Inclusive Education: Barriers, Issues, and Strategies for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This assignment explores the barriers and issues faced by educators in inclusive classrooms while educating students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It discusses the benefits of inclusive education for students with disabilities, as well as the challenges and complexities involved. The assignment also provides strategies for educators to overcome these barriers and create an inclusive learning environment for students with ASD.

Running head: INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Introduction:
Students with Autism spectrum Disorder (ASD) are nowadays included in the typical
inclusive schoolrooms as evidence states it to be beneficial for the growth of such kids. Autism
spectrum disorder can be described as the developmental disorder, which affects communication
and behavior of affected individuals (Christensen et al. 2018). Although ASD can be diagnosed
at any age, professionals call this disorder as the developmental disorder. This is mainly because
symptoms of this disorder appear in the first two years of life. Some of the symptoms that are
often shown by such students are difficulty in their communication and interaction with others,
exhibiting restricted interests as well as repetitive behaviors (Wong et al. 2015). Students with
ASD show also symptoms that hurt their ability for functioning effectively in school, work and
other areas of life. This assignment will show the different barriers and issues faced by the
educators of inclusive classrooms while educating students with ASD and the strategies that they
can adapt to overcome the issues.
Overview:
Inclusive education can be defined as the arrangement of education systems and
curriculums where all students notwithstanding of any challenges are positioned in age-
appropriate universal education lessons. The main aim of such steps is to ensure high quality
instruction, interventions and supports that would be enabling the students to meet victory in
the essential curriculum. Such schools and classrooms mainly function on the foundation that
pupils with different types of disabilities are also essentially competent as pupils without
incapacities. The main idea is to make all the students irrespective of their capabilities to be full
contributors in their schoolrooms as well as in the native school community (Ip et al. 2016). This

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form of movement is based on the legislation that all students need to obtain their teaching in the
least preventive environment allowing them to be with peers without incapacities to supreme
degree conceivable. General education is made the first choice for all students.
Benefits for students with disabilities as in case of autism spectrum disorder:
Knowledgeable and skillful teachers mainly carry on fruitful inclusive education
principally through tolerant, understanding as well as addressing numerous student variances
and diversities. This needs to include any form of physical, academic, social, cognitive and
even emotional. Studies are of the opinion that the driving principle of inclusive education for
the students with incapacities like autism spectrum disorder and other pupils without disabilities
is to make them feel greeted and suitably challenged and reinforced in their efforts (Keen et al.
2016). Different researches conducted on the efficiency of the inclusive education have found
out those students with incapacities like autism and other disabilities and short of any disabilities
can study more (Whalon et al. 2015). Research conducted over the previous thirty years have
confirmed the fact that students with incapacities like autism and other disorders have advanced
achievement and enhanced skills over inclusive education (Case et al. 2015). Moreover, peers of
such children who do not face any challenges also benefit from the concept of inclusive
education. For students who suffer from autism spectrum disorder and several similar disorders,
inclusive education help in providing academic gains in literacy like that in cases of reading and
writing and even in math and social studies. They are seen to perform well both in marks and on
uniform tests and even better communiqué skills. Students with ASD also show improvement in
social skills as well as make better friendships with other students (Kasari et al. 2015). Moreover,
a study by Whalon et al. (2015) has also revealed that when students with autism who spend
more time in the inclusive classrooms remain allied with fewer nonattendances and

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recommendations for any forms of troublemaking behaviors. Some of the interview-based
studies have found out that autistic students participating in the inclusive education classes have
better attitudes like those that they have advanced self-concept and they like their institute and
their educators more. Such autistic students are also found to be more motivated around working
and even learning becomes interesting for them (Estes et al. 2015).
Issues affecting inclusive education:
Although there are studies that have put forward the positive outcomes for the pupils with
autism who are contained within inclusive education classroom learning, many others have
argued over its benefits (Szatmari et al. 2015). One of the studies has found out that many
children with autism have behaviors that are incompatible with instructions and therefore they
are seen to master the educational content more slowly (Whalon et al. 2015). Often special
methods are seen to be required to help such children develop their full potential that might not
be included in the general education curriculum in inclusive classrooms.
Studies have shown that when pupils with individual education plans called IEPs for
autism receive an inclusive education, they are found to be deprived of the benefits of the
credentialed special education teachers (Jo et al. 2015). They also cannot be benefitted from the
classroom milieu that have special education supports naturally embedded in it. Much inclusive
education are seen to take place in the chronological age or that of the age level classrooms but it
has been found that many included students suffering from autism are not found to be as close as
that of their academic grade levels as that of their peers without any disabilities. This can be
explained with the help of examples (Gunn et al. 2016). A ten-year-old autism student who can
add might not follow addition “word problems” and might not be benefitted from fifth grade

