Classroom behavior of mentally retarded children across different classroom settings

Little research has been done on direct obser-vation of retarded children in ongoing class-room situations, despite the fact that it can provide data on social or academic character-istics which are often quite different from those obtained by indirect measures such as teacher ratings or psychometrics. In the present study, over 900 children were observed in different classroom settings with regard to verbal interaction, attending, nonattending, and disruptive behavior. These were further broken into 3 conditions in which either peers or teachers were involved or where no observ-able response to the behavior was noticed. While total on-task behavior distinguished in-stitutionalized children from children in com-munity schools and special classes, it did not differentiate retarded children in community-based classrooms from one another. While some unexpected patterns of behavior emerged in each group, these generally tended to dis-appear when within-group classroom differ-ences were taken into account. Some developmental trends were also observed. Surprisingly, overall levels of on-task behavior compared favorably with those found in previous observation studies of normal children. Placement of mentally retarded (MR) children in classroom settings has tra-ditionally involved assigning mildly or educable mentally retarded (EMR) chil-dren mainly to regular or special classrooms and more severely or trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children to classes in special schools or institutions. ’ While disagreement continues as to the effects of various placements on the social functioning of such children (MacMillan, 1977), there is consensus that adaptation to the classroom setting is an important factor in later adjustmen