Presented at ISEC 2000

Training and Follow-up Activities in Inclusive Education in Bangladesh

Shirin Zaman Munir - Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation for the Developmentally Disabled, Bangladesh

Abstract

A ten-day training workshop for 25 teacher trainers on Inclusive Education was held in June 1999. The Bangla translated version of the Resource Pack teacher training manual was used as the base for training by the UNESCO consultant, which generated considerable enthusiasm among participants who were either teachers of regular school or special school. Participants visited several primary schools run by NG0's as well as special schools. It was also decided that special education teachers would work as resource teachers and special schools as resource centres for the schools involved in Inclusive Education.

The workshop was followed up by starting Inclusive Education Programme in a number of schools run by NG0's by enrolling disadvantaged children and children with special needs. The improvement noticed within a short period among all the children was encouraging. The normal children and children with special needs mixed with each other as friends. The normal children were observed to have developed a helpful attitude towards their weaker friends. The paper will discuss the significance of Inclusive Education in promoting education among all children especially in developing countries.

INTRODUCTION

The importance and rights of every child to inclusive education was based on the established Universal Declaration of Human Rights including the World Declaration on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990), the convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the United Nations Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Disabled Persons (1993). Furthermore, the World Conference on Special Needs Education in Cooperation with UNESCO held in Salamanca, Spain in 1994 reaffirmed the commitment to Education for All by endorsing the Framework of Action on Special Needs Education recognizing the necessity and urgency of providing education for children with special education needs education within regular education system.

DEVELOPMENT OF UNESCO RESOURCE PACK

The recognition for schooling for children with special need within regular education system or inclusive education means that teacher in regular schools need to be prepared for this challenge of handling children with special needs.

To meet this challenge UNESCO has taken up a project named "Special needs in the classroom" which has led to the development and dissemination of the "Teacher Education Resource Pack" - comprising of ideas and materials that can be used by teacher educators to support teachers in mainstream schools in responding to diversity of pupil.

An international group of teachers, educators and administrators prepared the draft of the pack which was field tested by a team of resource people in eight countries (Canada, Chile, India, Jordan, Kenya, Malta, Spain and Zimbabwe) and the content of the materials were found to be appropriate for teachers in each country according to their national contexts, and focused on issues that were found meaningful and relevant. It was also found that the activities and process used were successful in helping both teacher educators and teachers to develop their thinking and practice.

Based on the analysis of data rationales were developed that would provide specifications for the content of the materials, the approaches to teacher education and the strategy for dissemination. The pack was re-written to include a manual and associated video programmes. This was introduced to groups in over fifty countries translated in different language and at present the basis of regional development projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East as well as part of major initiatives in China, India and Thailand. The pack has been found to be useful in in-service, pre-service and school improvement contexts (Ainscow, et al 1995).

APPLICATION AND USE OF THE TEACHER EDUCATION RESOURCE PACK IN BANGLADESH

Since Bangladesh Government is committed to provide "Education for All children by the year 2000", it has formed a committee for Inclusive Education under the Ministry of Education with the representatives of the Ministry of Social Welfare and UNESCO to promote education of children with disability in the regular schools. The Resource Pack was thereby translated in Bangla by the effort of an NGO for use in Bangladesh.

The present paper will discuss the training workshop based on the UNESCO Teacher Resource Pack: Special Needs in the classroom and follow-up activities undertaken to initiate Inclusive Education for meeting the educational needs of disabled children in the country.

WORKSHOP ON INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING USING UNESCO TEACHER RESOURCE PACK : SPECIAL NEEDS IN THE CLASSROOM

A two week long workshop in June 1999 was planned under the project "Mobile Training Team in Special Education" which aimed at stimulating the efforts of the UNESCO member states of APEID. Since 1993, the Training Team mainly focused on integrated/inclusive education for disabled children with specific objective depending on each country's need in view of the following overall objectives :

- The introduction of the concept of inclusive education.

- The development of adequate pre-service and in-service teacher education programme.

- The formulation of follow-up activities.

The effort of the workshop in Bangladesh was co-ordinated by Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation and was conducted by Ms Anupam Ahuja, education consultant working for UNESCO and supported by Mr. Onno Koopman from UNESCO, PROAP, Bangkok.

