Classroom and playground interaction of students with and without disabilities

The classroom and playground behaviors of students with disabilities, in an integrated classroom, are frequently cited as reasons for rejection of these students by their regular-class peers. We compared the classroom and playground behavior of 95 students with mild disabilities with that of 95 students without disabilities, age and sex matched, and enrolled in the same classes. The children, age 8-13 years, attended state government elementary schools. Behaviors were observed using a time-sampling method with nine categories of behavior in each setting. The behavior of both groups of students was in many ways similar, regardless of the presence of disabilities.