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Article Critique
The article chosen is the ‘American School Counselor Association. (1999). Position statement: The professional school counselor and the special needs student, retrieved from http://www.schoolcounselor.org/ pubs/position6.htm’ The paper seeks to provide a thorough critique of the article. This will be done against the background of theoretical knowledge in the respective topics, method of research and argumentative structure of the article. Specific topic of the article The article focuses on the role of the school counselor in relation to children with special needs. This article serves to declare the American School Counselor’s position on the matter. Given that the topic is a position statement, then one expects that the style of writing will be independent and even instructive. This is exactly what one finds as they proceed with the article. The topic also hints at the theme of the article. In this case, the authors are focusing on school counselor’s role with an inclination towards the needs of the special child. There are also certain expectations that the topic induces in the reader’s mind. For instance, one expects that they will receive information about the nature and type of functions school counselors perform in general. Additionally, one expects that the article will reveal the needs of the special child in the school environment. Thereafter, maybe the authors could merge the latter aspects to fit their chosen topic. Theoretical assumptions The overlying assumption in this article is that the reader is already familiar with the issue of inclusive education. Some of the stakeholders mentioned in the article actually refer to a number of bodies given the authority or mandate to deal with implementation of special needs programs in public schools. At one point, the article addresses the issue of the IDEA. The Individuals with Disabilities Act was passed at a time when the government felt the need to give children with disabilities the right to join a public school. This program was very comprehensive and there are some specific rules and guidelines aimed at ensuring that students with learning or special disabilities had the opportunity to access support in the mainstream environment. The mandate for implementation is given to Local Education Authorities (LEA). The latter group have the administrative duty to carry out the program. Consequently, if another group were to be given the mandate to administer special needs programs within the school environment, there would be some confusion or conflict of interest. This is probably why the authors to the article clearly state that school counselor’s should not take up administrative programs related to the Individuals with Disabilities Act. The article also assumes that the reader is also familiar with all the teams needed in implementation of special needs programs in a school. For instance, there is reference to the 504 planning team. This is a team that has the mandate to create a plan for assisting special needs children fit into their environment. The team is given this mandate by the Local education authorities. There is also some reference given to other stakeholders in the special needs programs. For instance; • Community members • Parents of the special needs children • Staff members • School administration • Etc It is a known fact that counseling entails collaboration between various stakeholders. Any counselor worth his salt must go out of his way to engage the efforts of parents. This is because the latter have the ability to supplement their efforts at home. What counselors manage to achieve in school is only enough to cover half the problem, the rest can be accounted for by the children’s respective parents. This is in terms of the child’s psychological and emotional needs. Collaboration with parents also allows counselors to get financial support needed to provide special needs children with adequate support. Counseling also involves getting good will and support from the surrounding communities. This is an aspect that greatly affects the level of acceptance of special needs programs within the society. Good will from the community largely determines the level of success of the program. How the work contributes to overall topic of my thesis (General problems and concepts of my discipline that it engages in) The overall thesis statement revolves around the challenges currently facing implementation of children with special needs programs within mainstream schools. There are a number of pending issues especially with regard to the stakeholders involved in the programs. First, there are still some groups that believe children with special needs should be placed in segregated institutions. This school of thought is founded on the premise that there could never be adequate resources or material to support children with special needs. By clarifying the role of the school counselor, the article contributes towards the solution by illustrating how special children programs can be implemented through the help of the counselor. This will go a long way in solving the problem of segregated schools. The other problem in the thesis system is the relative importance of the social model of providing for children with special needs in comparison to the medical model which considers children with special needs as a negative challenge. The article under review suggests ways in which barriers to participation and learning disabilities can be eliminated through school counselors. This is also the underlying concept behind the social model of inclusive education. This model regards special needs programs in a positive light. It advocates for the same; elimination barriers for children with learning difficulties. Therefore, the article contributes towards eliminating some of the older notions and concepts towards special needs children that did not help them achieve their potential. There is an increasing need to redefine the role of stakeholders within the school environment with regard to special needs children. There are a number of stakeholders in mainstream schools who can support the learning process of the special needs child. For instance, there are teaching assistants, personal assistants or nurses, the school administration and counselors. However, their roles need to be clearly laid out in order to enhance smooth implementation of this program. The article has contributed towards this goal by outlining the role of the school counselor in special needs programs. It has also hinted at the roles of other stakeholders such as parents, the school