Inclusive Education in Mainstream Classrooms

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Recommended: Managing diversity in the classroom

In classrooms around Australia teachers will find communities of diverse learners with different backgrounds, cultures, and abilities. The challenge for teachers is to guide students to succeed by creating classrooms that are inclusive, supportive, and free from judgement.

“Mum, I can hear my footsteps!” Harry stated, upon being fitted with his first hearing aid (M. Mitchell, personal communication, July 8, 2010). Harry is a nine–year–old boy in Year 5 who attends a public school in New South Wales. In 2010, when Harry was in Year 1 at school, his mother assisted with class literacy groups and questioned why Harry was so far behind his peers in literacy. Harry was tested and subsequently diagnosed with moderate sensorineural hearing loss in his left ear. Sensorineural hearing loss is most commonly caused by problems with the cochlear (Schoem & Darrow, 2012), which sends and receives messages through nerve fibres to and from the brain. A healthy cochlear uses the information it receives from the brain, for example to omit background noise (Hamilton & Kessler, n.d.), and this helps explain why people with sensorineural hearing loss often struggle with background noise. There is currently no medical treatment for sensorineural hearing loss (Schoem & Darrow, 2012), however, the person may benefit from amplification in the form of hearing aids. In Harry’s case, wearing a behind–the–ear (BTE) hearing aid on his left ear helps amplify the sound he receives, but unfortunately, even the best hearing aid cannot tell the brain to eliminate background noise the way a healthy functioning cochlear can (North Carolina Hearing Loss Inc., n.d.).

Hearing loss is also defined as either bilateral—meaning both ears, or unilateral—in one ear (Heward...

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.../files/documents/05_2012/national_disability_strategy_2010_2020.pdf
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. (2012). Report on the Review of Disability Standards for Education 2005. Retrieved from http://auspeld.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Report_on_the_Review_of_DSE.pdf
New South Wales Department of Education and Communities [NSWDEC]. (2010). Disability Action Plan 2011-2015. Retrieved from https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/strat_direction/strat_plans/disaplan.pdf
United Nations. (1994). Standard rules on the equalisation of opportunities for persons with disabilities 1994. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/gadocs/standardrules.pdf
United Nations. (2006). Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities 2006. Retrieved from http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/N06/645/30/PDF/N0664530.pdf?OpenElement

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