregivers

Once a month Robbie’s parents are invited to participate in a team meeting. The planning templates are shared with them weekly and they are encouraged to preview upcoming books and topics by watching videos, going on community outings (e.g., the science museum), and discussing key vocabulary in order to provide background knowledge that enhances comprehension of material and the ability to contribute during class. Robbie’s parents share with his team short iPad™ videos of Robbie at home and in the community that become visual supports for writing and help inform the vocabulary that is programmed on his iPad™ and his light tech communication boards.

Creating Planning Time

The principal of Robbie’s school prioritizes the creation of common planning time when building the master schedule. Other principals have created or found time for planning (Causton & Tracy-Bronson, 2014) by:

• Hiring a permanent substitute teacher for half days and holding team planning meetings on those days.
• Asking a principal, assistant principal, or other non-teaching staff member to cover a class.
• Holding planning meetings during recess or lunch time and assigning coverage to a paraprofessional or trained volunteer.
• Grouping two classes together to watch a video or do a special project, relieving one of the general education teachers to attend a planning meeting.
• Holding meetings before or after school and compensating team members for their participation.
• Using Skype or Facetime to allow an itinerant provider (e.g., SLP, OT, or PT) to join via distance technology.
• Lengthening the school day by 15 minutes a day for four days a week and then dismissing students early on the fifth day to provide 60 minutes of planning time for teams.
• Using portions of staff development days to give teams time to plan.
• Partnering with local colleges to engage their faculty to supervise interns who lead classes while their general education cooperating teachers participate in planning meetings.
• Lengthening the school year so that all staff teach four days a week and have a fifth full day for collaborative planning and participation in professional learning communities.

Understanding Inclusive Team Member Roles

A typical IEP is comprised of goals and objectives written in isolation by individual service providers. An inclusive IEP is comprised of goals and objectives written to support the student’s learning and participation in general education instruction in a general education class. The general education and special education teacher might write math goals aligned with the appropriate AA-AAS for the student’s grade level. The general educator and SLP might write ELA goals that focus on AA-AAS and that relate to modified grade level texts for listening and reading comprehension. The SLP and OT might write goals related to participation in writing and art class. And the PT might write goals related to navigation throughout the building and the student’s participation in physical education class.

Assuring Teams Have Access to Assistive Technology and Augmentative Communication

Assistive technology and augmentative communication evaluations should answer the question, “How can these tools help the student fully participate in the academic and social routines of the general education classroom and acquire skills and knowledge from the grade-aligned AA-AAS?” If team members do not have expertise in using these tools, it is their professional and ethical responsibility to enroll in inservice workshops or credit-bearing coursework to bring their skills up to date. Administrators need to plan their annual budgets to purchase the tools that are specified on students’ IEPs.

Providing Inclusive Professional Development

Administrators can support inclusive professional development by requiring each professional in the district to write a personal professional development plan that addresses the core best practices in inclusive education. General educators, special educators, and related service providers who usually attend continuing education workshops by themselves would find it more effective if they attended as part of a student team.

Student: Robbie

Subject: Math

Unit: operations and algebraic thinking - 4 operations with double digits

Routine: whole class instruction and discussion Week of: September 10, 2018

What are Typical Students Doing to Participate in this Routine?	Supports for the Robbie’s Participation in Whole Class Instruction
	Communication Supports	Vision Supports	Assistive Technology	Physical Supports
Sitting in seats Looking at SmartBoardTM Writing on notetaking forms Asking questions Making comments	Model using AAC device Ten seconds of wait time before expecting response Teacher asks Robbie an individualized question Teacher asks Robbie, “Do you have a question or comment?” twice during lesson	Dim classroom lights while teacher is writing on SmartBoardTM iPadTM background is yellow All numbers and operations signs are at least 1-inch tall, written in black, and outlined in red	SmartBoardTM is mirrored to Robbie’s iPadTM GoWorksheetTM adapted note-taking form BigKeysTM to enter numbers into worksheet	Prone stander for 20 minutes Hand-under-hand support from adult for gaining access to AAC device and BigKeysTM

Source: Adapted from Jorgensen, C. (2018). It’s more than “just being in:” Creating authentic inclusion for students with complex support needs. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Inc. Adapted with permission. Use or distribution separate from this article requires permission from the publisher (contact rights@brookespublishing.com).

Reflecting on Practice

At the end of weekly planning meetings, IEP teams should ask themselves three questions to help them reflect on team functioning: What went well during this meeting? What might we like to change next time? Did we have any “ah-ha’s” during this meeting? Research has shown that answering these questions helps improve team performance (Hunt, Soto, Maier, & Deering, 2003; McSheehan, Sonnenmeier, Jorgensen, & Turner, 2006).

Summary

Operationalizing the maxim “together we are better” not only promotes collaboration among IEP team members, but also enhances student learning and other performance outcomes. None of us alone has all of the knowledge required to teach students with complex support needs. But when teams are focused on common goals through collaborative planning and practice, everybody wins.

