Academic engaged time of 6 students with low-incidence disabilities enrolled in a general elementary classrooms for reading or math and at least one other subject was compared to that of 6 students without disabilities from the same classes and 6 students without disabilities from different classes that were not inclusive. Three dependent measures used were frequency of observation intervals that students were engaged in academic responding, task management, and competing behaviors. Results showed no significant differences in academic responding and task management behaviors of students with and without disabilities enrolled in general education classes, significant differences between these groups on frequency of competing behaviors, no significant differences between students without disabilities on academic responding and task management, and significant differences between students without disabilities on frequency of competing behaviors.

This study examined the instructional contexts of six students with severe disabilities and six peers without disabilities enrolled in the same general education classes. The two groups of students were compared on (a) the extent to which they were the exclusive focus of instruction; (b) the amount of one-to-one, small group, and whole group instruction that they received and the amount of independent work they were asked to complete; (c) who delivered instruction; and (d) the types of instructional interactions that were directed toward them. Data were collected using The Code for Instructional Structure and Academic Response — Mainstream Version (MS-CISSAR; Carta, Greenwood, Schwartz & Miller, 1990). The results indicate that students with severe disabilities were much more likely than their typically developing peers to have instruction focused exclusively on them and to receive one-to-one instruction. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for educational programs for this group of students and future research.

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