It has been asserted that the way we provide services to learners with mild disabilities has a significant effect on their social-emotional development. From your reading, cite at least three pieces of evidence to support that claim

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: Answers will vary but might include some or all of the following:
• Special education services can communicate to learners a sense of not being as skilled as others their age, compromising their resolution of Erikson's "industry vs. inferiority" stage.
• The development of social perspective taking requires extensive experiences with others; when learners are served in special education settings for the majority of their day, associating primarily with others who also have deficits in social development, their own development may be delayed even more. Significant associations with typical role models and socially skilled peers are critical to development.
• Many learners with mild disabilities have some delays or deficiencies in language development, including social language or pragmatics, delays which impact their social development and adjustment. Pragmatics is, however, the language skill least likely to be addressed in the learner's IEP.
• Special education programming tends to focus on academic remediation, failing to address a learner's needs for development of the skills involved in social awareness and social skill.
• Programming for learners with behavioral problems tends to focus on controlling problem behaviors rather than on developing their social behavioral knowledge and skills.