A major challenge faced by all teachers, but especially those who inclusively teach students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, is how to redesign curriculum to better meet the needs of all their learners. Consider this scenario. In a public school, a fourth grade teacher named Jackie learns from her principal that she, for the first time, will teach a class that includes a learner with a significant cognitive disability. Jackie is collaborative, innovative, and a go-getter who embraces new challenges, but she feels concerned and unprepared. She had just one class that focused on special education in her teacher preparation program. How does she best approach teaching her new student? Does this student learn the same content that she has taught for the past few years? As Jackie begins her curriculum planning she reaches out to two important colleagues – the inclusion facilitator and the student’s previous third grade teacher. They both reassure her that she already knows 85% of what she needs to be an excellent teacher to all her students. Jackie asks what she should do about her curriculum. The third grade teacher tells her to try Universal Design for Learning (UDL), because it will allow her to better plan for all students. In fact, there was a UDL approach that really helped her last year: Make your classwide instructional goal to create expert learners. Intrigued, Jackie begins to explore UDL and this idea of the expert learner.

What is UDL and How Will the Concept of Expert Learner Help?

UDL is a framework for learning that is useful for teachers wanting to incorporate more flexibility into their curriculum to allow for greater accessibility for all learners (Hall, Meyer, & Rose, 2012). UDL challenges teachers to see the unnecessary barriers to learning and respond by designing more equitable and accessible curriculum that embraces learner variability (Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2014). For example, requiring students to read a certain chapter on indigenous people creates many barriers to learners who are still learning how to decode text. If the goal is for learners to learn about indigenous people, and not decode text to gain information, then the barrier of reading text should be removed by providing students with a variety of options, such as listening to text being read aloud, watching a documentary, visiting a museum, or interviewing an indigenous person. As you begin to add these options into your curriculum, you also need to empower students to learn how to make choices and manage having more autonomy when learning. You have to teach them how to become expert learners.

Expert learners are motivated to learn, resourceful in their learning, and skillful in how they learn. That does not mean that “expert” means the same for all learners. Some might equate the term “expert learner” with someone who has specific expertise in a content area like geography or literature, or a discrete academic skill like solving proofs. However, in UDL the concept of an expert learner is broader and focused on empowering learners to master the process of learning with the goal of becoming more self-directed and engaged in their learning. That means providing options and opportunities for choice, goal setting, review, and reflection. When our ultimate goal is to empower students to learn more independently (or even interdependently), it will help them become active members of their community and the workforce. Instead of waiting for direction, expert learners take initiative, ask for help if needed, and persist even when learning gets challenging. If we truly want our students to live better lives, we need to also design learning opportunities that encourage student ownership in decisions about what to learn, how to learn it, and how to show what they know. When they are expert learners they are able to learn content better and more efficiently.

What Can I Do?

As any teacher will attest, teaching curriculum content is important, but it is equally, if not more, important to empower students to develop expertise in how to learn. When your goal in teaching is overly focused on “covering” or teaching specific content, it is easy to lose focus on the important longer term goals we have for all our students. How do we foster expert learners through proactive curriculum design? Teachers like Jackie can look at their curriculum and ask themselves, what can I do that will make my students expert learners this year and for years into the future? All students, and teachers too, can strive to be constantly reflecting and improving.

Expert learners are motivated, knowledgeable, and strategic. These three traits help us to think about curriculum options that can empower all learners (see Table 1). Instead of focusing narrowly on covering content, Jackie asks herself several questions about her curriculum and what changes she can make to foster a classroom of expert learners:

• Motivation: What motivates my students and how can I leverage these topics and interests to encourage them to persist in their learning, even when it is challenging? What will engage them to learn even when I am not there to support them? How can I provide options to learn different content, or in contexts that relate to students’ personal experiences or interests? Or in those instances where choice is not possible, how can I provide more support and encouragement?

• Knowledge of Concepts: What are my students knowledgeable about and how can I design opportunities to make use of what they already know? What do they want to learn? How can I provide opportunities to learn these concepts that will increase their autonomy and decrease my direct involvement or direction?

• Skill and Strategy: How do my students show what they know and how can I build upon their communication and organizational skills? What tools will allow them to create, communicate, and problem solve more independently?

EXPERT LEARNERS ARE...	KEY QUESTIONS	WHAT YOU CAN DO	EXAMPLES FROM 4TH GRADE CIVICS LESSON
Expert Learners are Motivated	What engages your students? What topics do they like? What tools/technology do they like to use when learning? Where are their “pain points” and how can you provide more scaffolds and supports there?	Use what motivates your students to design learning around those topics or as bridges to other less motivating topics.	Students have a choice of what community they want to learn about rather than having no choice. If they cannot choose the community, they have a choice of what their area of focus will be.
Expert Learners are Knowledgeable	What do your students know? What do they want to learn about? How do they prefer to learn new concepts? What helps them to generalize what they are learning?	Design learning around the expertise of your students. Let them be the expert and lead teaching of themselves and their peers. Consider the different formats and technology that can allow for a rich understanding of concepts.	Students can choose to learn about people through various resources: Texts (primary or secondary sources) Videos and documentaries Museum visits Interviews with community members
Expert Learners are Strategic	When do your students shine? What are the best ways for them to show what they know? What technology are they motivated to use?	Allow students to co-design their assignments, projects, or performances. Encourage the use of technology, tools, and peer supports to encourage independence/interdependence.	All students come up with, and execute, a goal that motivates them and makes sense given the resources they are using. They present their project individually or with peers. Students are empowered to ask for help and receive feedback and editing throughout (the focus is on the process and less on the product).

