A Study On Educational Placement Of Children With Intellectual Disability

Educational placement is a main component of special education, which guarantees the appropriate education for children with disability. Placement does not only refer to the physical space but it also include the teaching approaches, teaching materials and equipment, particular educational objects, educators and educational goals, et al.Because of the changes in social economic levels and mainstream values, the placement of children with disability has changed for several times since the early age of special education. At present, there are four types of placement for children with disability; they are special school, special class, resource room and general class.These four types of placement are different in curriculum, educators, peer communication Special school and special class are characterized by individualized curriculum and isolation; while resource room and general class provide more opportunities to communicate with ordinary peers but the curriculum is more general and difficult.Children with different kinds of disabilities need different types of educational placement. Children with intellectual disabilities usually have the features of short attention span, short and slow memory, small memory capacity and consequently their language and mathematics can only reach the level of grade five or six at primary school. In addition, children with intellectual disability are slow in adaptive behavior and social interaction. Because of that, they need special curriculum and individualized teaching. Resource room and special class are comparatively appropriate for them among the four types of placement.According to the current placement in many countries, it is found that the placement of children with intellectual disability is affected less by inclusive education movement than children with other disabilities. Special class in general schools is the main type of placement and the proportion of children with intellectual disability learning in general class is small. There is no strong evidence to prove the placement of resource room and general class is better than special class and special school. In China, the majority of children with intellectual disability are learning in regular class, but the educational quality is not satisfactory. We have not paid enough attention to educational placement for children with intellectual disability and there are few empirical studies on this issue. Based on that, this study put forward some suggestions, such as strengthening quality supervision, improving the learning in regular class system et al. to provide appropriate placement for children with intellectual disability.