I was wondering what everyone thinks works best to help
support struggling students, a pull-in or push-out model? I began my teaching career in a special
education classroom, and I always pushed for my students to be included in
everything as much as possible. For this
reason, I really disliked when my students were taken out of class for any
reason. However, when some special needs
students are left in their classrooms they struggle to comprehend the
material. It seems like these students
would be better served by being pulled out to work on their specific skills
deficits. This strategy can lead to
backlash from parents who simply want their child to be included as much as
possible, regardless of any potential benefit to their child. They just don’t want their student to be seen
as different from their classmates. I
have seen pull-in models work very well, but I don’t think that they allow
quite the same amount of differentiation of material that push-out models can
do. It’s tough to have kids work on deficit
skills while still working on similar material as the rest of the class. I’d love to know if anyone has experience
with either of these models of instruction and can tell me which one they
prefer. Thanks!
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI have had experience with both models and have seem the pendulum swing throughout my career to favor one setting over the other. My thought is that there is no one right model- it truly varies from student to student. That being said, I also think it varies from teacher to teacher. I recognize that when I taught in the pull out model, my perspective became very jaded and I lost sight of the expectations of the general education setting. My thoughts are that if a teacher is going to teach pull out segments, they should also teach inclusion segments on that same grade level. My reasoning for this is so that teachers remain up to date with the expectations and rigor of the general education setting. Moreover, it better equips them to hold their pull out students to higher rigor because they better understand the requirements if they are to return to mainstream.
Without question, some children require small group instruction. The least restrictive environment for some children is not the general education setting. Far too often people consider the general education setting as the LRE, when in fact it can be very restrictive for some of our learners and does not meet their individualized needs.