A New Focus for Jackie

As Jackie begins adapting and redesigning her curriculum, she realizes that all her fourth grade students need support and scaffolding to become expert learners. Although she originally thought that her new classroom goal of providing more options to foster expert learners would lend itself to being more inclusive to one student with a significant cognitive disability, she realizes it will actually benefit all her students. With this new focus, she is better able to teach content standards in a variety of ways and integrate students’ individual learning goals, preferences, interventions, and integrated therapies. Although we all can feel the pressure to cover content, what might happen if we make expert learning and empowering our students our goal?

Supporting students who have complex communication needs and require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in school is challenging. In order to participate meaningfully in classroom activities and social opportunities, students must have access to understandable communication methods. This is most important in the inclusive classroom, where all students are expected to initiate, respond, and interact with adults and peers. Unfortunately, a full 30% of students with significant cognitive disabilities have no or limited use of symbolic communication (i.e., speech, signs, or symbols), and up to 10% of these students lack a clear, understandable form of intentional communication, even at the high school level (Erickson & Geist, 2016; Kearns, Towles-Reeves, Kleinert, Kleinert, & Thomas, 2011). These data do not reflect students’ inability to acquire symbolic communication, but rather a lack of access to effective communication technologies and systematic instruction to use them.

Despite the challenges, inclusive settings have proven to be the most effective for supporting AAC learning and use for at least some students with significant cognitive disabilities (Ganz, Rispoli, Mason, & Hong, 2014). Four elements appear to support successful learning and use of AAC in inclusive classrooms (Kleinert & Kearns , in development): team collaboration, peer mediated supports, modeling of aided communication, and teacher/staff training.  Based on these four elements, we present the following five evidence-based practices that can support AAC learning and use in inclusive settings.

Strategy 1 – Team Collaboration and Training

Clearly, in order to help students with significant cognitive disabilities learn to use AAC, their teams must learn to use AAC and evidence-based strategies to teach it while collaborating to ensure its use with fidelity throughout the day(Downing, 2004). Training should focus on the operation of the AAC systems and their use to communicate across partners, purposes, and contexts. Everyone – peers, professionals, paraprofessionals, and parents – must demonstrate the use of AAC for a variety of communicative purposes while collaborating to maximize implementation of teaching strategies.  

Strategy 2 – Model, Model, Model

In order for students with significant cognitive disabilities to learn AAC, they must see it modeled and used throughout the day, every day. Aided language modeling (or aided language stimulation, or aided language input), a highly effective AAC intervention approach (O’Neill, Light, & Pope, 2018), requires adults and peers to demonstrate the use of graphic symbols on the AAC system to communicate throughout the day. While talking as they normally would, adults and peers point to or otherwise select symbols on the AAC system that match at least some of the words they are speaking. This strategy is significantly different from and more effective than the “show me” or “point to” method used by some instructors.

Strategy 3 - Use of Core Vocabulary

Maximize early success by selecting vocabulary for AAC that is highly flexible, frequently occurring, and immediately useful for the AAC user. This core vocabulary includes words with flexible usage,  such as verbs, adjectives/adverbs, and pronouns. These words allow for a wide range of communication intents and purposes such as commenting (“Like”) , questioning (“Why?”), refusing (“No”), and requesting (“Want”). The fact that these words are not context or purpose dependent maximizes the opportunities for teaching and learning them across the school day. In contrast, nouns tend to be highly specific to a context or routine.

Core vocabulary became the focus of AAC intervention for students with significant cognitive disabilities in response to the need to support their successful communication during academic instruction and social interactions. Given a relatively small set of core vocabulary, students with significant cognitive disabilities can successfully initiate, respond, and interact across the school day. (For more information on core vocabulary, see the Project Core below).

Strategy 4 – Building on Core Vocabulary with “Fringe” Vocabulary

Nouns, in general, refer to specific persons, places, or things. Adding nouns, or context-dependent fringe vocabulary, to students’ AAC systems (i.e., by combining high- and light-tech displays, for example) allows them to have conversations with friends about things that are important to them and supports active participation in some classroom activities. For example, a student’s AAC system might include photographs of family members, pets, or friends, and symbols representing current topics of interest among the student and peers. These fringe words are used less frequently than core words and are generally highly unique to the user, but can be important in certain contexts.

Strategy 5 - Peers, Peers, Peers!

