The question of how to facilitate social interaction between special education students and regular education students has been the subject of much study over the decade. Some successful methods and programs have been identified, but the problem has become one of introducing such programs into regular classroom programming. As the authors of this study note, classrooms must provide students with mental retardation with an enviroment that is motivationally stimulating and emotionally safe. This study provides evidence that drama can serve as a mechanism to increase interaction among students with and without mental retardation - a finding that encourages the inclusion of special education students in regular education classrooms.

The authors used an experimental design to examine social interactions of students with and without mental retardation involved in either a creative drama program or a noncompetitive cooperative games program. The results indicated that students with disabilities were targets of positive social bids from students without disabilities significantly more often in the creative drama program than in the cooperative games program. The small number of subjects and the self-selection of special education students may limit the generalizability of results. (p. 63-64)