The Regular Education Initiative and Psychoeducational Assessment: A Components of Variance Approach.

Overview & Synopsis

The regular education initiative is a recent movement away from special education for students with learning and behavior problems. Leaders and advocates from the fields of school psychology, special education, and compensatory education have argued that the current within-child disability approach to serving students experiencing academic or social difficulties has proven inadequate. In response, alternatives that would significantly increase the involvement of regular classroom teachers in the instruction of these students are being proposed. The proposed changes in the relationship between regular and special education represent a paradigm shift in educational thinking and practice. The service delivery models being proposed as part of the initiative require a radical reconceptualization of childhood disorder, away from the intrapsychic focus that has dominated psychology during most of this century and toward an acknowledgement of the interactional, environmental bases of problem behavior. If strategies proposed as part of the regular education initiative are to be successful, the ecological assumptions and the possible pitfalls inherent in them must be made explicit. (MSE)