The inclusive classroom has the distinct advantage of the constant presence of peers who are competent communicators. Encouraging peers to use AAC with students with significant cognitive disabilities increases access to repeated, interactive, and generative language opportunities across environments. Peers can use aided language modeling, which can “substantially increase” social interactions among peers, and, in some cases, increases the use of AAC (Biggs, Carter, & Gustafson, 2017; Biggs, Carter, Mazur, Barnes, & Bumble, 2018).

Conclusion

Communication enhances inclusion, friendship, and life-long learning. Embedding the simple, evidence-based strategies described here will serve to increase access, opportunity, and success for students with significant cognitive disabilities and complex communication needs.

Inclusive education is a philosophical framework (McLeskey, Rosenberg, & Westling, 2013) that views all learners as capable thinkers, authentic members, and valued contributors who can be educated within general education settings in their neighborhood schools, with differentiated and individualized teaching and learning strategies that match their strengths, learning styles, challenges, interests, and needs. It calls for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities to have access to the same instructional and non-instructional experiences alongside peers within general education classrooms, with appropriate instructional adjustments to meet their needs (Quirk, Ryndak, & Taub, 2017). To achieve this access, there is a need for disseminating practical recommendations and strategies to deliver special education supports through inclusive service delivery – supports that ensure access, participation, learning progress, and outcomes for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who are currently marginalized through separate educational placements. In this article, I will share some of the most important strategies for making inclusive education successful.

Strategy 1: Share Classroom Space to Provide Inclusive Special Education Services

Students with the most significant cognitive disabilities have a team of professionals who provide services in their general education classroom. This means that professionals negotiate a shared space and have parity in their responsibilities within the classroom, ranging from classroom management to designing learning experiences, adjusting instruction to meet learning needs, and joint accountability for each student.

Strategy 2: Presume Competence and Start with Student Strengths

Presuming competence (Biklen & Burke, 2006) is a mindset and belief about a student with a complex disability that ensures educators assume that each student is a thinking human being who is intelligent and has thoughts about their learning and their life, especially when that student might communicate through typing, a communication device, or other non-traditional manner. Inclusive teams often create a positive, professional student profile (Causton & Tracy-Bronson, 2015) to determine the student’s strengths, interests, hobbies, dislikes, intelligences, mode of communication, behavior preferences, performance within specific subjects, and effective learning supports. Using such a profile impacts how educators think about, refer to, include, write goals, and design learning experiences for the student.

Strategy 3: Balance Classroom Curriculum Demands and Specific Learning Needs

Using the grade-level state standards and the district curriculum, inclusive educators map out units of study across the year with the range of learners in mind. They determine which big ideas, objectives, and skills are essential for all students to learn, and thoughtfully determine which would be most essential for students with cognitive disabilities. Inclusive educators are skilled in organizing these traditional classroom demands while simultaneously attending to student-specific learning needs.  This allows teachers to ensure membership, access, and learning outcomes for all students, as well as meet the cognitive demands for specific students with extensive support needs.

Strategy 4: Restructure the Classroom

Inclusive educators identify as agents of change who continually tinker with classroom elements, such as environment, lesson structure, materials, learning experiences, type of participation, classroom rules, and social relationships. Examples of ways to modify these elements follow:

Learning Environment and Culture

Inclusive educators consider the ways in which work spaces, seating, lighting, and learning tools contribute to or hinder student focus, engagement, and ease in the learning process. Are flexible seating options available? Is purposeful seating that allows for peer collaboration and intentional support considered? Instead of assigning students to one desk for all learning experiences or subjects, do students use the entire classroom space throughout the day, working in different spots for each subject area? These considerations allow inclusive educators to facilitate social relationships between students with cognitive disabilities and multiple peers.

An important rule is that students with cognitive disabilities always sit amongst peers. Oftentimes students with cognitive disabilities are sitting on the end or side of the table or in the back of the room; there might be a paraprofessional sitting directly next to them. Inclusive educators ensure that students with cognitive disabilities are sitting with two peers directly next to them. This supports multiple opportunities for informal social interaction and intentional peer support.

Another aspect of a culture that supports learning is providing students without disabilities instruction and input about strategies to purposefully support a peer with a cognitive disability. These include the following: a) facilitating a work task by asking closed-ended questions, b) creating a word bank of limited answers, c) providing a model of task completion, d) providing wait time to respond or complete a problem, e) demonstrating steps, and f) restating directions. Intentional peer support sets the expectation of interdependence during classroom learning experiences. The paraprofessional should support as needed, but should also fade support by circulating and assisting other students.  Inclusive educators provide explicit guidance to paraprofessionals about their role to provide a variety of supports and promote independence and interdependence.

Lesson Structure, Materials, Experiences 

Design lessons that include all students from the onset. What part of the lesson will then need to be modified to account for learner variability?  Will more time be needed, writing output style be adjusted, or content be paired to a student’s priority learning objectives? For example, maybe students are using multiple texts at various readability levels but studying the same theme. Perhaps the focus is on distinguishing between mathematical operations within word problems. The digits within the problems vary. Students have the option of whether to read the problem silently, with a partner, or access an audio file that reads it. Different options are available to students. Each section of the lesson is intentional and steps are analyzed to determine if specific supports or materials are needed in order to promote learning for students with extensive support needs. A range of materials is offered to support specific areas that could be problematic for students with cognitive disabilities. Inclusive educators model that fair is not that everyone gets the same thing, rather that every student gets the supports and materials needed in order to promote learning and success in understanding the most important elements of the general education curriculum.

