Email: eenet@man.ac.uk
1. Introduction
We chose the title 'Overcoming Resource Barriers' because access to resources is a major issue all over the world in every aspect of life, including education. In the most apparently well-resourced classrooms in Europe teachers complain that 'there aren't enough resources' and claim that they would be capable of so much more 'if only there were more resources'. Lack of resources is arguably the most well-used excuse for not developing more inclusive practices in education. Yet in countries where material resources are extremely limited, where children may not be able to go to school at all because their families cannot afford the school fees, there are some outstanding examples of what can be achieved with very little. These examples have a great deal to teach the North, where arguments about access to material resources can often be a major barrier to developing a more enabling form of education.
This symposium was not intended to be an 'exotic' session where participants are treated to descriptions of far-away countries, irrelevant to their own situation. It was intended to challenge participants' thinking about their own situation - to make their familiar (culture, school, community), unfamiliar for an hour or so. Take a step back from what you know so well. Listen to the way in which parents of disabled children in Lesotho have become more resourceful in response to their situation and are now a major human resource for the Ministry of Education's inclusive education programme. The national parents' organisation offers training advice to teachers, teacher trainers and policy makers. Consider the benefits of democratising classrooms in Zambia so that children play a more active role in their own learning and develop an understanding of citizenship. Learn from the commitment of a group of disabled people and parents in Uganda who developed a community based school for all children, where disabled children are fully included. Previously their disabled children had been excluded from their local schools. The parents also wanted a more appropriate curriculum for their children, one which does not distance them from their cultural heritage and which better prepares them for life. Now ask yourself how the lessons from these stories may have relevance for your own situation, even if you have more material resources at your disposal.
The Enabling Education Network (EENET) was set up in 1997 to develop an information-sharing network aimed at supporting and promoting the inclusion of marginalised groups in education world wide. It is based at Manchester University, funded by European non-governmental organisations and is managed by an international steering group. EENET aims to be an accessible, inclusive and participatory network, not just an information service. EENET is committed to encouraging the effective participation in education of all key stakeholders; engaging with the difficulties caused by the global imbalance of power; and encouraging a critical and discerning response to all information and materials circulated. EENET is a catalyst for the development of inclusive practice and a clearing-house for information which promotes inclusion. A brief introduction to EENET's values, principles, activities and vision was given in this symposium and is included in this paper in Appendix 1. The way in which EENET is helping IE practitioners in over 100 countries in the world to overcome the information barriers they face is demonstrated through a role play, a description of which can be found below.
2. Planning the Symposium: Accessibility and Participation
A network which 'talks inclusion' should also 'walk inclusion'. It is not enough to share information about inclusion, inclusive practice and methodology has to be at the heart of everything that EENET does. One of EENET's key messages is that some of the most innovative practice in IE is in the countries of the South and these voices need to be heard. However information tends to flow from North to South and Northerners tend to be reluctant to learn from this experience. As material resources become over-stretched in the North, the lessons to be learned from these projects about overcoming resource barriers are becoming more meaningful.
EENET organised a one-day presentation skills workshop immediately prior to the ISEC Congress on July 22, primarily for practitioners from the South. Participatory methods and peer-tutoring ensured that the practitioners were enabled to communicate their experience effectively. It was during this workshop that participants were identified for the EENET symposium. An intensive day of preparation followed on July 23. We heard more about IE in Uganda, Zambia and Lesotho and developed a role play which would highlight the way in which resource barriers have been creatively overcome.
"The medium is the message"
The initial planning for the EENET symposium began at the steering group meeting on July 21. Several observers attended this meeting as they had arrived early in time for the presentation skills workshop and altogether 10 countries were represented. We began by listing barriers to inclusion such as geographical, human resources, material resources, attitudes, infrastructure, systems and bureaucracy. We then made a list of the typical excuses we all hear in our everyday work.
