Social interactions and play are essential activities in early child development. Terpstra and Tamura (2008, p.405) argue that most of the skills learned by children are passed over from their peers; for instance the awareness of social roles, communication and reaction to life situations. Typically children prefer interacting with colleagues who have similar characteristics as themselves than those with different conditions. According to Hestenes and Carroll (2000, p.230), it is necessary to give children opportunities to interact with their peers because ethical development and acquisition of social competency occur at an early age. Social interaction of children with their peers, for instance between the age of three and five years, has significant gains ranging from increasing capabilities of cognition, social-emotional to physical capabilities. Through cooperation and conversation with each other, children engage in plays and through participation their cognitive development is enhanced. The complexity of the play lends the children to engage their brains affecting their cognitive capabilities (Hestenes and Carroll 2000, p.231).
Theories Mind
On the other hand, the article "Constructing an understanding of Mind" by Carpendale and Lewis (2004, p.80) presents a different perception of social understanding of childhood development within a social interaction. The authors introduce the “theories of mind” such as individualistic process, introspection or maturation, or enculturation process and agree with the fact that the extent, as well as the nature of interaction encountered by the children, influences their social understanding. However, they emphasize on account of the additional evidence involving social interaction. In addition, the connection between the aspects of social understanding and interaction can be explained by the accumulating evidence of the development of social cognition (Carpendale and Lewis 2004, p.84). This research is built upon the theories on the process by which children comprehend the minds of others as well as themselves by formulating the theories of mind implicitly. Development of the general knowledge, especially social knowledge, of children, is based on the triadic interaction between them, their peers and the world. Carpendale and Lewis (2004, p.85) elaborates the capacity when and how triadic interaction develops from a child’s interaction with the objects in the rest of the world.
Friendships reciprocity
On the contrary, children with disability can avoid social isolation because their social ties are weak and that no friendships reciprocity and others get involved centrally enjoying the considerable exchange. Children with impairments tend to develop peer cluster connections with girls, and Chamberlain, Kasari, and Rotheram-Fuller (2007, p.241) suggest that it is likely that girls take a role of "care-taking" more than other classmates of the opposite gender. In classroom groupings, a child with autism is most likely to be in the group that is set apart from the groupings which are more prominent. These children also find themselves at the centre of social attention, mostly from all her classmates causing worry to the child’s parents and teachers about her future regarding social life, even as their strategies of social inclusion proves ineffective.
Inclusive Education
In an educational program that embraces inclusivity addresses placing children with disabilities in a setting of peers who are typically developing and shares the same age such that they can interact as well as learn through a modelling format of natural behaviour. According to Terpstra and Tamura (2008, p.406), children with disabilities are associated with lower rates of interaction, including social response, social initiation and inability to use social skills appropriately. To encourage social interaction specific methods like peer imitation, strategies of group affection, environmental arrangements, and interventions of peer mediation can be adopted. The arguments of these authors are to show that social interaction between children without disabilities and those with disabilities can be increased by implementing these interventions and strategies. Similarly, Kemple (2004, p.30) suggests that children can be supported socially by teachers in a setting of inclusivity by altering the classroom’s social dynamics through structure and organization, like exercises for solving social problems, activities for role-playing, cooperative games and sharing of stories that enable social competence. By using the selected available materials carefully, children can be supported socially in classroom comprehensive programs like free-play schedules, encouraging independence routines and positive behaviour management systems (Kemple 2004, p.31).
Implementation of Inclusive Education
Role of parents and teachers
Inclusivity in education and creation of unique curriculums places demands on both parents and teachers. Children with disabilities require particular attention in schools that provide different rates of learning because they have aptitudes and difficulties of various kinds (Dockrell, Peacey and Lunt 2002, p.3). Dockrell, Peacey, and Lunt (2002, p.3) demonstrate that the preparedness of teachers to meet these special educational needs is lacking, including to teachers who are initially trained, those in the post-qualification training and even the teachers at the advanced level of professional development. By establishing individual training, teachers can acknowledge and help to meet these needs as well as complement the process of making policy decisions on this kind of education. Additionally, parents collaborate in teaching disabled children that is considered as a right and a component that is necessary for delivery of an efficient and effective provision in the United Kingdom (Dept. of Health 2000, p.19). Involvement of parents in special education covers several aspects like the process of assessment where the knowledge of the parents towards their child is a source of information which is very necessary; therefore, making decisions and receiving full information is a right guaranteed to parents. Also, expressing provision of preference, referring to their experts, and making a necessary intervention in the education is the parents' mandate. Parents also provide the information about the working or functioning of the system designed to satisfy their children’s needs. Although such details concern an individual’s experience by the children, when all the personal information is collected they can be analysed and their outcomes generalized widely in the entire group (Spann, Kohler and Soenksen 2003, p.228).