Classroom Rules 

Traditional classroom rules often unknowingly exclude or marginalize students with disabilities. Inclusive educators critically examine and adjust every rule to ensure equitable inclusion. For example, for one student with a cognitive disability who liked to roam around the classroom, the expectation to sit in a desk was too challenging. He would run around the classroom and bump into peers during writing workshop. His teacher put a masking tape track on the floor around the classroom. His experience changed from being a student who would often get in trouble to a student who just needed to be given the opportunity to move his body during lessons. When asked about bumping into peers during writing he responded, “I wanted to get their attention.” Knowing this, his teacher built engagement strategies, such as turn and talks, inside-outside circles, and partner learning experiences, during the day to support his interest in connecting with classmates.

Strategy 5: Write IEP Goals That Can Be Infused During Naturally-Occurring Times

Inclusive educators ensure that educational placement is specified in a student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) within the general education classroom and that services are delivered there. All students must have access to academic content. Federal laws require that the IEP goals must be aligned with the state’s academic content standards for the grade in which the child is enrolled. Additionally, there can be other goals related to social or functional skills.

For this reason, when writing the IEP goals, inclusive educators will often specifically state “with general education peers” or “within the general education environment.” The reason this statement is infused directly into the goals is so that everyone on the team understands that the goals are worked on right within the context of the classroom, all services are delivered in general education, and providers will come to the student instead of pulling students out for services in a separate classroom setting. Inclusive educators thoughtfully infuse IEP goals into the naturally-occurring school day. For example, fine motor use to pull down a zipper pull can be worked on upon arrival, before and after recess, and at the end of the school day. Pragmatics of social conversations (e.g., greeting, turn-taking) can be facilitated by a paraprofessional during cooperative learning experiences in science. Learning to use a communication device can be worked on during regular classroom routines and learning experiences.

Strategy 6: Document Progress with a Focus on Assessment Practices for All

With the Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District ruling that schools must do more than provide minimal educational benefit for students with disabilities, inclusive educators understand that students with cognitive disabilities are expected to make progress on their IEP goals, including grade-level academics. To this end, it is imperative that educators record this progress using curriculum-based assessments that document learning experiences and progression toward IEP goals.

Conclusion

Supporting students with cognitive disabilities in inclusive classrooms requires educators to take up a change-agent stance. Implementation of these strategies, paired with asking questions about ways to increase learning opportunities, is critical to the success of inclusive service delivery. This reflective inquiry allows educators to adapt and adjust to continually include all students.

Districts that embrace an ethic of inclusiveness not only benefit students during their schooling years, but also prepare citizens who are more likely to expect, support, and have the skills to share this inclusive ethic within the broader community and civic life. Unfortunately, too many students with intellectual disability, particularly those with the most significant cognitive disabilities, are not educated in general education classrooms or are physically present but isolated in the back of the classroom, unnecessarily separated from their classmates. These students often receive a substantial portion of their instruction from paraprofessionals rather than from highly qualified teachers and special educators. They may also have inadequate access to the general curriculum, resulting in limited opportunities to learn and demonstrate progress in the important range of curricular content available to other students. These artificially imposed restrictions mean that these students miss out on the benefits of being included and their peers miss out on the opportunities to learn with, and from, them.

Including students with the full range of cognitive disabilities and abilities in general education classes is facilitated when educational teams use approaches like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that take into consideration a full range of student performance and support needs – below, at, and above grade-level. Using UDL in combination with collaboration, creative problem-solving, and evidence-based strategies and approaches can benefit all students in the classroom community including those with the most significant cognitive disabilities.

Putting educational teams in advantageous positions to implement the most promising practices requires that we scrutinize our service delivery patterns and develop contemporary models that are more congruent with inclusive educational practices. Newer service delivery models lessen the negative outcomes associated with segregated special education and increase opportunities for every student to learn in supported general education environments.

In this article, we share how an inclusive service delivery model, based on personnel utilization data from 69 schools, can reimagine the deployment of existing school personnel in ways that better support student learning in inclusive schools and classrooms (Giangreco & Suter, 2015). Frattura and Capper’s (2006) development of Integrated Comprehensive Systems (ICS) is a second model that makes needed services and supports available as part of a child’s core instructional program. According to Frattura (NCEO, 2012, p. 10), ICS is “about building collaborative teaching and promoting the sharing of expertise among all adults in the system” (for further discussion of ICS see the Stoughton Area School District profile by NCEO, 2012). Both models challenge assumptions and support educators in rethinking structures and personnel allocation supportive of inclusive service delivery that increases involvement and progress in the general curriculum for students with all types of support needs.

