An investigation of the impact of early childhood special education teacher discretion on the practice of early childhood inclusion: A descriptive case stud

This study's purpose was to examine the impact of early childhood special education teacher discretion on the implementation of policy provisions in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) supporting inclusion practices at the local level. Discretion refers to the capacity to make individual choices or judgments when in different situations. The discretion of early childhood special education teachers was explored within the context of placement decisions for preschoolers with disabilities using a single-case, holistic, descriptive case study design.;This study was grounded in a conceptual framework of backward mapping (Elmore, 1979). Lipsky's (1980) theory of the street level bureaucrat was a central part of the conceptual framework. This theory purports that front-line workers use discretion in the delivery of public services thereby making policy as they shape it from rhetoric to reality.;The informants for the study were 10 early childhood special education teachers in one school system. The researcher conducted three interviews with each informant from October 2002 to June 2003. The interviews probed the informants' use of discretion in the placement decision-making process. Authentic child "cases" were used with the informants to provide a context for exploring discretion.;Findings from this study offer insight into how the early childhood special education teachers' use of discretion in the placement decision-making process impacts the implementation of provisions in IDEA and provides evidence that an early childhood special education teacher's idiosyncratic belief system intrinsically guides them in the implementation of policy.