Cooperative Learning as an Academic Intervention for Students with Mild Disabilities.

A current trend in education is toward the inclusion of students with special needs in general education classrooms. This trend grew out of the regular education initiative (REI), which started with the goal of educating larger numbers of students with mild disabilities in the general education environment to increase the overall academic achievement in schools (Lewis, Chard, & Scott, 1994). Over time, the objective of inclusive programming has grown-from simply increasing academic achievement to also increasing social competence and fostering positive relationships between children with special needs and their nonhandicapped peers. Thus, not only are contemporary teachers educating more diverse groups of students, but their responsibilities also are expanding to include more and more objectives. Teachers of students with mild disabilities must somehow facilitate the simultaneous attainment of academic and social skill goals alike-both of which represent significant areas of need for students with learning and behavioral disabilities. How teachers choose to meet this challenge varies-but teachers in inclusive environments typically choose interventions that are not only effective, but efficient as well. Teachers understandably feel pressure to focus primarily on academic skills even as they take on responsibility for more and more nonacademic (social) skills as well. Although robust literature is available on interventions that affect social behavior, programs and strategies that do not also directly impact academic skills in some way are viewed as "addons" and not typically maintained by teachers in general education settings (Pullan, 1991; Johnson, 1970, 1979). Increasingly, various forms of small-group instruction-specifically, models of cooperative learning-are being recommended as solutions for the complex problems associated with attempting to provide special, "individualized" education to students with learning and behavior problems in general education settings. Facets of these strategies as they influence the academic success of students with mild disabilities are discussed in this article, along with excerpts from interviews and observations done as part of a study of cooperative learning practices in an urban school district in the Pacific Northwest (Malmgren, 1997).