Inclusive Service Delivery Model

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, 2018) recently released an online guide for states on principal leadership to support inclusive schools for the success of each child. They defined inclusive education as follows:

Inclusive education is a schoolwide culture and practice of valuing each student as a learner across general classrooms, rather than a particular program or place. Inclusion provides students with disabilities equitable access and opportunity in the general education curriculum and ensures that each student receives the educational resources and rigor they need at the right moment in their education. In inclusive schools, educators’ roles are restructured for shared accountability and responsibility. Learners who need differentiated support and additional intervention receive it. And school leaders use schedules, teacher teams, and data to ensure the academic progress and success of each student (p. 2).

An exemplar model proposed by Giangreco and Suter (2015) reimagines the deployment and interactions among general education teachers, special educators, and paraprofessionals in order to educate all students as members of age-appropriate general education classrooms. An illustration of one exemplar model is provided in Figure 1. In the example provided, each grade level is comprised of three classrooms and is staffed (with the exception of kindergarten) by a general education teacher for each classroom, and one special educator and part-time paraprofessional support (1.5 FTE) for the grade level. Kindergarten has one paraprofessional assigned to each classroom due to the developmental needs of all the students in kindergarten. Paraprofessionals are assigned to classrooms, rather than to students, and are funded through a combination of special and general education funding. In addition to these classroom supports, three “floating” paraprofessionals work on a school-wide basis, addressing a variety of needs on a short- or longer-term basis. Additional support personnel (e.g., related service providers, behavioral specialists) work with educational team members, small groups of students or individually with students across the entire school to meet student needs within general education contexts as part of the school's use of a multi-tiered system of supports.

In Giangreco and Suter’s (2015) exemplar model, curricular and instructional planning is directed at meeting the needs of all students and all educators in the school community, rather than being focused on a specialized subset of students and educators. This school-wide focus allows education team members to work together to effectively support students, regardless of their intensity of needs. Each student is a member of a general education classroom community.  The classroom teacher’s capacity to educate each student is enhanced via the focused support of a special educator and paraprofessionals who are dedicated to support all students in the classroom in order to increase their engagement with, and opportunity to make progress in, the general curriculum. These dedicated classroom supports, along with school-wide supports, combine to provide an opportunity for every child to receive large-group, small-group, or individual instruction within the classroom community. A limited amount (e.g., < 20%) of pull-out instruction might be provided to any student if the classroom-level team thinks it is needed to meet individual student needs. Organizing personnel in this way allows all students to benefit by having access to educators with varying areas of expertise, including expertise in grade-level content, differentiating instruction, the use of UDL principles, and other evidence-based strategies delivered within inclusive contexts.

© 2015, Michael F. Giangreco

Less Ideal Models

A typical, but less than ideal approach, often used for students with significant cognitive disabilities, involves placing them in a program with other students with significant needs for support. When a program is not available in the student’s home school, the student and his/her family might be encouraged to attend a school that does house such a program, often located far from the student’s neighborhood. Alternatively, a paraprofessional may be hired as a primary means of support for a student in a neighborhood school – a response that is both unsustainable and ineffective.  This approach often results in many negative consequences, not the least of which is the unintended creation of barriers to interactions and relationships with typical peers and the classroom teacher. Further, and more problematic, is the all-too-common use of paraprofessionals, rather than licensed general and special educators, as the primary instructors for the student (Giangreco, 2010; Giangreco, Doyle, & Suter, 2012).

Giangreco and Suter’s (2015) exemplar demonstrates how reallocating existing resources (e.g., lessening the number of paraprofessionals and increasing the number of special educators) can be cost-neutral. Frattura and Capper (2006) reported that the more segregated students with disabilities are from their grade-level peers during instruction, the higher the financial cost of providing that instruction.

Conclusion

If we are serious about creating inclusive school communities that are sustainable, it is imperative that we create service delivery models that support that outcome. One such model has been described and we hope it can be used to advocate for this needed systems change.

Each child benefits from being a member of an inclusive classroom that intentionally supports a sense of belonging, values each member, and provides the opportunity for each child to establish relationships and friendships with grade-level classmates who have a wide range of strengths and needs. Inclusive school communities benefit all students during their school careers and after they graduate by contributing to the development of more inclusive, diverse, and vibrant communities. The conversations, hard work, and action-planning needed to create inclusive school communities for every student are well worth the effort.

Carter Smith, retired Director of Special Education for Williston Schools in the Champlain Valley School District of Vermont, and co-principals Erica McLaughlin and Pat Miller of Randolph Elementary School in the Orange Southwest School District, led two of the 69 schools that participated in the Giangreco and Suter (2015) study of personnel deployment to better support inclusive learning (see previous article). They used data collected about their schools through the study to inform their own inclusive service delivery models. Practices embedded in principles created by Smith and colleagues in the Champlain Valley School District to guide the delivery of inclusive instruction and interventions are aligned with some of the conceptual shifts described by Giangreco and Suter (2015). These practices are highlighted below, with observations shared by Smith, McLaughlin, and Miller during a 2018 interview for this Impact article.