Twenty six participants mostly teachers from regular schools, school supervisors and teacher trainers belonging to nine non-governmental organization participated in the workshop. The organizations were :

• Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation (BPF).
• Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC).
• Gonoshahajjo Sangstha (GSS).
• Samaj Unnayan Sangstha (SUS).
• Hellen Keller International (HKI).
• Ahsania Mission.
• Salvation Army Integrated School for the Blind.
• Underprivileged Children's Education Programme (UCEP).
• Department of Special Education (IER), University of Dhaka.

The aim of the workshop were :

• to demonstrate how the UNESCO Teacher Education Resource Pack can be used to stimulate teachers and other professional and school development activities towards a more inclusive orientation to all children.
• to explore possible follow-up activities in the schools/teacher training institutes as part of local and national level initiatives.

The training was based on the five basic principles of the UNESCO initiative for teachers education :

• active learning,
• negotiation of objectives,
• demonstration,
• practice and feedback and
• continuous and support for learning.

At the end of the Workshop all the participants from the respective organizations developed a follow-up work plan with an emphasis on doable and achievable initiative within a period of six months period. All the participants were also encouraged to link with each other and the co-ordinating agency - BPF team members with respect to implementation of their future activities and plan.

OUTCOME OF THE WORKSHOP

A. Follow-up Workshop conducted by BPF Team :

To comply with the follow-up work plan the BPF members who participated in the workshop formed a team comprising of 7 members. The members organized a training workshop for the staff, teachers and community workers of the primary school, the CBR programme, special school which BPF has been running in the rural areas since 1989; staff and teachers of the Kindergarten school adjacent to the Urban Centre of BPF, parents of the normal children of the Kindergarten school, staff of GSS and SUS who previously participated in the workshop conducted in June and B.S.Ed students of the Institute of Special Education of BPF.

The five day long workshop held in the month of September, 1999 based on the UNESCO "Special Needs in the Classroom" pack was provided to strengthen the understanding of new methods and prepare the schools and local community for accepting and admission of children with special need in the regular school.

After the follow-up workshop attitudes of the Kindergarten school teachers and parents who were resistant to, and apprehensive about integration and inclusion has changed and they were willing to try integration.

The BPF team members conducted few more workshops on Inclusive Education organized by different NGO's for people working at different levels to sensitize them about inclusion.

B. Initiating Inclusive Schooling :

As a follow-up of the workshop, BPF initiated inclusive education at the rural primary school of BPF. It was indeed a bold step taken by BPF when for years BPF had been engaged in running special classes for the children with special needs. However the process of this shifting from special class to inclusive education had gradually being introduced since 1989 when BPF set up a primary school for the underprivileged normal children of the villages who had no access to the regular school for the economic condition of their families. The children of the special classes were integrated in the primary school primarily into non-academic classes such as music, games, snack time, art class under the supervision of the teacher in-charge of the children with special needs.

During the period from September 1999 to June 2000 a total number of 17 children with special needs (7 male and 10 female) were enrolled in the primary school of BPF. Out of these 17 children 8 were enrolled in the nursery, 2 in the 1st grade, 2 in the 2nd grade, 2 in the 3rd grade and 1 in 4th grade. The disability profile of the children has been presented in following table :

TABLE

Disability Profile of the Children Enrolled in the Primary School of BPF

OUTCOME OF THE INCLUSIVE SCHOLING:

The inclusion of children with special needs was possible in BPF's primary school because the teachers and staff were facilitated through in-service training and on going support system by the BPF professional. The children were found to be improving depending on their level of functioning, the teaching and learning strategies were active, interactive and flexible, children were happy to be in the same class with their fellow mates and were accepted by their class mates. Problems were there, teachers had to work hard to explain different aspects of disability to the non-disabled peer to accept them as one of their members with their individual limitation and abilities

Parents and family member of the disabled children who feared about their children's acceptance by their non-disabled peers in the same class were satisfied with the programme and the concept of inclusive education was accepted by the community members and they were coming forward to help.

With the initiation of the inclusive schooling BPF were able to create a condition in the regular school to accommodate children with special needs. Moreover, the non-disabled children were benefited by the innovative ideas teachers were using to meet the challenges they were facing every day while dealing with children with diversified needs.