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math curriculum. This fifth grade math core curriculum are seen to focus on pre-algebra
equations using all basic numeric operations with which an autistic student of the same standard
might not adapt to well. That special education student must need to learn all the mathematics
“in between” first and in this regard, the paraprofessional aides are found selfdom to possess an
expertise to teach those subjects to him and such expertise might not be an aspect of the job
description of the professional. Herein lays the arguments. In this case, if the 1:1 aide are found
to be competent in teaching subtractions but such 1:1 teaching would again isolate the pupil with
autism from the peer classmates doing pre-algebra at the same time (Szatmari et al. 2015).
At the similar time, many other researchers have shown that disruptive special education
students who are placed inclusively like the previous case might have been associated with
negative “spillover effects” for the general education pupils in their classrooms. The general
education pupils are seen to be at the higher risks with increased rates of absenteeism, lower
reading and math scores and others (Jo et al. 2015). This is mainly because general education
teachers work with pupils places on IEPs and tend to spend more time overall dealing with
behavior management, restarting and repeating instruction , going more slowly and having very
little time for instruction overall.
Complexities of inclusive education:
Students with autism spectrum disorders are seen to present different unique forms of
challenges to schools and therefore teachers are often seen to face many difficulties for meeting
their needs effectively. Internationally, it has been found that one in all 68 children are identified
with autism spectrum disorder globally. ASD can be explained as the progressive disability that
can cause noteworthy social communiqué and different behavioral encounters. The children are

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seen to experience various challenges while they try to interact and communicate with others and
this impact on the different aspects of their daily lives. These challenges lead to development of
stress in the children with autism making them suffer from depression and anxiety. As in the
present days, inclusive classroom try to develop social environments that rely heavily on the
ability of students to interact, communicate and socialize with others effectively (Zwaiggenbaum
et al. 2015). This is seen to affect the students with autism as such requirements in the inclusive
classrooms can intensify the stress, anxiety and even depression that children with ASD
experience. Studies have found that often teachers lack the understanding of the prominence of
connecting the association between academic knowledge and social-emotional capability of the
students. Teachers need to realize that a nonexistence of social-emotional skill can result not
only in a reduction of the depth and the connection of the student with that of the school but also
their academic performance (Laghi et al. 2016). Studies have found that students with autism can
find many of the tasks done by general students without any disabilities to be quite difficult.
These are especially those that require lots of planning and organization like that of the
management of assignments, participation of the assessments, navigation of the learning task and
completing homework (Van et al. 2015). Therefore, providing them specialized attention besides
attending to needs of all students without disabilities quite strenuous and this requires extra
resources, arrangements, infrastructures and separate timeslots as well.
Barriers in inclusive education:
Strategies:
Firstly, teachers should be adequately skilled in enlightening all pupils with disabilities
especially like that of ASD. It has been seen that in the present generation, more and more

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number of pupils with ASD are accepted in inclusive schooling settings and therefore, there is
the real need within the professional communities for understanding ASD and the various
intricacies that are offered by the different magnitudes of the disorder. Studies have been
conducted which showed that efficient training to the educators for better understanding of the
illness, analytic criteria and effective recognition for the proper communication education
elegances of the students having ASD results in positive outcomes (Hochman et al. 2015). There
was an important upsurge in the knowledge of the professionals about the ways in supporting
students with ASD as well as through a slight growth in the ease level of coaching students with
ASD. Moreover, it has also been found that training professionals also make them less anxious
when taking a student with autism involved in the classroom. Absence of such knowledge among
the teachers make them not only stressed but also impact the learning process as well as the
general attainment of the most identified educational goals of the students (Mandy et al. 2016).
Secondly, one of the studies by Jo et al. (2015) stated that in order to include students
who suffer from ASD, there needs to have a strong partnership between everybody who remain
involved in the tutoring of the pupil. This might include the leaders, general as well as distinct
education teachers, paraprofessionals, families, authorities and any additional parties who are
involved in the accomplishment of the pupils with ASD (Luxford et al. 2017). All the parties
need to work together to provide consistency for the student with that of ASD. Moreover, studies
are also of the opinion that involving parents and guardians of the students with ASD in the
academic program of their children help in promoting the constancy across all the surroundings
and contributes to the simplification and upkeep of skills learnt at school. The students with ASD
needs to be repeated and strengthened for using the learned material as well as conducts at home
and hence kinfolk’s involvement is necessary part in the collaboration. ASD is a behavioral

