When I was a practicum student and was assigned to one of the early childhood centers that included special needs children in the classroom, I observed a research in process. I wasn't completely aware of the research hypothesis, but the topic was about whether children growing up with special needs children would express more empathy and show more help to others. The research was conducted by a group of university students regarding children behaviors. At the time I was doing my practicum, the research was in the step of gathering data. The students stayed in the observation room, observing and recording some specific helping behaviors shown by the group of children (participants) they chose. These children did not know they were being observed, but of course their parents had been informed and signed the parent consent forms. The students chose to not inform the children because they wanted to observe the natural responses of these participants. Some other members of this research went to centers that did not include special needs children. After they gathered enough data, they would put these different sets of data together and compare them.
I didn't know what the research conclusion was, but I am very interested in this topic. However, when I thought of this research, I had a question that I wanted to clarify. Let say their research conclusion was positive, that children going to inclusive centers might express more empathy and show more help to others. How did the research minimize the affects of environment? These children show more help because they have seen special needs children and they know how to help. If we put other group of children (the ones that went to exclusive child cares) in the same environment, they might show the same degrees of help to the special needs children. The environmental factor could be the one that influenced the research results. But anyways, I think this topic is very interesting and I would like to learn more about this in the future.
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