Bondar T. Trends in the Development of Inclusive Education in the USA and Canada

The dissertation provides the holistic overview of the trends in the development of inclusive education in the USA and Canada empowered by the social movement for equal rights from the 1950-s to 2018. The overview of the inclusive education research proves that the monograph Inclusive Education in the USA and Canada: Trends outlines the newest inclusive education trends in the USA and Canada. The concept of inclusion in the USA and Canada contains a set of characteristics that perform axiological and explanatory functions meant to describe specific features of its evolution. Its complexity, contextuality, multitiered system, and social significance prove to be important to provide for students’ educational needs. There has been identified that «inclusion» and «inclusive education» refer to the right to have an access to free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment in the USA while in Canada inclusion is viewed as a more socially just approach to education of students with exceptional needs. Nine governments consider «inclusive education» a value system that does not mandate education in the same classrooms for all students. The philosophy of humanism, existentialism, postmodernism, pragmatism, personalism (USA), essentialism, perennialism (Canada) have been established as the foundation for inclusive education. There have been identified schools of thought: behaviorism, structuralism, and social constructivism. In the USA and Canada two different thrusts are identified within the philosophy of inclusion: social constructivists seeking for solutions to provide support to all the students irrespective of their «ability» in the regular education classroom and the philosophers of «deficit» emphasizing categorization and labelling. In the United States inclusion focuses on the human rights idea and social constructivism that require the adaptation of the environment to the needs of students with disabilities; whereas in Canada, inclusion is based on the combination of principles related to medical, social and disability rights paradigms. The U.S. legislation arranged in the chronological order allowed to identify the five stages in the U.S. inclusive education development: the active social movement for equal rights (1954–1974); integration of children with disabilities into general school through mainstreaming (1975–1985); the Regular Education Initiative (full inclusion) (1986–2000); accountable inclusive education (2001–2014); high quality inclusive education (2015–2018); and in Canada: segregation (1954–1959); special education / integration movement (1960–1981); integration / inclusion movement (1982–2009); human disability rights inclusion (2010–2018). The teacher education system for inclusive schools in the USA and Canada has been explored. Requirements for teacher training are described in the U.S. federal government legislation. The dependence of the teacher training system on the U.S. legislation is established. The differentiated periods of the development in inclusive education in the United States clearly mark qualitative changes in the requirements for teacher training. In Canada, teacher education targets to satisfy multicultural needs; the uncertainty about the inclusion of pupils with special needs (full / incomplete inclusion) hinders the development of the inclusive courses. In the USA teaching students with disabilities in the regular educational environment is ensured by the «Response to Intervention» (RtI) and its updated version «Multitiered Support System» model. Its multitiered structure allows schools to improve student behavior and learning outcomes. The concept use is mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act. In Canada the placement of students with exceptionalities along a continuum of educational settings (ranging from the regular classroom to a specialized facility) is a practice long established and anchored in legislation. This «cascade model» was first proposed by Reynolds (1962), then modified by E. Deno as a means to outline the options of service delivery to individuals with disabilities in health care settings. It followed a pyramid model in which there was a continuum of placement options with the majority of individuals receiving care in their home settings and, depending on need, the minority would require services in a specialized facility. A push to alter education radically and include all students in the typical school environment in Canada is linked to the development of the Three-Block Model or Universal Design for Learning.