General Classroom Strategies to Enhance the Inclusion of Students with Learning Difficulties

The philosophy of inclusion is difficult to translate into practice. Forlin (1998) and Knight (2000, 2007) have reported that inclusion makes considerable demands on teachers. For special needs education to work effectively, it is essential that teachers accept responsibility for managing students' special needs and their learning. This chapter builds on the work of Bellert and Graham (2006) in exploring how teachers can meet the needs of students with learning disabilities in their classrooms. In this chapter we emphasize the role of the teacher as the manager of students' learning based on "the recurrent educational research findings that in school differences outweigh any other factor in the performance of either individual students or indeed institutions and that teacher intervention in student learning is correlated with student success" (Smith et al., 2007, p. 2). Specifically, this chapter will consider the characteristics of students with learning difficulties, approaches to overcoming obstacles to these students' successful learning and discuss research-based strategies that support students in inclusive classrooms.