Creating inclusive schools for students with disabilities is a major leadership responsibility for principals throughout the world. Each national, regional and local context is different, but every principal can help create and support inclusive schools. The purpose of this article is to describe the evolving context of inclusive education and school leadership in the United States aligning what is known to an established leadership framework (Hitt and Tucker, 2016), as there are similarities between the Hitt and Tucker domains and the work of leaders in inclusive schools. The authors emphasize that inclusive leadership is consistent with existing conceptualizations of principals' work. The authors consider specific policies and organizational conditions that support inclusive schools and highlight successes and continuing challenges for principals that can be applied throughout the world.,This paper utilizes an exploratory approach to review the US policy-related and empirical literature on school leadership for effective inclusive schools. The authors draw across time from research syntheses in school and inclusive leadership from leading journals in educational leadership, special education and edited volumes focused on school leadership. The authors analyze common themes centered on leadership practice, organizational and social conditions and challenges.,The research review identified effective leadership practices that support inclusive education in the United States and provides a critical discussion of how these findings relate to international research and practice.,The paper considers the relevance of national policy contexts coupled with a review of school leadership for inclusive schools that is insightful for policymakers and practitioners seeking to create more inclusive schools throughout the world.,The paper offers a situated review of leadership for inclusive schools in the United States. As such, this review lays the foundation for a comparative and international conversation on school leadership for inclusion.

Principal leadership for students with disabilities in effective inclusive schools

Special education teachers (SETs) are expected to use effective practices to improve outcomes for students with disabilities, yet even those who are well-prepared may not be effective in teaching t...

Improving Working Conditions to Support Special Educators’ Effectiveness: A Call for Leadership:

Most education systems were not initially designed to include students with disabilities. However, over the past 25 years, great strives have been taken to ensure students with disabilities have access to the general education classroom and to important social, emotional and academic opportunities. Within the USA, researchers have begun to focus on the principal's role in creating and sustaining effective inclusive schools. The purpose of this article is to examine the leadership practices and perceptions associated with creating effective inclusive schools for students with disabilities. This qualitative study examined how two elementary school principals created an effective inclusive school and how they understood the challenges and change processes associated with inclusion. Each principal was interviewed and observed four times over one school year. Teachers and district administrators were also interviewed to gain insights into the school's progress with inclusion and to verify principals’ interview data. This study added to existing research by identifying the following leadership practices critical to creating effective inclusive schools: (1) creating a culture of change-oriented collaboration, (2) planning and evaluating, (3) building capacity and (4) developing/revising plans. The principals felt that these practices enabled inclusion to take root, despite challenges and the chaotic nature of life in schools. A total of three additional themes emerged related to how principals understood change processes and challenges associated with inclusion: collaborative inquiry, information flow and crises/distractions/fatigue. Several key leadership practices were identified in this study, including practices associated to systems thinking (ST). These practices hold promise and might be applied to thoughtfully design inclusive reforms. Faculty in principal preparation programs might also consider exposing aspiring leaders to the literature on leadership for effective inclusive schools as well as systems thinking. The paper identifies the leadership practices of two principals who created effective inclusive schools. The paper is unique as it applies a ST lens to the investigation of leadership for inclusion.

Undoing Systems of Exclusion: Exploring Inclusive Leadership and Systems Thinking in Two Inclusive Elementary Schools.

Propensity score matching was used to create intervention and comparison groups to compare academic outcomes of students with disabilities in the U.S. state of Indiana placed in more inclusive settings with those placed in less inclusive settings. Student and school demographic and outcome data were analyzed from the eighth grade in 2013 through graduation in 2018. Students with disabilities spending 80% more time in inclusive classrooms did better in reading and math than peers spending more time in special education classrooms. The study shows differences in diploma types of students in more inclusive settings than those in less inclusive settings, indicating that students in inclusive settings engage in more rigorous course of study and are more prepared for successful post-secondary educational and employment opportunities.

The Relationship Between Special Education Placement and High School Outcomes

This article examines how leaders in public, private, and hybrid educational systems manage competing pressures in their institutional environments. Across all systems, leaders responded to system-specific puzzles by (re)building systemwide educational infrastructures to support instructional coherence and framed these efforts as rooted in concerns about pragmatic organizational legitimacy. These efforts surfaced several challenges related to educational equity; leaders framed their responses to these challenges as tied to both pragmatic and moral organizational legitimacy. To address these challenges, leaders turned to an array of disparate government and nongovernment organizations in their institutional environments to procure and coordinate essential resources. Thus, the press for instructional coherence reinforced their reliance on an incoherent institutional environment.

Striving for Coherence, Struggling With Incoherence: A Comparative Study of Six Educational Systems Organizing for Instruction

The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate suggests a preference for educating students with disabilities in general education settings provided their needs can be met there. This study examin...

Trends in LRE Placement Rates Over the Past 25 Years

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Erica Bergmann

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Trends in LRE Placement Rates Over the Past 25 Years