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THE EFFECT OF NON-CATEGORICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF CHILDREN'S COMPETENCE ON SPECIAL EDUCATION PLACEMENT DECISIONS
Abstract
This study explored the hypothesis that the provision of deficit-oriented information about children with special educational needs has the effect of biasing educational placement recommendations in a more restrictive direction and also influences judgments concerning social acceptance and probable success of the placements for children. School psychologists were presented with information about children that varied on two dimensions: mode of information presentation and label condition. Some of the subjects were told that the children had been assigned a label ("Behaviorally/Emotionally Impaired" or "Learning Disabled") and then were given descriptions of the children, either competence-oriented or problem-oriented, while other subjects were given these descriptions without an assigned label. Problem-oriented descriptions provided information about the children's particular deficits while competence-oriented descriptions provided information about relative strengths and weaknesses. The subjects were then asked to indicate the level of educational mainstreaming which they believed to be appropriate, their anticipated acceptance of the children by peers and their estimates of placement success for each child. It was hypothesized that competence-oriented information would result in placement recommendations that would be less restrictive than would problem-oriented information and also in higher estimates of anticipated acceptance of the child by peers and likely success of the placement. It was also hypothesized that children with no psychoeducational label would receive less restrictive placement recommendations, would be viewed as more likely to be accepted by peers and would be seen as more likely to succeed educationally than children with psychoeducational labels. It was predicted that the label Behavioral/Emotional Impairment would most negatively bias ratings on the three dependent variables. The results obtained supported the hypotheses regarding mode of data presentation; that is, competence-oriented information resulted in placement recommendations that were significantly less restrictive than did problem-oriented information and also in significantly higher estimates of anticipated acceptance of the child by non-handicapped peers and likely success of the placement. The hypotheses concerning the effects of labeling were not supported by these results. Implications of this study for the practice of school psychology were discussed.
Subject Area
Developmental psychology
Recommended Citation
JAVEL, MARY ELLEN, "THE EFFECT OF NON-CATEGORICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF CHILDREN'S COMPETENCE ON SPECIAL EDUCATION PLACEMENT DECISIONS" (1982). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8217533.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8217533