The Challenge of Inclusion

Abstract

The integration or inclusion of young children with disabilities into public school and community-based educational and child care programs is a topic of importance to the range of personnel working in early intervention/early childhood special education. This paper takes the position that many of these personnel embrace inclusion at the conceptual level but ignore or discount its implications at the applied or child level. A discussion of the policies and practices of inclusion as they may potentially affect individual children and families serves as a basis for offering a series of recommendations for fostering successful inclusion.