Performance of inclusive education
Similarly, Spann, Kohler and Soenksen (2003, p.229) examined satisfaction or perception of parents on services of special education, and many families reported that never have they been given a chance to make choices and the services being offered are different from what they requested. In New Hampshire, the families reported disagreements with professionals leading to implementation of changes without prior consultation. Kohler (1999, p.156) conducted a research and interviewed parents of school-age and preschool children with impairments, and most of the parents reported that the services offered by these schools were either unrelated or ineffective to the pressing needs of their children. Kohler noted that more than 60% of the parents claimed of communication problems, where teachers fail to listen to the needs of the parents or not to update them on the progress of their children. Teachers’ communication skills and failure to consider new perspectives and ideas are the most claims presented by these parents. Parents have different views of service provision and inclusion; they also don't know about the available services, although the programmes of interventions in the community can address these deficiencies. On the other hand, parents of children in inclusive schools have different positive views as compared to non-inclusive schools, acknowledging that an inclusive programme of learning is valuable for the development of their children (Hestenes and Carroll 2000, p.244). The major interest of the parents with disabled children is the level of quality offered by the particular program or support and the possibilities of their children being rejected by their peers.
Experience at the Inclusive Education
Isolation and rejection
The idea that developmental level similarity increases the social interaction between the disabled children and the ones without ailments has not been supported sufficiently. Hestenes and Carroll (2000, p.243) argue that from the program of inclusion, the gained social improvement is temporary; the benefits of inclusive classrooms are not long lasting. The Hestenes’ study implies that pupils without disabilities maintain preconceived social perceptions which are adverse to a child living with disabilities. Estell et al. (2008, p.6) suggest that achieving children from middle school reject their peers who have disabilities disproportionately. The study shows that these pupils reject the disabled for both scholastic and play activities despite them being in an educational environment of inclusivity. Diverse studies of social acceptance and inclusion also displayed similar results of rejection. Studies have not sufficiently looked into longitudinal impacts of inclusion of children with impairments on social status, and most of these studies have considered only a single school. Estell et al. (2008, p.6) further finds that children without disabilities are more liked than the disabled children. Although the disabled children tend to gain more friends, their social status does not find stability during their years in a school course. The study shows that social preferences ratings of students with disabilities reduce over their school year course while being “liked least” increases in the score.
Furthermore, Hestenes and Carroll (2000, p.230) develops an empirical approach to describe play interactions context as well as bring a better understanding of the experience of classroom inclusivity for all the children, whether they are disabled or not. They examined beliefs and play interactions of young children in a setting of an inclusive preschool and finds that children who have no impairments involve in more cooperative and with less solitude as compared to children with disabilities. Following the widespread inclusion of disabled children in regular schools, some studies depict that inclusion placements cause isolation and rejection risks. In a different study by Chamberlain, Kasari, and Rotheram-Fuller(2007, p.240), the author tries to assess the typical inclusion of children with impairment in classroom revealing mixed outcomes. Some children with autism reported cases of loneliness, lower peer acceptance, the centrality of social network and friendship reciprocity. However, the loneliness score was meagre, and the authors attribute this to self-report data of intentional distortion because rarely do children with impairment engage in deceit or reasoning that is counter-factual due to "theory of mind." Chamberlain,Kasari, and Rotheram-Fuller(2007, p.239) suggest that children with autism suffer from deficits of social cognition rendering them incapable of identifying their social relationships’ relative weakness leading to "ignorant bliss." In an inclusive classroom, loneliness is caused by a mismatch between the perception of and desire for friendship reciprocity. Low reports of isolation are also caused by lack of social awareness (Chamberlain, Kasari and Rotheram-Fuller 2007, p.239).