administration, local education authorities and others. Kinds of material the work presents The material is a combination of a number of sources but the most outstanding forms are historical accounts. For instance, the material refers to the nature of legislations passed about inclusion. Additionally, it also reflects on the kind of court proceedings that have been passed with reference to the role of school staff when dealing with inclusive cases. Additionally, the article presents some secondary sources. This is because the information they present about the role of the school counselor is not entirely new. Most of the assertions made are issues that have been discussed before. However, the authors have not quoted these sources. It is also possible that some of the sources used in the article come from personal observations. The authors did not lay out specific research rules or procedures that they used to get information. Personal observations are usually conducted procedurally. However, one can still be able to determine that the issues being put forward by the authors could be an expression of what the authors have noticed for themselves. Some of the advantages of this form of research are that personal observations allow the researcher to look at situations in their typical scenario. This means that subjects need not pretend to be something they are not just to appease the interviewer or researcher. However, the main advantage of this type of research collection is that most of the information mostly depends upon the memory of the interviewer. Also, the researcher may have some underlying assumptions and may set out to find them during his research. Consequently, results end up being inaccurate. Since the article is a position statement, the American School Counselor’s Association are simply making their stand known about the subject matter. This means that the need to include quantitative data, biographical accounts and employment of primary sources may not be that important in the end. How material illustrates the thesis (through writing style, tone, quotes, summarize passages) The article is not a proposal therefore; the tone is more assertive and instructive. The American School Counselor’s Association (1999) were simply trying to give their perspective on what they thought about a school counselor’s role in relation to their special needs child. This is why the article is called a position statement and not a research article. Most of their views are founded upon some inclusive education principles. Despite the fact that the authors were giving their stand on the matter, they have tried justifying this position by pointing out some facts. Legislations concerning special needs children formed a basis for their argument. Additionally, the authors also quoted court decisions favoring their perspective on the matter. Therefore, despite the fact that the writing style if instructive and layered, there is still proof to back their claims. However, it should be noted that this article refers to some legislations and court decisions but no effort is made to quote or cite them. Additionally, there is no reference list at the end of the article suggesting that the authors may have been proposing new ideas that have never been heard before. As it will be seen in the latter parts of the essay, the ideas brought forward in the article are not original, there are some underlying principles and theories from earlier writers. As a result, it would have been appropriate if the authors quoted or referred to these authors. This gives credit to their work. The thesis of the work is assessing the needs of children with disabilities in the school environment or in the learning process. The article under review contributes towards this thesis by clarifying the roles of some helpers within the school environment that can enhance the learning experience. At the beginning of the article, the authors start by stating the role of the school counselor. In this case it is to support the career development, personal and academic needs of any child in the learning environment. Professional counselors are required to show tangible results annually even when dealing with disabled children. The article provides a rationale for their standpoint by asserting that the field of education has numerous laws that facilitate this. For instance, the federal state passed laws requiring that schools provide least restrictive environments. In this sense, schools ought to go out of their way to aid children with disabilities. Consequently, school counselors need to utilize this opportunity. Federal law requires that schools offer educational programs that are individual in nature. This means that they should deal with the needs of each child on a personal basis; a role that can be easily implemented by the school counselor. Lastly, there is a law that requires adherence to due process; this also applies to the school counselor and to the child with special needs. The article also emphasizes the importance of defining professional counselor’s role given the fact that they work with children with disabilities both in and out of the classroom scenario. However, the roles must be in tune with local policies and laws. After asserting the importance of defining the school counselor’s role, the article then lays them out. School counselors lead the school counseling program, they provide collaborative services, they analyze children and determine whether they require special needs counseling, they work with other groups to support special needs children. School counselors counsel children both individually and in groups, they protect the rights of the children with disabilities and safeguard their interests, they help students in the transition process from one grade to another, they work with parents and other staff members who deal with special needs children. Lastly, they refer children to other specialist in the community. The school counselor is required to perform heavy tasks. However, the American School Counselor Association (1999) were quick to point out that there some limits to the roles of the school counselor. This is especially in relation to administrative duties. According to the article, school counselors are not supposed to make any decisions regarding the retention and placement of special needs. They should not be given the mandate to supervise IDEA programs within any school environment. The authors also assert that school counselors need not act as representatives in the special needs implementation program. While school counselors can take part in the design phase of the counseling program in a school, they do not have the mandate to coordinate the planning team. They also have no mandate to implement decisions made by the planning team. ‘The professional school counselor takes an active role in providing a comprehensive school counseling program to students with special needs. Professional school counselors advocate for all students and provide collaborative services to students with special needs consistent with those services provided to students through the comprehensive school counseling program.’ American School Counselor Association. (1999) Alternative ways of arguing from the same material The article clearly defines the roles of the school counselor with regard to children with disabilities and also with regard to children without disabilities. However, there is a need to cover some of the underlying issuers in these roles. While it is a great idea that school counselors are considered key in implementation of special needs programs, one should discuss whether or not those school counselors have the adequate physical and mental resources to take up this challenge. Other writings suggest that there is a need to prepare school counselors to take up roles with special needs children. For instance, research conducted in some one hundred schools implementing the American School Counselor’s recommendations found that most schools took these assertions seriously and implemented most of them. The following statistics indicated the level of implementation in the samples taken Elementary schools- 28% High schools – 34% Middle schools- 38% Total schools with school counselors performing ASCA’s recommendations-75% Some of the tasks that these school counselors performed included; giving children with disabilities some counseling services. This was done either on an individual basis or on a group level. Another task taken up by these counselors is provision of service through multidisciplinary teams. Additionally, school counselors in those participating schools also assisted children with disabilities in terms of behavior modification roles. Despite this enthusiasm about implementation, the same survey found out that most of the school counselors involved in the program were experiencing major hurdles. These stem from the fact that some of the procedures laid out in school counseling standards have a lot of ambiguity. For instance, it is stated that there should be incorporation of all types of students but there are no specific instructions on how this can occur. Additionally, the same group illustrates that counseling children with different abilities gives counselors opportunities to gain experience, however, very little is mentioned with reference to special needs children. The same may be said of counselors undergoing training as no reference is made towards the special needs children directly. Similarly, the article under review has been very clear about the role to be played by counselors in the school environment. However, there are no references on training necessary to implement those recommendations. Therefore, the American School Counselor’s Association is merely stating theoretical objectives without referring to ways in which those objectives can be achieved. The article under review would have been more enriching if there was some reference to the nature of preparations to be made by school counselors. Currently, the schools in the United States are in urgent need of such kinds of reforms because most of them seem to disregard the need for counselor training with reference to special needs children. Some two researchers; Prillaman and Korinek surveyed schools in the US to investigate school counselor’s level of preparedness in dealing with special needs children. It was found that most of them were not implementing any sort of teacher training program for them. Out of the two hundred and thirty eight respondents interviewed in the research, only twenty eight percent of them passed through some form of training related to special needs children. Even course work found within their training institutions revealed that most school counselors had very little preparation in this field. The article would have been more applicable if some reference was made to the preparations necessary in training programs for school counselors. Theoretical issues and topics that the work raises The most outstanding theme that stands out in the article is the importance of providing support to children with special needs especially in the inclusive environments. There has been a growing misconception that when mainstream schools take up children with special needs, then those children will have to work much harder to achieve objectives set out for them. However, experts assert that such attitudes have missed out a very important point; the fact that schools should be the ones doing the adjusting and not the child. If all inclusive schools were to provide thorough support to their special needs children, then inclusion as a concept would not have yielded any positive outcome. An example of how this can be achieved is by helping those special needs children move from grade to grade, ensuring that their personal, social and mental lives are going and collaborating efforts between parents, community services and other teachers. These are all roles that can be filled by the school counselor. Therefore, it is sensible that the article has highlighted all these roles. It is also imperative to remember that most advocates for special needs children have been focusing on the philosophical aspect of inclusion. Most of them paid little if any attention to the nature of the needs of an individual child. However, the most important element about inclusive education is the fact that each specific child has their own preferences and needs. Consequently, support needs to be more than just a coz for implementers. Another theoretical basis for the article under review is the legal system. Inclusion in the United States has been placed under the mandate of the IDEA or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1990). This Act was passed in order to ensure that children with disabilities can have access to free education in public schools. This was where the term least restrictive environment emanated. According to the Act, schools supporting special needs children should ensure that they provide them with the most appropriate support possible. Also, there should be adequate accessibility to the school curriculum and other resourceful materials. However, it should be noted that there are some exceptions to this amendment. It provides that some students may not necessarily benefit