Commemorating 50 Years of RPSD : A Tribute to Haring et al. (1987) and the Emergence of Interventions to Promote Peer Interaction

After United States Public Law 94-142 (1975) was passed, the 1980s brought many changes for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Students with disabilities were no longer denied a free and appropriate public education. Local districts began creating special education classrooms within mainstream schools to integrate students with IDD into the same buildings as their peers. However, integration did not mean inclusion. Students with and without disabilities may have been learning in the same building, but little opportunity for shared learning and socialization resulted in few social interactions and an absence of peer-to-peer relationships.

This reality established a critical need for research focused on supporting social interactions and relationships among students with and without IDD. In this second article of RPSD’s Fiftieth Anniversary Series (see Kennedy et al., 2025), we feature Haring and colleagues (1987), who were among the first wave of researchers to tackle this pressing issue. Driving their research was a conviction that being in the same building was not enough. Haring and colleagues believed students with and without IDD alike would benefit from shared learning and social experiences at school. In their rigorous study, Haring et al. compared two approaches to support interactions among high school students with and without IDD: peer tutoring and special friends. They wanted to learn if these programs could positively shift peer attitudes about students with IDD and lead to an increase in social interactions, as well as to determine whether there were any differences between the two intervention approaches. They found that high schoolers who volunteered to participate in peer tutoring and special friends had more positive attitudes at the start than peers who did not volunteer. By the end of the study, the high schoolers who participated in either of the programs spent more time interacting with classmates with disabilities and were more likely to start up a conversation with someone with a disability than peers who did not participate. Today, the concepts of social inclusion, collaborative learning environments, and peer-mediated interventions are integral to special education practice. Haring et al. (1987) set the stage for this work, helping establish these interventions as critical topics for research and innovation.

In editing this special section, we (Elizabeth Biggs and Zach Rossetti) have gained so much from reflecting on the contributions of Haring et al. (1987). Although each of our lines of research is distinct, we both do work that aims to understand how to support authentic, equal-status interactions and relationships among students with and without IDD. We long to see a time and place where inclusion and belonging are the norm for students with IDD in our public schools, rather than the exception. It has been a privilege to reflect simultaneously on how far as a field we have come and on how far we must still go.

For this special section, we have invited commentaries from individuals who offer unique vantage points on social interventions involving students with IDD, including perspectives as researchers (Drs. Craig Kennedy, Erik Carter, and Alison Zagona) and as a self-advocate (Cat Bernstein). Each commentary raises both critical lessons and pressing questions. Our hope is that this special section plays a role in facilitating even greater advances in research, advocacy, practice, and policy to ensure that schools are a place of inclusion and belonging for all students—including students with IDD who have extensive support needs. One thing is clear: for this to happen, authentic peer interactions and relationships must be at the center.