Using Prevention Strategies in General Education.

Abstract

Recent emphasis on inclusion of students with disabilities in general education underscores the need for providing teachers with effective instructional strategies to accommodate children's diverse behavioral and learning needs (Hocutt, 1996). Inclusion asks that general and special education teachers exchange information about instructional strategies for students in special education who are mainstreamed for part of their school day in general education classrooms. Often, the intervention strategies that are effective for mainstreamed students are appropriate also as prevention strategies. Prevention programs are based on the premise that early identification of learning, behavioral, and emotional problems can lead to early intervention and better outcomes for children. If unchecked, the problems of young children may be exacerbated by environmental conditions in general education classes to a level where the only alternative, from the teacher's perspective, is placement in a special education program. If general education teachers feel competent in using prevention strategies and are able to see improvement in a child's behavior and learning, they may decide that referral to special education is unnecessary. The purpose of this article is to describe classroom management, academic enhancement, and social development strategies that can be implemented in general education classrooms to prevent the development of serious emotional and behavioral problems in children. These strategies are part of a comprehensive intervention for elementary school children in the primary grades who were identified by their teachers as being at risk for having problems serious enough to warrant referral and placement in special education programs. The intervention is a component of Project SUCCESS, a 4-year research Project funded by the U. S. Department of Education. In the first section of the article, we describe briefly the screening process that was used to identify children in kindergarten and first grade as being at risk for developing serious learning, behavioral, and emotional problems. In addition, we discuss the classroom dynamics within the student's general education classrooms to assist in understanding the quantity and quality of interactions between students and teachers and their perceptions of one another. The focus of the second section of the article is on several guiding principles for implementing prevention strategies. In the third section we present scenarios depicting typical classroom situations in which students' behavioral, academic, and personal/social problems are evident. These scenarios provide the framework for discussing how to select and implement prevention strategies that address specific problems of at-risk students in general