SPECIAL EDUCATION

Special Education: Ethical Issues and Challenges Reaction Paper

Disabilities could be mental or physical. It certainly creates a lifelong impact on a childs social, emotional, and mental health that needs to be addressed during his early years. Parents and teachers are crucial since they are the primary educators for special children. This paper explores the common issues and challenges while working with individuals with disabilities, the methods of overcoming them, and the ethical and legal implications.

Common Issues and Challenges While Working With Individuals with Disabilities

Inclusive classrooms, teacher motivation, dealing with students from different cultural backgrounds, and even managing the mixed abilities students simultaneously, such as slow learners, high achievers, etc., are some of the most common challenges identified while working with students with disabilities.

Rather than excluding a person who is disabled, social inclusion is the concept that emerged with a positive approach so that the removal of social barriers could be encouraged. The participation of disabled people in society is promoted to facilitate such inclusionary steps, in which inclusive classroom is also cited. However, the availability of teachers and even the appropriate training for managing inclusive classrooms is scarce. Teachers are not sufficiently prepared to handle classroom challenges like tackling classroom behavior of disabled students, issues in social interaction with peers, and facilitating lesson plans in which disabled students should be kept at a pace with the other learners (Ahammed, 2021). Continuous adaptation has to be made to suit the needs of disabled students since the curriculum is usually locally produced by the mainstream head offices (Zemba & Chipindi, 2020).

Moreover, it has been explored that mixed ability classrooms already pose a considerable challenge for teachers in the regular classroom since students of different capacities, abilities, and learning paces are to be kept on the same page (Al-Subaiei, 2017). This issue is amplified when it is in inclusive classrooms. Handling diversity concerns struggling teachers with a mixed cultural and racial composition in the classrooms. On top of that, studies further corroborated that teachers have insufficient knowledge to cope with mixed abilities students and those with disabilities within one classroom (Siddiqui et al., 2021). They sometimes lack suitable aid and are even deprived of the training that needs to run such classrooms. They face problems when assembling worksheets for diverse students, whether in terms of racial or mixed-ability diversity. Teachers find marking the assessments of mixed-ability students with the inclusion of disabled ones challenging.

Despite some benefits of a mixed-abilities inclusive classroom for disabled students, such as support of peers who are high learners and performing in groups with gifted learners, teachers still struggle to make lesson plans, assessments, or class materials for such groups (Hove, 2022). Teachers have felt that students with higher talents find it difficult to support those with disabilities and must be constantly motivated. Teachers think they cannot attend to every students particular need concurrently, which causes additional pressure of not being able to cope with everyones needs (Hove, 2022). The curriculum differentiation might be an unwanted hurdle that teachers think cannot be controlled due to the lack of classroom aids and channeling from the higher authorities (Hove, 2022). Meeting the needs of individual learners when some parents of high achievers discuss that their child feels bored or left out while the teacher is focusing more on disabled students causes stress for the teachers (Hove, 2022). Keeping such students from feeling excluded and not appearing to force them to work with disabled students is a task.

Keeping the morale and motivation of teachers of disabled students is another primary factor stated as an issue. They need to be influenced to work toward providing the basic educational right to disabled students, which mainly comes from salary equity and promotional opportunities (Aziz et al., 2015). Once the teachers know they have professional advancements in those specific fields and are recognized for their hard...

…vital role in creating cooperation that needs to be maintained and sustained for inclusive classrooms (Athanasiadis & Syriopoulou-Delli, 2010). They observe students daily and know what needs are present within the classrooms. Rather than parents imposing extra burdens on the teachers to teach their disabled child accurately, the parents should act as collaborators as they are one of the major stakeholders in the process. In my opinion, they should be continuously included in every activity of their child to make their useful information available to the teachers. Rather than keeping high expectations of the teachers alone and putting all the stress over their shoulders, it would be better that parents cooperate with teachers for a collaborative methodology towards inclusivity.

Also, I think teachers should be appropriately trained and prepared for mixed ability or differentiated classrooms. It would mainly encompass the establishment of a mindset that goal of educating disabled students is easily achievable. The first impression of teaching such students is challenging as it has become a stereotype that they demand extra effort. The reflection of perfuming as a group with team-based thinking would help the teachers overcome the psychological barriers that inder their motivation.

Lastly, higher authorities and school administration are indispensable in forming a flexible approach. They should not only consider extrinsic motivators for the teachers to keep their morale high, such as pay and compensation; they should also constantly provide intrinsic motivation with acknowledgment of their strenuous efforts that would help build a community with strength and teaching with success for inclusive classrooms.

Proper conduction of practices for a multicultural approach and all-inclusive classroom could only be made possible with a sure application of laws and acts generated by the government as it has already been investigated that it has positive benefits for the whole economy. To prevent teachers from having extra stress, they need to be constantly empowered, which is the sole responsivity of the higher authorities of the schools rather…