Teacher Education for Inclusion

Changing Paradigms and Innovative Approaches

Chris Forlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136965401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How teachers might best be prepared to work in schools with an increasingly diverse pupil population is of concern to educational academics, professionals and governments around the world. Changes that have taken place in legislation and practice often fail to taken into account how practitioners can ensure that all children and young people are able to achieve.

The focus of this international text is on innovative practices for preparing teachers to work in inclusive classrooms and schools. Drawing on both pre and in-service training methods, the expert contributors to this book follow three major themes:

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• social and political challenges regarding teacher education – providing an historical perspective on the training of teachers, tensions in preparing teachers for inclusion, cultural issues, the relationship between educational funding and practices and collaborative measures to support a whole school approach
• innovative approaches in pre-service teacher preparation – discussing a range of innovative models and approaches used in pre-service teacher education courses
• engaging professional development for inservice teachers – reviewing a range of approaches employed to engage working teachers and help them establish curricula and pedagogy that meets the needs of all students in their classes.

Each chapter will include a list of proposed learning outcomes, a theoretical or conceptual framework to help readers develop the proposed innovation, an overview of recent research, discussion of the research data available and a discussion of the international implications and challenges, summarising in suggestions for a positive way forward.

Teacher Education for Inclusion: Changing Paradigms and Innovative Approaches is essential reading for practising teacher educators, school leaders, university lecturers in education and post graduate students.

Part I
Social and political challenges in teacher education for inclusion

Chapter 1
Reframing teacher education for inclusion

Chris Forlin

Learning outcomes

• Understand the inclusion movement and the need for appropriate teacher education.

• Knowledge about training programs for preparing teachers for inclusion.

• Information about how initial teacher education (ITE) can be reframed to address the changed training needs of teachers for inclusion.

Introduction

This chapter will focus on the major changes in teacher education that have occurred regarding preparing teachers for inclusion. It will consider how programs at universities, teacher training institutions and colleges can be reframed to prepare teachers to provide appropriate education provision for students with disabilities and other diverse learning needs as education transitions towards a more inclusive approach to schooling. The degree to which teacher education has kept pace with societal changes and community expectations in the new knowledge-based paradigm will be considered and insights will be provided into what might be required to ensure a better match between teacher education and the needs of students in today’s world.

Teacher education

Teacher education has been in the frame for considerably longer than the last century; yet how much has this frame changed during this time? Societal and political changes have been vast and far reaching, as have advancements in technology, science, medicine and the humanities. Major changes have occurred in the movement towards more democratic and equitable educational opportunities and in the clientele group for mainstream schools; but what has changed in teacher education? While there is enormous diversity across the world in the needs of students and in the way they respond to their teachers and there is a general acceptance that these needs have become more intense, demanding, and more difficult to respond to placing considerable demands on teachers; there has been relatively little by way of radical changes to teacher preparation and professional development to facilitate this.

In many western countries, student expectations have made teaching very challenging, resulting in a teaching profession that is disillusioned and despondent with students becoming disenfranchized with schooling, either dropping out or making life extremely unpleasant for their teachers (Rose and Jones, 2007). In less-developed countries, many learners are receiving free education for the first time, resulting in the need to provide education for large numbers; frequently without a strongly developed infrastructure and with teachers who are poorly trained and ill equipped to deal with their diverse needs (Du Toit and Forlin, 2009).

Coupled with these changes has been a far-reaching paradigm shift in the education of students with disabilities and other special needs (Ainscow, 2003). In recent years enormous transitions in thinking, expectations and opportunities have occurred. Traditionally, students with specialized needs were educated in segregated facilities, often categorically aligned so that they could be educated with their own kind. Over the past 40 years there has been an evolution from segregated to inclusive placements, which has resulted in complex and often difficult changes in the way schools operate and in the expectations for teachers (Forlin, 2006). Inclusive education, while initially focusing on providing for students with disabilities in mainstream schools, now encompasses a much broader definition that refers to all children who may have been historically marginalized from meaningful education, who come from varied multicultural and multi-diverse backgrounds, or who are at risk of not achieving to their potential.

Even though teacher education has also exhibited changes, have these really kept up with the pace of change that is occurring and in particular in preparing teachers for the diversity of student populations to be found in mainstream schools? In preparing teachers for inclusion there are many tensions that need to be surmounted as institutions grapple with how they can allocate sufficient time to all aspects of teacher education and as they decide to which areas they will place most resources (Chong et al., 2007). One of the major time barriers would seem to be the expectation that in order to learn about inclusion this must occur in a segregated course, rather than being embedded within the regular curriculum. Not only does this involve extra time but it continues the myth that inclusion is different from regular education and that it can only be taught by specialists. How can teacher education be reframed to overcome these challenges?

