A Feasibility Study of a Full Integration Model Developed for a Group of Students Classified as Mildly Intellectually Disabled

Abstract

The feasibility of a functional full‐time integration model was examined by comparing the academic and social achievement of two groups of 13 students with mild intellectual disabilities who had been randomly allocated to either age‐appropriate mainstream classes or to a segregated special class. Both groups of students had previously attended special classes in a support unit catering for students with mild intellectual disabilities and had been taught by two special education teachers. During the experimental phase, one teacher remained in the unit while the other acted as a resource teacher for both integrated students with disabilities and regular low progress students in mainstream classes to which the students with disabilities had been allocated. After a 16 week intervention, the results indicated that the integrated students improved significantly more than their segregated counterparts on measures of decoding and mathematics as well as in time spent playing with regular peers. Furthermore, in one regular classroom where the resource teacher had established a mastery learning/cooperative group procedure, both regular students and those with disabilities improved significantly more in academic skills than a parallel group in a traditionally organized classroom. While it is recognised that teacher effects cannot be partialled out in such an intervention, the implications of these results for extending special education services into the mainstream rather than isolating them within special classes are discussed.