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incapacity and it is seen to present innumerable trials to the school setting. Therefore, it is often
indispensable that all the staff should work extraordinary level of constancy and understanding
while addressing detailed student actions. This would result in better development of the
environment that would help the children with ASD to cope with the learning in the inclusion
environment (Kamps et al. 2015). The collaboration should be such that everyone should be
working as a team keeping constancy when addressing conducts as well as other approaches in
training pupils with ASD. This would help the kid with autism to learn what is anticipated of
them through the teaching as well as other facets of their life, in to how they should act.
Third, it is important for the concerned authority as well as the educators to affirm a
precise student sketch on which the instructive scheduling needs to be based. Valuation of the
kids and the young folks with autism wants to be modified and therefore desires to depend on
careful comment along with the documentation of areas of attention and the capability and
expertise that require additional expansion. Besides, caring for the normal children without
disabilities, the professionals need to take extra initiative for undertaking individualized
assessments (Bradshaw et al. 2015). Assessment needs to be conducted across a plethora of
surroundings, thereby collect evidence from diverse sources like from parentages and specialists,
and thus form a comprehensive profile. This would help in developing a proper education plan
for such children so that they can also keep up with the rest of the students without any disorder
in the class and do not remain left behind.
Two important aspects that need to be included in the teaching strategies for educators
who manage kids with ASD in their general schoolrooms along with other children (without any
disabilities) are priming and prompting. Students with ASD need to be provided an opportunity
in seeing and knowing the activity before they are asked to be engaged in it. This can be

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explained as an example of priming. In such a scenario, a teacher might deliver the pupil with
books for understanding about a specific country earlier the topic is presented to the entire class
as well as showing the agenda of the actions afore the school meeting so that the pupil with ASD
remains equipped in advance. The application of video as well as internet know-how can help in
assisting pupils to be ready for field tours to unacquainted spaces. Again, encouragement
approaches are mainly seen to support the ability of the students to be efficacious and
consequently they get interested to try errands that might be novel or problematic. Stimuli can be
presented both by the staffs of the schools and even peers. Studies have already shown that they
are both effective for the increase of the appropriate behavior. In one study, has been seen that
stimulating by the peers in the community interface situations upsurge the communications with
the ASD and more significantly was widespread to other school as well as home surroundings
(Locke et al. 2016). A number of researches have shown that the usage of visual agendas in a
school location has been found to rise probability, thus snowballing the individuality of pupil and
reducing the likelihood of the problematic conduct. One of the optimistic consequence of this
method conferring to one of the study was the indications of augmented on-task as well as on-
schedule retorting.
Additional important plan that had been put forward by many of the studies for operative
inclusion of the pupils in universal education schoolrooms is peer intercession. Some of the peer
peacekeepers are socially knowledgeable peers who are skilled with methods for interrelating
informally with their classmates with autism for swelling the peer’s societal as well as theoretical
capability. Problem behaviors can be described as one of the obstacles towards addition in the
general education schoolrooms. Positive behavior support can be considered to be one of the
most recommended intervention strategy that would be helpful in addressing the problem

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behavior. This well researched approach are mainly seen to be conducting a functional behavior
assessment for successfully identifying the purpose or the drive of the behavior from the
standpoint of the pupil and this is now followed by designing the intervention strategies
successfully addressing the behavior of concern. The intervention plan should then be developed
on the assessment generally includes introduction of the antecedent strategies (Mandy et al.
2016). This would be including those identified in the previous paragraphs as well as training the
pupil alternative suitable habits for getting their requirements met like that of schooling the
utilization of image communiqué scheme, social and even self-management expertise.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it becomes quite clear that students with ASD often gets
benefitted when they are made to attend inclusive education systems along with students without
any disabilities. However, several complexities and issues might also arise when such students
are included into the inclusive classrooms. They require extra attention from educators, educators
need special skills to handle them, extra finding and infrastructures and many others. Different
evidence based articles had proposed many new strategies the years which can help the present
day educators and school authorities to build environments that align with the needs and
requirements of students with ASD.

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