Social Behaviors
According to Frederickson and Furnham (2004, p.405), the children with disabilities who experience rejection, their life is featured with a high level of social behaviours which are harmful, while those without disabilities are characterized by both high levels social behaviours which are harmful and low levels of social practices which are positive. These findings leave the unanswered question of the general appropriateness of programmes of social skills training focused on peer acceptance skills to promote social inclusiveness for the children with disabilities. Children with impairments, who are rejected, are more heterogeneous regarding their profile of social skills than those without disabilities (Frederickson and Furnham 2004, p.406). Most of the children without disabilities are considered by their peers with disabilities as having disruptive or aggressive behaviour. Successful interventions that alter particular social skills that distinguish accepted subgroups from those rejected, whether they have the disability or not, have not been identified by the study and leave a gap for another research to establish the successful interventions for improved inclusion and social acceptance for these children. It is essential to understand the processes concealing the relationships between fellow cognizance of child’s behaviour, social recognition, and status of individual needs to design interventions that meet the array of needs discerned.
Cultural Representation and Inclusion
Hodkinson (2007, p.57) suggests that to provide a breeding ground that is fertile to fix practices of inclusivity in the mainstream schools, the attitudes and cultural representation of the children who are not impaired towards those impaired need to be considered carefully. Apparently, research findings relating to children without disability, their conceptualization of disability and their attitudes remain unsettled allowing the disabled children to be seen as uncritically "the problem." However, most of the findings only suggest that both individual and societal attitudes may be a vital catalyst in promoting inclusivity in education successfully. Tregaskis (2000, p.343) explores both the perspectives of the disabled and non-disabled children using a social model angle. He suggests that the findings from this model can be used to formulate the governmental policies of inclusion such that through consideration of the views of children barriers can be broken down, a process that would make the practice of inclusive education more efficient. Therefore, by researching about the attitudes of non-disabled children can provide a developmental theory to provide adequate learning that addresses inclusivity (Tregaskis 2000, p.344).
Government Policies
Hodkinson (2007, p.74) shows that the knowledge and understanding of children towards the concept of inclusion are insufficient and as a result, they are constrained to articulate the way social contexts can lead either to display impairment or change impairment to disability. Furthermore, Hodkinson (2007, p.75) suggests children without disability need to be educated that disability is a socio-spatial construct that shifts and not a stable or constant position of identity. According to Ballard (2004, p.322), transforming education to include all children should not be seen as systems capability of "technical problem" but as “cultural politics” whose aim is to protect the “citizenship” for all. A social position of dominance renders children with disability as of less value as compared to others. The view of these children in politics and their place as far as power relations are concerned is the one that does not allow the recognition of their identity, and this becomes difficult for their needs to be met. Changing this environment of exclusion can only be signalled in the government's policy to provide learning opportunities with equal quality to both the disabled and non-disabled children.
Outcome Measures
Evaluation of inclusivity
Evaluating the results of education that is inclusive is acknowledged as complicated, and most of the studies which have attempted to assess have not given final outcomes. Little attempts have been made historically to assess the results of the provisions related to special education needs for the children. The process of evaluation exhibits some significant methodological difficulties to examine the regulation such as impossibilities of using group designs of marched control in comparing provisions of different forms. Again, comparing studies of pupils in different groups is difficult. People with special needs exhibit substantial variation and what works for one group or one child may not work for the other groups or children, and also the considerable variation shown by children with special needs makes challenging to generate a comparison (Dockrell, Peacey and Lunt 2002, p.41). Nevertheless, the rationale for educating disabled children in the mainstream schools is based on the insufficiency of evidence for the children’s superior performance in settings which are segregated. There is an escalation of demands for individual children additional resources, and also the need to establish the distribution of available resources equally.
Ball (2012, p.43) suggests that the public expenditure on special education should be scrutinized to deploy resources equally, meeting the needs and managing expenses efficiently. There is a possibility of considering the evaluation of social, academic, and life-chance outcomes. Only little efforts of outcome measures have been carried out in the United Kingdom, and they have just presented microscopic scale studies focusing only on particular groups of children with disabilities like autism, language impairment, hearing impairment and others. Many studies have looked into how specific groups of children perform in an inclusive setting than the non-inclusive. The development and performance measures have produced results which are inconclusive. However, studies of a given whole environment which is supported appropriately, like that of Hestenes and Carroll (2000), have provided positive outcomes. Other studies have focused on the outcome of effectiveness using self-concept and self-esteem measures and produced results which are inconclusive in regards to placements comparisons.
