Behavioral Impacts Associated With Students With Disabilities in Australian Schools: The Need for a Deeper Understanding of Inclusivity and Their Learning Journey

Background

Families of students with disabilities in Australia have an important choice in their schooling. That choice is to decide whether or not to send their students to a special school, where the school has been created in order to support students with a range of disabilities, or to send their student to a mainstream school, which attempts to be inclusive of everyone. Students in mainstream schools display a number of different behaviors which may be interpreted incorrectly by students with disabilities as regular behaviors. This in turn creates a conundrum for the students with disabilities as they may try to replicate these behaviors. A number of different factors will come into question throughout, including socioeconomic status, hereditary factors, self-efficacy and behavioral factors of mainstream students and students with disabilities. Kahu and Nelsen (2018) states that students’ self-efficacy is critical to behaviors displayed. Furthermore, Yu and Singh (2018) concur, indicating that students whom stem from low socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to have lower motivation levels and self-drive. Schools far from capital cities and in low socioeconomic areas have a higher rate of behavior incidences and a lower level of educational outcomes. If the behaviors are uninterrupted and not substituted, the behaviors may turn into chronic challenging behavior. These chronic behaviors can negatively impact a variety of life outcomes for individuals with intellectual disability.