Collaboration and Coherence involve the coordination of inclusive practices with core instruction, structured team planning time, and collaborative instructional design between general and special educators. Smith exclaims, “Classroom teachers are more involved in addressing students’ needs when special educators are embedded into the classroom. I have trouble understanding why you wouldn’t embed special educators. This helps classroom teachers accept students as their own, rather than belonging to the special education department.”

Evidence-Based Instruction and Inclusive Practices provide access to grade-level content and materials for all students, position the classroom teacher as the primary instructional planner, and focus on the integration of inclusive interventions into core curriculum. Miller and McLaughlin explain, “We have special educators assigned to every grade-level team; for example, one special educator works with the kindergarten team, another is assigned to the first and second grade team, a third special educator works with the third and fourth grade team, etc. Every August we offer co teaching training to explicitly teach educators how to work collaboratively and use data for decision making.”

Responsive Teaching and Data-Driven Decision Making involve ongoing student progress monitoring and the educator’s use of multiple data points from formative assessments, rather than one standard measurement, to refine instruction and interventions. “The idea of clustering students in disability specific programs is foreign to us. Student placement is critical, and we try to be as equitable as possible. Our team uses socio-economic status, English learner needs, and behavioral and instructional needs data to determine placement in general education classrooms,” explains Smith.  

Expertise is defined as students receiving instruction by the most qualified professional in the most integrated setting, and involves the effective training and use of all personnel including paraprofessionals (e.g., supplemental instructor, data collector, assistant to students with personal care needs, facilitator of positive peer interactions). An effective use of expertise described by Miller and McLaughlin involves the use of master-level teachers as interventionists, working in general education classrooms, meeting regularly with special and general educators, and using paraprofessionals as supplemental instructional supports in inclusive settings rather than using them to provide one-to-one student services.

Prevention is defined as students being identified for intervention at the earliest indication of need, in an environment where teachers have the knowledge, autonomy, and flexibility to adjust their instruction to deliver high-quality early education experiences for all young children. Smith shares, “It is essential to start inclusive service delivery as early as possible, in preschool.”

Smith, Miller, and McLaughlin agree there are more benefits than challenges for all students, families, and educators associated with implementing a comprehensive inclusive service delivery model. Smith explains, “Students with disabilities are more independent and interdependent with peers in fully integrated settings, and the use of one-to-one paraprofessional services should be removed immediately; instead, paraprofessionals should provide non-student-specific supports in classrooms.” According to Miller and McLaughlin, “Families now have the opportunity to know a team of teachers really well, not just the special educator and paraprofessional. It used to be seen as the special educator’s responsibility to educate students with disabilities. Now, perspectives have shifted, and all teachers take responsibility for the education of all students.”

Learning opportunities in inclusive environments abound for students with disabilities. While these opportunities are not always recognized or valued, they are present. They are broad in their scope, and are pivotal for increasing student options and growth both during their time in school, as well as lifelong.

Often the challenge is seeing and believing that the array of experiences within a school are learning opportunities, then planning how they are best accessed and maximized. The general education standards and curriculum, school-wide social-emotional supports, positive behavior expectations, and school rituals and routines are learning opportunities that comprise the educational experience for all students. They create the foundation of a framework that special educators can use to identify and implement supports students with disabilities require to access higher level learning.

The challenge of planning for and implementing inclusive education is highlighted when we consider the complexity of the learning environments along with integral roles and responsibilities that paraprofessionals have in supporting learning in these environments.  Paraprofessionals are central to the success of educating students with disabilities, particularly those with the most significant cognitive disabilities. This has been true for decades and will continue into the future. Inherent within the paraprofessional roles are nuanced skills and assumed utilization of tools supportive of inclusive classrooms and settings, including when and where they are implemented. Often they are the frontline for in-the-moment decisions, and require a repertoire of skills and tools to draw upon depending on each situation. These skills and tools for making decisions are developed and supervised by licensed special and general educators.

Using Instructional Layers to Guide Paraprofessional Roles

Instructional layers provide a framework for organizing and prioritizing student programs, all of the steps needed to implement the program, as well as a structure for clarifying paraprofessional responsibilities across multiple settings. The framework consists of three layers:

1. Layer 1 is the core instruction for all students. For academics, this means that instruction aligns with the grade level standards for a content area. In the areas of positive behavior and social-emotional learning (SEL), the core content is the SEL curriculum and strategies for building community and solving conflicts. For functional skills, the core is the rituals and routines followed by all students.
2. Layer 2 instruction provides greater access to the Layer 1 content by providing additional, differentiated instruction. Examples are pre-teaching, re-teaching, or focusing on smaller chunks of content allowing priority pieces of the core to be meaningfully understood by students. Often this is provided in small groups, but can also include individual student support.
3. Layer 3 instruction is driven by the individual student priorities and needs identified in the individualized education plans (IEPs). It clarifies how and when IEP goals and objectives are specifically taught across the school day.

