Teaching and Learning Characteristics of Placement Settings Used With Students With Complex Support Needs

• In Event: The Truth About Least Restrictive Environment, Instructional Contexts, and Outcomes for Students With Extensive Support Needs

Abstract

IEP Teams must be accountable for student learning. Teams for students with complex support needs are certainly aware of this, perceiving their role as one of developing educational goals to meet a student’s individual education needs, then assigning the student to a placement (e.g., self-contained class) or placement configuration (e.g., resource plus general education) viewed as best for meeting those educational needs. What IEP teams across the country perceive to be true is that different placements offer different kinds of opportunities and supports for learning. What we now know to be the truth is that opportunities, supports and student learning do vary across placement settings; however, that variance follows a linear pattern in which greater setting restrictiveness is associated with consistently less opportunities, less supports, and consequently less student learning. Clearly, IEP teams across the nation are making life-effecting educational decisions without a working knowledge of what students actually experience in particular placements. Jackson et al (in press) provide evidence for this pattern; however, what is missing in the research literature are descriptions of the contributing conditions of the four settings used in placement (i.e., general education class, resource, self-contained class, special school). This presentation addresses this by examining nationwide data across all four placements, providing data-based characterizations of the curriculum, instruction, supports, and services within each placement level.

Authors

• Lewis B. Jackson, University of Northern Colorado
  Presenting Author

• Kirsten Rebecca Lansey, University of Arizona
  Presenting Author

• Matthew Jameson, Utah State University
  Presenting Author