The effect of sharing health information on teachers' production of classroom accommodations

Ninety elementary‐school teachers read information about a hypothetical student experiencing school‐related problems due to Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), generated classroom accommodations to assist the student, and rated their confidence in these accommodations. Each teacher was provided one of three levels of information about T1DM: (a) no disease information , (b) basic disease information , and (c) basic disease information + classroom implications . Providing teachers with more information about T1DM increased their ability to accommodate a student's learning needs. Similarly, a lower proportion of disease‐specific accommodations were generated by teachers receiving no disease information (37%) than by teachers receiving basic disease information or basic disease information + classroom implications, and the later two groups were equivalent (47% for each). This study and future work concerning the effect of chronic illness on classroom performance and adjustment have implications for medical professionals, teachers, and school psychologists. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 553–564, 2006.