Identifying children with disabilities: Approaches to functionality screenings in schools

• In Event: The Equity Initiative: Gathering and Utilizing Data on Children with Disabilities in Education

Proposal

To support students and monitor the inclusion of children with disabilities, schools must be able to identify children who have mild to severe impairments in physical, sensory, cognitive, and behavioral functioning. In settings where screenings for such impairments are not standard practice, schools may not have ready information about which students face challenges, making it harder to help those students and compromising a school’s capacity to gather and report accurate data on disability. In some cases, parents and children themselves may not be aware of any impairment, even where a simple solution, such as wearing eyeglasses, could have great impact on a child’s opportunity to learn. Large, crowded classes compound problems with identification, making it more difficult for teachers to provide the individualized attention that could help to recognize functional limitations that threaten children’s learning.

To shed light on means of identification that have been—and could be—used to help ensure that schools, and especially teachers, are aware of students with special needs, this presentation will share findings from a landscape review on screening approaches. Based on results from the review, which synthesizes existing literature and information from key informant interviews, the presentation will report on the screening tools available, their use in different contexts, and the nature of follow-up provided to students identified as having difficulties or disabilities.

The presentation will offer insights into effective practices for incorporating screening approaches into low-resource environments. With education practitioners in mind, the presentation will give special consideration to the cost-effectiveness of different approaches and implications for incorporating them into programs in low-resource environments. In conclusion, the presentation will point to gaps in what current approaches address.

Author

• Rachel Hatch, FHI 360