We can't do IE because:
Attitudes are negative - "Until
attitudes change…";
Disabled children aren't ready (eg not toilet
trained);
It will affect the other children (contagious);
No capacity
to learn;
Parents' fear of rejection ;
Teachers are trained in special
education - "I'll lose my job";
Our people aren't literate;
We've got
other priorities;
Our system's too rigid;
Buildings are not accessible;
No trained personnel;
No transport - distances are too great;
No
money;
No equipment or materials;
No policy or legislation;
An analysis of the barriers and excuses
An analysis of the excuses led us to conclude that solutions could be found in the barriers themselves. Culture and context account for the environmental barriers such as economics and geography. The rest can be divided into: people; resources; and information. The 'people' barriers are mostly to do with attitudes and training, both of which can be transformed so that the same people can be mobilised for inclusion. The material resource barriers need not prevent inclusion if the people are committed. Creative and innovative solutions can be found to overcome limited material resources. Information barriers can easily be remedied by giving committed people access to relevant information so that training courses can be transformed and inclusive policy and legislation developed. EENET's main task is to address the barriers caused by limited access to information.
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Negative attitudes lead people to say: "We don't have ….. therefore we can't do…." This is especially true in the richer countries of the North where the emphasis is on 'having' rather than 'being'. However if we challenge this by saying: "We are….therefore we do", it is possible to overcome the most apparently insurmountable of barriers. We must use what we have in whatever context we are working. Resourceful people are people full of resources. |
We decided that the most effective way of communicating these messages would be through role play as this would enable practitioners from a variety of backgrounds to speak from personal experience about the way they have overcome these barriers in their own situations.
3. The Symposium
Brainstorm
Following a brief introduction to EENET,
participants at the symposium were asked to spend 5 minutes brainstorming the
following question in small groups:
"What are the barriers to inclusion for all?"
We deliberately chose the term 'inclusion for all' because:
The barriers were written up on sheets of A4 paper and stuck to the wall to represent bricks which together form a barrier to inclusion. A summary of the barriers can be found below. They have been organised into the 3 key barriers identified in the planning: people; resources; and information. These groups of barriers can be found in all situations - both economically poor and economically rich. Contextual barriers are more general and are the key to understanding those barriers which are specific to each unique situation:
Context
Extreme poverty
People
Negative attitudes
Attitudes of parents,
teachers, children, community
Ignorance
Fear
Prejudice
"Being denied a voice"
Looking for excuses
The limitation of the notion of inclusion
Too much specialisation
Lack of common understanding and vision
Lack of contact with disabled people
Competition
Lack of awareness
in the community
Stereotyped thinking
Inadequate skills of teachers
Curriculum not inclusive
Rigid curriculum
School structure
Resources
Limited resources
Large class sizes
Lack of support services
Low salaries of teachers
Information
Lack of information Government policy Once
the barriers had been identified, the group performed a role play which
demonstrated some of the ways in which resource barriers have been overcome.
The role players included a disabled person who co-ordinates an inclusive
school in an urban area, a parent of a disabled child who is also the
co-ordinator of a national parents' organisation, a non-specialist school
teacher from a rural area, and a community based rehabilitation worker. Deepa,
a co-ordinator of an inclusive programme, posed key questions from the audience
with a degree of scepticism. John, Palesa, Paul and Krishna responded with
concrete examples from their own experience. The audience was asked to consider
the following reflection on a fixed versus a flexible concept of inclusion
while they watched the role play:
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"We don't have the resources for inclusion!" "Excuse me, but you have a fixed idea about inclusion, which gives you a fixed idea about resources…If you have a flexible idea about inclusion, you can have a more flexible attitude to resources!" |
4. Role play
My name is Deepa Jain. I am a co-ordinator of an inclusive programme in Delhi, India. I'd like to ask you a few questions about inclusion. Firstly, how can I teach your child when I haven't had any training? My name is Palesa Mphohle and I come from Lesotho. I am a parent of a child with mental disability and I am the co-ordinator of the Lesotho Society of Mentally Handicapped Persons (LSMHP) which is a national organisation of parents founded in 1992.