Reliable approach of measuring outcomes
The study by Hestenes and Carroll (2000) study provides a valuable framework for measuring outcomes. The survey by Estell et al. (2008, p.11) tends to assert the process and the "end-point" results; however, it is not conclusive because it referred to individuals rather than systematically assessing outcomes for groups of children. Studies related to children's issues to costs and the essence of provision has not been covered by the research. Also, while using the attainment data of education, which is available, outcomes evaluations and monitoring the progress of pupil can be achieved. Although the children without disability have not been extensively addressed by most research studies, no adverse impacts indicated by their social or cognitive development. Estell (2008, p.12) found that there are higher ratings of affirmation of disabled children by those without disability in an inclusive preschool as well as knowledge of the nature of disability as compared to pupils in segregated classes. Participation of these children in inclusive schools increases the evidence of understanding and acceptance of disability.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the noted aspects have a whole range of decision planning in schools, nations and local settings. On the other hand, there is a need for understanding the profile of the needs of groups and individuals to prioritize on sources which are secure, activities, organization of accurate measures of outcomes and assessment of planning decisions. Again, when considering the needs of individuals, a balance must be established with appropriate concern for the environment in which the learning of all the children is taking place. Acoustic environment is a matter of consideration for most of these children (Terpstra and Tamura (2008, p.407). Other concerns include quality teaching, which mainly relates to “teacher talk” and the quality of understanding brought by teachers to ensure that pupils attain the intended purpose of general facility Ballard (2004, p.323). The need for creating a balance between the groups and individuals has significant effects on policy and operation throughout the system of education from the classroom to the national policy; where inclusion is reduced to a matter of the needs of an individual that strategy cannot succeed. Moreover, the developmental difficulties of children must be considered regarding their interaction between their weaknesses and strengths and the environment surrounding them. As the interaction with these aspects advances, the balance is distorted over time, where Carpendale and Lewis (2004, p.81) term this model as compensatory interaction. This overview signifies that the assessment of the research evidence which examines the multiplicity of the needs of children must be evidence-based, strategic and inclusive of perspectives of various stakeholders.
References
Ballard, K., 2004. Children and disability: Special or included. Waikato Journal of Education, 10(1), pp.315-326.
Ball, S.J., 2012. Politics and policy making in education: Explorations in sociology. Routledge.
Carpendale, J.I., and Lewis, C., 2004. Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction. Behavioral and brain sciences, 27(1), pp.79-96.
Chamberlain, B., Kasari, C. and Rotheram-Fuller, E., 2007. Involvement or isolation? The social networks of children with autism in regular classrooms. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37(2), pp.230-242.
Dockrell, J., Peacey, N. and Lunt, I., 2002. Literature review: meeting the needs of children with special educational needs.
Dept. of Health, Great Britain. Department of Education, Employment, and Great Britain.Home Office, 2000. Framework for the assessment of children in need and their families.
Estell, D.B., Jones, M.H., Pearl, R., Van Acker, R., Farmer, T.W. and Rodkin, P.C., 2008. Peer groups, popularity, and social preference: Trajectories of social functioning among students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41(1), pp.5-14.
Frederickson, N.L. and Furnham, A.F., 2004. Peer‐assessed behavioral characteristics and sociometric rejection: Differences between pupils who have moderate learning difficulties and their mainstream peers. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(3), pp.391-410.
Hestenes, L.L. and Carroll, D.E., 2000. The play interactions of young children with and without disabilities: Individual and environmental influences. Early childhood research quarterly, 15(2), pp.229-246.
Hodkinson, A., 2007. Inclusive education and the cultural representation of disability and Disabled people: a recipe for disaster or catalyst of change? An examination of non-disabled primary school children's attitudes to children with disabilities. Research in education, 77(1), pp.56-76.
Kemple, K.M., 2004. Let's be friends: Peer competence and social inclusion in early childhood programs. Teachers College Press.
Kohler, F.W., 1999. Examining the services received by young children with autism and their families: A survey of parent responses. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 14(3), pp.150-158.
Spann, S.J., Kohler, F.W. and Soenksen, D., 2003. Examining parents' involvement in and perceptions of special education services: An interview with families in a parent support group. Focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, 18(4), pp.228-237.
Terpstra, J.E. and Tamura, R., 2008. Effective social interaction strategies for inclusive settings. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35(5), pp.405-411.
Tregaskis, C., 2000. Interviewing non-disabled people about their disability-related attitudes: Seeking methodologies.
