Presentation of Findings
Inclusive Culture
Quantitative data from the Likert-scale based questions were analyzed in order to the
themes regarding inclusive culture at an urban elementary school in San Diego, California.
Questions were asked to the participants about their administration and how supported they felt
by them regarding teaching students with special needs. Overall, 54.6% of the participants felt
they are not encouraged to attend conferences/workshops on teaching students with special
needs. 72.8% of the participants responded that they could approach their administration with
any concerns regarding their students with special needs and 63.6% of the participants felt their
administration does not provide them with sufficient support when there are students with IEP’s
in their classrooms.
The survey also led the participants to spend time reflecting on their colleagues and being
able to effectively work with them concerning students with special needs. 81.8% of the
participants agreed that their colleagues are willing to help them with issues that may arise when
they have students with an IEP in their classroom. When working with special education
teachers, 81.8% felt they were comfortable working with them when there are students with
IEP’s in their classrooms. However, 54.6% of the participants felt that special educators and aids
do not constantly work with them to help educate the students with IEP’s.
Likert-scale style questions were also asked about the district in which the participants
work, their preference in working alone and being provided with sufficient material in working
with students with special needs. When asked whether the participants’ district provides them
with sufficient out of district training opportunities in order to appropriately teach students with
disabilities, 90.9% answered no. 45.5% of the participants mentioned that they would like to be
the only teacher in their classroom. When asked if they are provided with sufficient material in
order to be able to make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs, 54.6% of
the participants felt they were not given the right amount of accommodations.
Teacher Training
First, the qualitative data that came from the open-ended questions were analyzed to find
the themes. When the participants were asked about the special education courses they had
attended, three mentioned receiving the gifted and talented education (GATE) certification at
San Diego State University, two attended district in-service training, two received special
education training at their school site, two have attended no special education courses, and the
others could not remember.
Then the quantitative data from the multiple-choice questions were evaluated. These
multiple-choice questions were based on the Likert scale, where answers scaled from 1-4; 1
meaning strongly disagree and 4 meaning strongly agree. More than half of the participants,
54.6%, either agreed or strongly agreed that their educational background had prepared them to
effectively teach students with disabilities along with 63.7% of the participants either strongly
disagreeing or disagreeing with the statement, “I need more training in order to appropriately
teach students with an IEP.”
Inclusive Practices
he last high-leverage practice asked about in the survey was
Flexible Grouping. T
flexible grouping. 100% of the participants responded that they use flexible grouping in their
classrooms. Most of the participants mentioned that they create groups based on skills and needs.
For most of these teachers, these needs-based groups are adjusted frequently, as students’ needs
change. Some, however, vary in whether students with similar abilities are put together or if
groups are made up of students with all different skill levels. Whole group, small group, and
individual instruction are used in these classrooms as well. Small groups based on needs and
skills are used mostly for math and reading but were also mentioned to be used in other subjects
like science. One teacher explained, “my flexible grouping is by ‘who gets along’ early in the
year and transitions into loose ability groups as they learn and can demonstrate appropriate
behaviors.”
Assistive and Instructional Technologies. Another high leverage practice that was
asked about was assistive and instructional technologies. 72.7% of the participants either agreed
or strongly agree that they use assistive and instructional technologies when teaching students
with special needs and 27.3% disagreed. Each student at this specific school site is provided with
a chrome book, so most of the assistive and instructional technologies are used through google
chrome with chrome extensions. All of the classrooms are also equipped with Promethean boards
and overhead projectors. Read and Write is a chrome extension that is added to every chrome
book at the school. This extension offers tools to support reading, writing, studying and research
like text-to-speech, text and picture dictionaries, speech-to-text, word prediction, collecting
highlights from the text, collecting and listening to voice notes, and simplifying and
summarizing text from the web (Read&Write 2020). Other than chrome books and their chrome
extensions, some participants responded that they used visual schedules and microphones for
hearing impaired students.
Providing Positive and Constructive Feedback. When regarding giving positive and
constructive feedback, 27.3% of the participants agreed and 72.7% strongly agreed. When asked
about what giving students feedback in their classroom looked like in an open-ended question,
all of the participants responded with the same use of positive, verbal, and non-verbal feedback,
whether on academic work or behavior. A few participants mentioned that they give positive
feedback to students then offer suggestions for improvement. One participant explained that they
“first [give] a positive about a specific thing done well, then a suggestion for how to improve the
work.”