Sociology

Instructional practices are vital elements in the restructuring process of the education system today. Of late, there have been numerous issues revolving around these instructional practices and which have had significant influence on their effectiveness.   This is because there have been intense calls for a renewed vision within the learning process to ensure that the education system in place meets both the goals of the student and those of the system itself. the instructional practices in place determines the effectiveness with which the students are developed as learners and how well they share the responsibilities involved in the learning process. The practice has the mandate of introducing collaborative experiences which considerably depend on both the varied understanding and the information relating to the extensive range of students. This is because the learning process is the function of many variables whereby some classrooms that are learning oriented, planning and management skills, success rate, effective questioning and appropriate learning activities fall under the control of the teacher. These variables have a strong impact on the achievement, behavior and attitude.

According to Noll (2007), a reading curriculum becomes effective for aiding learning when employed in a classroom with a consistent, focused and well designed instruction. Moreover, the essential elements are far more successful when applied in classrooms characterized by a reading instruction which is highly effective. When moving to a higher current instructional practice level, little attention is paid to uniform and sequential learning activities, traditional assignment forms and didactic instructions. Rather, instructors begin to adopt instructional strategies that are focused on student-directed process of learning, differentiated instruction, detailed classroom routines, differing assessment strategies, and authentic opportunities for problem solving (Noll, 2007).

There have been varied opinions regarding the issues of who, what, when and how instructional practices ought to address the specific needs of learners.   Inclusion is an educational practice in which the students having special needs in education share the same classroom with their non-disabled counterparts (Noll, 2007). The adoption of the practice varies with the severity of the needs. Unlike the earlier notions of mainstreaming and integration, inclusion is not principally concerned with special needs and disabilities such as to imply that learners become ready or change to be included in the mainstream. Inclusion thus addresses both the rights of the child to participate and the responsibility of the school to accept the child. According Noll (2007), inclusion does not rely on the use of special classrooms or schools that seek to separate the disabled from non-disabled students.

Therefore, a premium is focused on thorough participation of disabled students so as to respect their civil, educational and social rights. In an inclusive school therefore, the curriculum is developed in such a way that it does not categorize special and general educations systems. Instead, the curriculum is structured in such a manner that it encourages learning together of both those with disabilities and those without. This practice seeks to make learning more relevant to every student especially those students more prone to pressure of exclusion. While maximizing learner participation in various community schools, the practice involves the restructuring and rethinking of policies, culture, curricula and practice in the learning environments such that varied needs for learning are met despite their nature or origin (Noll, 2007). With the inclusion practice it is the school that fits itself into the student needs and not the students who fit themselves into the needs of the school. That is, all students befit equally from the education, the differences among the students are treated as a resource for diversity and not as a problem, and that the varied student development needs are addressed from a broad and flexible response range.

Inclusive education is thus a process that seeks to remove barriers and enable every student including those previously excluded and therefore accommodate them to participate and learn competitively in the general school settings. There is full and regular inclusion. Regularly, the learner is provided with slightly detailed attention in terms of specialized services outside regular setting of the classrooms. On another hand, fully included students are completely integrated into the general education system. Full inclusion is especially very successful with students whose needs are easily met following minor adjustments of the regular classroom setting.

Currently, instructional practices involve classroom walkthroughs settings in a collaborative mode. With this, observations can be intimidating and obtrusive. In this case, the practice   thus seeks to provide meaningful helpful feedback.  The instructional practices are exclusively aligned to a learning and teaching approach based on the subject matter. The instructional practices thus ought to be focused on presentations that are teacher led. There is the use of education materials that are focused to specific content characteristics serving as the focus for student education (Noll, 2007). With instructional practices tending to be uniform and sequential for all students, the evaluation techniques are directed on the assessment results to assist in guiding instruction. Research based practices are directed to basic classroom procedures such as objective setting, note taking and summarizing by the students, provision of practice, homework and adequate time for waiting. With the current instructional practices, the student projects are teacher directed in the context of identifying project results and requirements for completion.

In some contexts, the instructional practices involve the implementation of a learning based approach. In thus, the learning process is rather diversified and founded basically on student questions. The teacher thus needs to serve as a facilitator or co-learner in the classroom setting. Projects on students are student directed and involve the implementation of alternative assessment approach encompassing peer views, student reflection and performance-based evaluations. With these instructional practices, the students are advised to contribute to the evaluation process appropriately to the context being focused on (Noll, 2007). The differentiation level is thus moderate with respect to interests, student learning styles and the readiness level. Utilization of research-based practices thus extends beyond the routine in the classroom such as advanced organization and accommodation of non-linguistic presentation. The content of the standards is based on the need for students to know in an attempt to identify and resolve vital issues through application of problem solving and critical thinking skills. The teachers and their students are both involved in the process of devising the instruments that are appropriate for the assessment. The application of research-based practices sometimes goes deep into complicated routines on class room settings.

The other issue involves mainstreaming. The students are involved in the regular class systems depending on the skills possessed and this is done in specific time durations. There is the integration of special education classes with the regular system. However, the system is based on the notion that the special needs students who are not able to perform according to certain expected standards in the normal class rooms belong to an environment that calls for special education. This special education is offered in self-contained resource rooms where teachers with the capacity to train on special needs by interacting directly with these students to appropriately adjust or offer remedy to the resource room and therefore effectively meet the need of the students (Noll, 2007). Currently, there have been political propositions calling for the elimination of the special resource classrooms but various researchers, parents and educators have remained firm on their stand advocating for the classrooms to be retained to enhance the tolerance capacity of the students. Despite challenges facing mainstreaming, the system is able to impact positively to the special needs students through high academic achievements unlike with the exclusion practice. The resource room has proved to successfully increase the students academic skills and therefore significantly improving the special need students capacity in the general classroom setting. Besides improving self-efficacy, mainstreaming also improves the social skills of the special needs students. This helps these students to be involved in the regular community practice. Issue of cost, compromise of the non-disabled students education due to more emphasis on special needs children in the regular class and harm to the special needs student education are some of the drawbacks that prompt political opposition of mainstreaming.