A comparative study of pull-out resource room instruction to in-class resource room instruction

According to The Regular Education Initiative, students with disabilities will be fully integrated into the regular education classroom. Hardman et. al. (1993) found that segregating learning disabled students limits their opportunities to learn appropriate social skills, Weiner (1979) hypothesized that attributions a child makes about himself/herself will affect his/her level of motivation. He also said that children who attribute failure to lack of ability and success to external factors, will develop a learned helplessness. Placing students with disabilities into regular education programs with their non-disabled peers is a movement designed to increase a learning disabled student\u27s self esteem improving their ability to learn. This study attempted to identify if learning disabled students improved in the areas of academic achievement and social skills when placed in a classroom with their non-disabled peers. The participants in this study were 44 classified resource center students from two middle class, suburban school districts. 22 students received in-class resource room instruction whereas the other 22 received pull-out instruction. Both groups were compared by an independent measures t test to determine if the in-class group achieved higher scores on achievement tests and social skills inventories. Results did not support the hypothesis that there would be a significant difference between the in-class and the pull-out groups