from inclusion in the classroom even after receiving all the necessary support and material if their deformities are so severe. However, the latter part has solicited a lot of debate. The country’s legal system also highly supports inclusion given the fact that there have been many court rulings favoring the issue. Judges have demanded for convincing evidence to show that a child cannot benefit from inclusion. Therefore if a child is placed in restrictive environments, then schools need to give evidence of why this has occurred. Since it is the basic right of the child to receive education in regular classrooms, the least restrictive law requires that children be given all or some of the following aids to help them progress; • Curriculum modifications • Support • Materials • Adequate personnel By observing the latter, schools will have brought help to the child with special needs rather than taking the child to them. The second point forms the basis for the article under review because it brings out the fact that schools must provide support to children with special needs. The school counselor, as stated in the article, achieves a large chunk of this function. This implies that the article adheres to some of the most fundamental principles of inclusion. Since counselors are required to assist special needs children in their transition from grade to grade or a transition into high schools, then this falls within the larger framework of inclusion. The following are some of the major principles that govern successful incorporation of children with special needs within the classroom. First of all, there should be a comprehensive program that incorporates all personnel. This is an issue that has been covered in the article by requiring counselors to work together with other members of staff. Second, a school must provide supplementary services for children with special needs. Again, this is something that the article has touched on. The authors assert that counselors need to be work with children both outside and inside the classroom. This latter aspect can be regarded as part of the ‘supplementary services’ mentioned before. Third, great support for children with special needs also entails the respect of special needs as individuals. When a particular school regards all children with special needs as persons that can be generalized, then they fail to understand the major purpose of inclusion. Again, this aspect has been covered in the article; the authors claim that school counselors need to asses specific needs of the special needs child. This implies that counselors are adhering to the principle of individualization. Failure to do this, can result in blanket measures by schools. This not only makes it very difficult for a child with a special need to succeed, but it can be considered as an abuse of their basic rights. All in all, there are a number of characteristics that must be eliminated in order to ensure that any inclusive system is successful. Some of them include; -Implementing inclusion badly -Failure to merge inclusion and less restrictive environments -Failure to give adequate support services -Negative attitudes among staff members -Offering physical classes in large groups -Etc Reactions concerning the work The federal government asserts that all children have the right to public education unless there is a concrete reason for not adhering to this principle. Therefore, provision of special needs programs can only be successful if the kinds of people who implement them eliminate all possible barriers. The first major problem about the article under review is the fact that it is a position statement. The nature of the statementing process in the United States may be geared towards helping children with special needs but it can also become an impediment to full implementation. This article and others like it could be slowing down the process of full inclusion Additionally, the article’s authors are insensitive to inclusivists concerns. Most of them (inclusivists) assert that the language ‘special education’ is itself segregatory as it implies that children with disabilities have no right to public education and this is just a privilege. Conclusion The article contributes towards the overall thesis of the research by ascertaining the role of the school counselor towards children with special needs. However, the article would have more informative it contained methods on how to achieve it and also if it respected concerns of inclusivists. Reference: American School Counselor Association. (1999). Position statement: The professional school counselor and the special needs student. http://www.schoolcounselor.org/ pubs/position6.htm (Retrieved June 30th, 2008) American School Counselor Association. (2003). The ASCA national model: A framework for school counseling programs. Alexandria, VA: Author. Florian, L. Et al (2006): The SAGE Handbook of Special Education London, Sage Reynolds, C.R. and Fletcher-Jansen E. (2007): Encyclopedia of Special Education London, Wiley (3 volumes, forthcoming) Mitchell, D. (2005): Contextualizing Inclusive Education, Evaluating old and New International Paradigms. London Routledge, Falmer. Armstrong, F. et al (2000): Inclusive Education, Policy, Contexts and Comparative Perspectives, London, David Fulton Daniels, H. (2000): Special Education Re-formed, Beyond Rhetoric? London: Falmer Press Evans, J. and Lund, I. (2002): Inclusive education, are there limits? European Journal of Special Needs Education, 17, (1) Jowett, S. and Moses, D. (1988): Joining Forces, a Study of Links between Special and Ordinary Schools. Slough, National Foundation for Educational Research/Nelson. Fletcher-Campbell, F. (1994): Still Joining Forces? A Follow-Up Study of Links between Ordinary and Special Schools, Slough, National Foundation for Educational Research. Norwich, B. and Weddell, K. (1994): Working Together: Inter-School Collaboration for Special Needs. London, David Fulton Publishers United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (1994): The Salamanca Declaration and Framework for Action. Paris, UNESCO. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (2001): Open File on Inclusive Education. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved from; www.unesco.org/education/educprog.sne, accessed on 30th June 2008 Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Author is associated with ResearchPapers247.Com which is a global Research Papers and Term Papers Writing Company. If you would like help in Research Papers and Term Paper Help you can visit ResearchPapers247.Com> |
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