Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

John Kaufhold

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the implementation of the Welsh Inclusion Model at a Title I elementary school in grades 4 through 5 in the Piedmont area of North Carolina. The researcher visited the Title I school, which was embarking in only its second year in the implementation of the Welsh Inclusion Model. During these visits, the researcher interviewed the principal, the Director of Elementary Education, and two inclusion teams. The entire group participated in a focus group interview. The surveys, interviews, ITTAP, and Co-Teaching rubric provided data that were triangulated to determine how well the school was implementing the Welsh Inclusion Model.

The conditions of the school caused school leaders to focus attention on students with disabilities (SWD) because the school failed to meet federal standards and was given "school of improvement" status in an attempt to meet those standards. The implementation of the Welsh Inclusion Model was to assist the school in meeting those standards.

The conditions of the targeted school warranted a new approach to increasing the academic gains of their special needs students. The school made a commitment to address this concern by implementing a new approach to teaching special needs children. The survey results indicated that the participants in general agreed with the format and the implementation of the Welsh Inclusion Model and that it was meeting the objectives for which the program was intended. The findings of the study confirmed that the inclusionary teams, as well as the administration of the targeted school, were making strides towards meeting the federal mandates of NCLB. However, from the data analysis the researcher observed that more financial support for both training and the use of materials was needed in order to continue to meet the needs of identified students at all levels.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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