	INSTRUCTIONAL FOCUS	PARAPROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS	PARAPROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
LAYER 1	General Education standards and curriculum School-wide social/emotional learning and positive behavioral frameworks School and classroom rituals and routines	Belief in and knowledge of how the general education environment meets the needs of all students, as well as the laws that support inclusive practices Understanding the instructional layers and the importance of the additive perspective Understanding the social/emotional learning and behavioral frameworks that are in place school-wide for all students Understanding the importance of the “1,000s of teachable moments” that exist for all students so students with disabilities can be specifically taught these routines and transitions	Communicating with the general and special education teachers to know what standards or curriculum will be the focus for the identified student Accessing the general education curriculum and having guidance from the teachers on priority learning topics Teaching the student the regular rituals and routines of all school environments (i.e., hallways, cafeteria, bathrooms, classrooms)
LAYER 2	Differentiating instruction and instructional resources to access and learn the priority Layer 1 concepts Often requires “breaking down” the components of the Layer 1 concept into smaller steps, allowing them to be directly taught Intentional grouping of students to assist peer relationships and belonging	Understanding how differentiated instruction assists all students within the general education environment Understanding technology that is available to support students individually, so instruction can be further differentiated in the moment or on-the-fly Understanding how paraprofessional support can be beneficial or intrusive to student learning, social relationships, and positive behavioral supports Knowledge of the ways students acquire, maintain, and generalize skills across people, places, and settings, as well as the importance of students with disabilities having the opportunity for repeated practice	Pre-teaching and re-teaching key academic concepts, rituals, and routines Implementing differentiated instructional strategies to the curriculum, as determined by licensed staff Using visuals and technology to present concepts in multiple representations Facilitating small group interactions with peers as part of natural learning opportunities
LAYER 3	IEP focused on teaching specific skills and eliminating/minimizing gaps in knowledge and skills Skills in the area of communication and developing relationships are identified and prioritized so they generalize across inclusive environments	Having high expectations of students with disabilities, knowing strengths, interests, and needs that exist Knowing the specific goals and strategies that identified students have outlined in their IEPs and evaluation reports	Integrating a focus on each IEP goal at the appropriate times of the school day Taking data on specific goals to track progress Identifying and communicating specific needs or issues that students are having when accessing academics to general and special education/related service professionals Using individual communication systems to support academic outcomes, fostering social relationships and natural peer supports/belonging within general education environments

When planning for instruction, all three layers are routinely addressed. A layered instructional framework is additive, meaning that when a student with a disability needs additional instruction in any area, the instruction for that area is in addition to, not in place of, the school-wide instruction that is available for all.

This framework is applicable for all students with disabilities, including students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Special and general educators collaborate to develop an instructional plan and determine how the full scope (academic, positive behavior, social-emotional, and functional) of the three layers of instruction will be taught. Each student’s plan, in turn, provides guidance for defining the responsibilities of a paraprofessional. Table 1 provides additional detail that links the layered instructional framework to the role of paraprofessionals for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.

Identifying Areas for Paraprofessional Development

The dynamic nature of inclusive environments, paired with individual needs of identified students, requires the paraprofessional to have a unique skill set within a school. Paraprofessionals act as a bridge – or potentially a barrier – to true student engagement across the school day. Their  responsibilities in inclusive settings are based on the integration of these layers of instruction (refer to Table 1), and how it applies to the individual students they support. Robust, ongoing professional development inclusive of job-embedded coaching and low-risk feedback is essential to a paraprofessional’s success within an inclusive environment and, ultimately, that of the students they support.

Areas of professional development and skills that support the work of paraprofessionals in inclusive settings include the:

• “Why” of inclusive education and the belief that all students are capable learners.
• Presence of, and ability to instruct students within, the thousands of teachable moments that exist across a school day.
• Ways students acquire, become fluent in, generalize, and maintain skills across people, places, and settings.
• Importance and understanding of the instructional layers’ additive nature of providing a complete and robust educational program.
• Importance of their roles and responsibilities in facilitating access to learning across the layers of instruction.
• Nuances of their role with regard to enhancing student agency and identity through appropriate cues, corrections, leveled prompting and fading of support.
• Critical importance of supporting peer relationships and belonging.
• Assistive technology that is specific to individual learners’ needs and for accessing the curriculum.

Teachers and schools are challenged by how to best support and train paraprofessionals to implement their roles and maximize student learning. Districts, schools, and teams provide paraprofessional development in multiple ways, and the future of this area of need will grow in tandem as we better and more often include students with the most significant cognitive disabilities within our schools and communities. Large group sessions focused on critical topics, online training opportunities that are completed inside or outside of the school day, job-embedded mini-professional development through onsite meetings once or twice a month, and job-embedded direction to paraprofessionals about how to support individual students are all options that exist and should be utilized.

Conclusion

Regardless of how a district organizes paraprofessional development and direction, when the layered instructional framework is the overall organizer of students’ programs and, subsequently, paraprofessional roles, linking what is taught, why it is taught, and how it can be taught is made more explicit and meaningful. It will more easily clarify student and paraprofessional needs and ultimately enhance the quantity and quality of learning opportunities for students with and without disabilities, as well as meaningfully support paraprofessionals within their profession.