The transition to inclusion

The inappropriateness of special classes for students with mild mental retardation and the efficacy of self-contained classrooms were first challenged by Dunn in 1968. Dunn proposed that the resource teacher whose role was to withdraw children with special needs for separate work should be retrained to support general educators. He proffered that their new role would be to “… develop instructional materials and lessons for implementing the prescription found to be effective for the child and to consult and work with the other educators who serve the child” (Dunn, 1968, p. 14). Dunn also noted that many of the children found in special education were from low-status backgrounds including over-representation of ethnic minorities and poor families. A clear transition in role was posited with the special education teacher functioning as part of and support for general education rather than perpetrating a segregated form of education.

Dunn’s proposal was followed rapidly by another influence. In 1970 Deno was one of the first to raise the question as to whether special education needed to exist at all as a separate administrative system. His work saw the emphasis on a medical model of disability begin to shift towards a social model when he proposed that:

The viewpoint must switch from the present fix on pathology, which points the accusing finger of cause at the child, to approaches which emphasize the fact that the problem is not in the child but in the mismatch which exists between the child’s needs and the opportunities we make available to nurture his self-realization.

(Deno, 1970, p. 229)

Both of these writers (Deno, 1970; Dunn, 1968) together with the civil rights movements out of the USA and the start of the normalization movement from the Scandinavian countries had an enormous impact on the development of the inclusive movement. There would seem little doubt now that inclusive education has become the catch-phrase of the 21st century. The philosophy of educating all students regardless of SEN within the mainstream environment is now firmly established as the education of choice for many jurisdictions (Winter, 2006). With such a change in philosophy regarding the education of students it follows that a traditional homogeneous approach to teaching is no longer viable. As classrooms become more heterogeneous teachers require different skills and pedagogies if they are to ensure that all students are able to access the curriculum.

Teachers’ perceptions about inclusion

It would seem generally accepted that for inclusion to be effectively implemented, policy promoting inclusive schooling must be supported by teachers who have the knowledge, skills and competencies (Winter, 2006) and an appropriate positive attitude (Avramidis and Norwich, 2002) to sustain this paradigm shift. With the majority of students who were historically excluded from mainstream schooling now being able to access their local schools in most western jurisdictions and increasingly across the Asia-Pacific region and throughout developing countries, teachers are indisputably key players in enabling this, therefore their feelings, attitudes and apprehensions about inclusion must be appropriately addressed.

In 1996, a large meta-analysis of 28 studies investigating teachers’ perceptions of inclusion by Scruggs and Mastropieri (1996), reported that while 65 per cent of the more than 10,000 teachers they surveyed supported the concept of inclusion only approximately 30 per cent believed they had appropriate training or skills or sufficient resources to enable them to implement it. According to a later extensive review of literature on inclusion undertaken by Avramidis and Norwich (2002), resistance to inclusion is noticeably less when teachers have obtained special education qualifications. Yet while most teacher education has changed in recent years to incorporate some content knowledge about diversity and inclusion, newly qualified teachers in many jurisdictions still suggest that they are unprepared for working in inclusive schools (Winter, 2006) and many teachers enter the profession with little understanding of inclusion (Booth et al., 2003).

Teacher attitudes

The attitude of teachers towards including students with disabilities in their mainstream classes is steadfastly established in the literature as a key element in furthering inclusive practices (Sharma et al., 2008). The training of teachers in preparation for inclusion is, for that reason, recognized as a critical factor in addressing attitudes and in promoting a greater commitment to inclusion. Indeed, many have argued that initial teacher preparation is the decisive factor in developing efficacious teachers who are confident in their own ability to teach all students; willing participants in the inclusive movement; and prepared to be engaged in education reform towards inclusion (Forlin, 2008).

Opportunities to engage with people with disabilities and their advocates during initial teacher training has provided an avenue for addressing negative attitudes towards people with disabilities and for encouraging a more positive position towards inclusion. Providing innovative programs that encourage and support pre-service teachers working with students with disabilities and providing opportunities for them to engage with self-advocates within the community are approaches that have been adopted successfully (Forlin, 2003). Similarly, increasing social contact with children with special needs during training has resulted in a positive influence on attitudes towards inclusion and a greater willingness to become involved with inclusion (Sharma et al., 2008). While developing more positive attitudes towards inclusion though, this also has the potential to heighten pre-service teachers’ concerns (Chong et al., 2007).

Teacher preparation programs for inclusive education

Teacher preparation for inclusive education is usually offered either as part of initial training or as ongoing professional learning for teachers. In most jurisdictions initial training consists of either a three- or four-year undergraduate degree; a four- or five-year double degree; or a one- or two-year postgraduate degree in education. In some instances, for example in England, it may alternatively be provided within a school in collaboration with a registered training institution, as participants take an active role within a school (Booth et al., 2003). Traditional teacher preparation programs entail both course work and teaching practice, whereas alternative teaching courses typically target post-degree students who seek a faster pathway into teaching; which may offer only limited on-site practice (Boe et...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Tables
• Figures
• Contributors
• Editorial Board
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I Social and political challenges in teacher education for inclusion
• Part II Innovative approaches for initial teacher preparation
• Part III Professional learning for practising teachers
• Index