Students with learning disabilities within the context of inclusive education: issues of identification and school management

Abstract

This paper reports findings of a case study carried out in twoelementary mainstream schools in Turkey. The main aim of thestudy was to investigate the role of identification and schoolmanagement within the process of educating students withlearning disabilities in mainstream schools. Interviews withstakeholders, observations and documentary analysis yielded thefollowing broad themes: (a) referral and identification was oftencarried out with little consideration of preventive and holisticapproaches; (b) identification based on narrow assessment guidedthe educational content, influenced school climate and teacherpractices and (c) school management bodies assumed littleresponsibility to plan, coordinate and evaluate the educationprovided to students with learning disabilities. Outcomes of this study can guide good practice and policy regarding identification and school management in Turkey as well as other countries going through similar processes in terms of educating students with learning disabilities in mainstream schools.