I also did not have any special training to be a parent of a disabled child, but by raising my child and exchanging experiences with other parents, I have realised that I have a lot of knowledge about my child. I can help you to teach my child. In Lesotho parents work with the Ministry of Education's inclusive education programme. We help give talks and advice to the students in the teacher training college and when teachers have problems related to our experiences as parents, they call on us. Problem-based learning in mainstream schools is better than any 'special' training.
Deepa: I'm concerned about your child, but why don't you send her to a special school?
My name is John Ndiraba Kiyaga and I am from Uganda. I am the director of Action to Positive Change on People with Disabilities (APCPD) and we run a small school on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala. When I was a child my mother wanted me to go to a special school far away from my home because she thought that I would get a better education there. I didn't want to go and I persuaded her to let me go to my local school. I worked hard at school and got top grades in all the subjects. Everyone knows me in my community and accepts me for who I am.
Palesa: It is a basic human right that every child should have access to education. My child has been born into our community with his brothers and sisters and should be allowed to go to his neighbourhood school with them. The children don't discriminate. They are willing to carry disabled children to school and take them to the toilet, if necessary.
Deepa: But if we can't send them to a special school, then we need to build a special unit attached to the local school.
My name is Paul Mumba and I am from Zambia. I am a primary school teacher in a village 600 kilometres away from the capital, Lusaka. I do not have any 'special' training. In my experience building a special unit is still segregation. A foreign donor came to our village one day and started measuring up our school. We didn't know what was going on. We were not consulted. The next thing we knew they were building a smart new building with windows, when the rest of the school doesn't have any. They sent us a special teacher who said that he was only allowed to have 5 children with learning difficulties in the unit. But we had identified 30 children in the community who had been excluded from school because of their learning difficulties, or 'mental handicaps'. The children used to call him 'Teacher of the Fools'.
Deepa: Excuse me, but I don't hear very well. Did you say 'Teacher of the Fools'?
Yes, that's right. They called him the teacher of the fools so the children were still seen as different and separate from the rest of the school.
John: In Uganda we are very concerned that disabled children shouldn't develop an inferiority complex. If they are kept separate, then they will feel as though they are not as good as the other children.
Palesa: In Lesotho we have found that non-disabled children also benefit from having disabled children in their school. They learn that we are all different and that we must care for one another. These children are our future policy makers. How can they implement policies on inclusion if they have not had any experience of it in their own lives?
Paul: In my school in Mpika I have experimented with making my classroom more democratic. At first this was difficult because in African culture children do not challenge what adults say. But as I encouraged them to play a greater role in the planning of their lessons, I found that they had a great deal to contribute. The other teachers weren't happy when they saw that the children had so much to say. They were used to doing all the talking. However the children were so much more motivated in their school work and their attendance improved. They realised that education was a human right and that if they didn't attend school then they weren't accessing their rights. We worked together in the community to encourage disabled children to come to school and we found ways of including them in our class. Now that my class has achieved the highest marks in the school, the other teachers, and even universities from UK, Zambia and USA have been to visit to see how it has happened. Democracy in the classroom has made it possible to include disabled children. It has also developed a strong awareness of human rights and social justice in the children. How can we expect African children to participate in a democratic state, if democracy is not practiced in the classroom.
Deepa: OK, so we agree about inclusion, but I've got 100 children in my class. The disabled child can't keep up and I've got no resources. What can I do?
Palesa: When teachers complain about the size of their class, I tell them that they should work out ways of reducing its size without excluding my child. What difference will it make if they have one less? Why should it be my child that misses out just because the class size is too big. That is the school's problem, not my child's problem.
My name is Krishna Lamichanne and I am from Nepal. I work as a community based rehabilitation worker in a rural area far from the capital city. The national literacy rate is only 52%, and it is much lower in the rural areas. We have found that the best thing to do when a disabled child is having a problem is to get everybody together to have a meeting. We invite the child, their parents and the teachers to discuss the problem and we work out ways to overcome it.
Deepa: But how can you tell people about inclusion when so many people are not literate?
Krishna: We use posters without any words. And we talk to the people. Just because they aren't literate doesn't mean that they don't know anything. They have lots of useful traditional knowledge. The parents of the disabled children know their own children so well. They understand when we talk about inclusion. Not being literate doesn't matter.
Palesa: Sometimes literacy can be a problem. The teachers, whose education was paid for with the taxes from the community, have problems going down to the level of the same community to uplift it, claiming that they are not literate.
Deepa: But surely we don't have all the answers in our own community?
Palesa: There are lots of useful international documents that can help us in our communities. These are the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the UN Standard Rules and the Salamanca Statement. We need to know about these international instruments because they are valuable campaigning tools. We also need to be well-informed about our own national policy. We have a policy on inclusion in Lesotho, but it isn't very clear about the education of children with 'mental handicaps'. We need to know more about what's going on in other countries so that we can help our governments to formulate clear policies.
Paul: Funding from external donors can be very problematic. It is essential that there is consultation, respect and collaboration between donors and the local community. We know our situation better than anyone else. It is inappropriate to impose an expensive western model on a local community. We have managed to turn the 'special unit' into a resource room where we have our staff meetings. We now work closely with 17 other schools in the area. By sharing experience and using local human resources we have been able to make the most of an inappropriate western intervention.
John: We didn't want to be dependent on external funders when we built our school. We had seen so many projects collapse after the donors had left, so instead we identified locally available resources. We recruited teachers who lived in the community and we set up a mobility aids workshop to provide income for the school. We make aids at low cost out of locally available materials. In this way we can be sustainable. There are 75 disabled children in the school at the moment and they don't pay any school fees. We had to work hard to convince the parents that they should send their children to school. The 125 non-disabled children pay school fees. The classes are all mixed and we have children with different sorts of impairments. APCPD is a community based initiative which is being used as a model for the country.
Deepa: Thank you for sharing your experiences. They are very encouraging. We know that we still have to find answers in our own contexts like you have done. We sometimes benefit from outside help, but ultimately we will have to find our own answers.
5. Conclusion
In diverse cultures and contexts, barriers and solutions can be found in:
1. People:
2. Money and materials:
3. Knowledge and information:
The context may include:
EENET:
By sharing information, creating conversations and supporting the documentation of innovative practice.
Appendix 1
EENET - An overview
The following overheads were shown to give an overview of EENET: its values and principles; its definition of inclusive education; why EENET was established; what EENET does; who is involved; and how EENET is organised.
"EENET is an information-sharing network which supports and promotes the inclusion of marginalised groups in education worldwide."
Underlying Values and Principles
EENET:
In conducting its work EENET:
EENET is committed to:
Inclusive Education:
· Acknowledges that all children can learn; · Acknowledges and respects differences in children: age, gender, ethnicity, language, disability, HIV and TB status etc; · Enables education structures, systems and methodologies to meet the needs of all children; · Is part of a wider strategy to promote an inclusive society; · Is a dynamic process which is constantly evolving; · Need not be restricted by large class sizes or a shortage of material resources.
Definition developed for the IDDC seminar on IE Agra, India, 1998
WHY was EENET established?
This is because:
WHAT does EENET do?
1. Newsletter
2. Web site
3. Information dissemination
4. Seminars
5. Family Involvement in Inclusive Education
EENET is in the process of collecting stories from parents and their organisations - of how they have campaigned for the inclusion of their children in education.
6. Regionalisation
In the long-term EENET aims to regionalise its activities by building partnerships with key regional organisations.
WHO is involved in EENET?
Academics; Community development workers; Disabled people's organisations; Children; National and international non-governmental organisations; Parents' organisations; Policy makers; Teachers;Teacher trainers; UN agencies.
HOW is EENET organised?
Initiated by:
Save the Children Fund (UK) With support from
the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC)
Funded by:
Atlas Alliance (Norway); Save the Children
(Sweden); Save the Children (UK).
Housed by:
Educational Support and Inclusion, School of
Education University of Manchester.
Managed by:
An International Steering Group:
SCF(UK);
Donors;
University of Manchester;
A disabled person from Asia;
A parent activist from Africa;
Staffed by:
A part-time co-ordinator.
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03/10/2000