The teachers accepted the additional workload they had undertaken for meeting the diversified needs of the children keeping in mind their contribution towards establishing the right to education of the children with special needs.

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED

The following problems were encountered while implementing the programme :

• Previously children with special needs were trained in special class and used to be integrated in the regular class only for certain period of time. Therefore, when they were in the regular class for the whole time the teachers were overburdened looking at the diversified needs of different children as a result the teaching learning environment were too often disturbed.
• Enrollment of children who had never been in any training programme and developed severe behaviour problem sometime disturbed the whole class and interfered in the learning situation.
• Enrolment of too many children with special needs in the nursery class disturbed the teaching/learning environment again placing too much of burden on the teachers.
• Negative attitude of some of the children without disability and lack of training of all levels of workers sometimes created problem.

However, the 1st phase of initiation towards inclusion had provided an important learning experience for BPF to decide upon the next phase of inclusion during the year 2001-2002. The recommendation that has been put forward will help the concerned people in making more space and appropriate support for all children in regular school or inclusive education.

RECOMMENDATION

• A partnership between the regular school teachers and the special education teachers should be developed by organizing training programme using the Resource Pack. This would help in sharing the experiences, ideas and approaches of the special teachers in dealing with special children with the regular school teacher.
• Inclusion should become standard practice for all the primary schools for achieving the goal of education for all. For this purpose, training in the use of the UNESCO Resource Pack should be made available to the teachers of the regular schools. The schools should however become used to practicing the UNESCO materials slowly, patiently and consistently for the purpose of teachers professional development and classroom activities. Sufficient time should be allowed for the transition from traditional teaching method to the use of active learning.
• Teacher Training Institutes should adopt the philosophy of UNESCO Teacher Education Pack which would help the student teacher in promoting inclusive education.
• Awareness and Challenges need to be built to influence the attitudes of the policy makers and service providers towards inclusion.
• Attractive and informative publicity materials such as posters, videos, leaflets need to be produced highlighting the issues of inclusion.
• Inclusive education by its definition includes all children and all schools. But at the initial stage it may be necessary to be selective in order to develop model of good practice.
• The education policy, curriculum and teaching strategies need to be modified to accommodate the disabled in the general educational system to realize the inclusive education proposed by "Salamanca Declaration 1994".
• Since the present initiative was taken by the NGO's there is a need to focus on the acceptance of the philosophy of Inclusive Education by the Government. The Government should provide support to the initiative and incorporate the learning in the system.

CONCLUSION

Bangladesh has overcome insurmountable obstacles and made sustainable progress in expanding primary education considerably which has not been an easy task. Remarkable success were seen with more children than ever coming into the safety net of "Education for All" with formal and non-formal system of education. Net enrollment in the formal system has increased to 56% in the year 1997 and much by the year 1999. Efforts to get girl child into schools have been very successful and the enrollment rate of girls is at present close to that of boys.

But still a large diverse population of children are excluded from education denying their rights to education. Educating learners with and without disabilities in regular class was not only feasible but could result in positive societal attitude and quality of education for all.

The workshop was an encouraging start on inclusion. In order to work towards inclusive education, important reform in teacher education and the organization of schools would be essential to eliminate school practices which marginalize certain groups of student and was more concerned about failure and dropout from schools.

It is also heartening to note that the present exercise of using the Resource Pack which was supposed to be the job of the Government was planned by a non-government organization like BPF. A great concern has been the lack of the required Government support to plans. There was also a need to build on collaborative work and a linkage between different NGO's.

It is hoped that the recommendation of the workshop will be applied by the participants and policy makers in making more space and providing appropriate support for the children with special need in regular school. A positive start has been made, careful follow-up and dissemination of learning was required. In addition a well planned back up of the NGO initiative and link with Government efforts can help in effective and sustained progress towards inclusion.

REFERENCE

1. Final Report on World-Conference on Special Needs Education : Access and Quality Salamanca, Spain, 7-10 June 1994.

2 The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education.

3. Mel Ainscow et al. The UNESCO teacher education project, "Special Needs in the Classroom" : Prospects quarterly review of comparative education, vol. XXV, No. 2, June 1995.

4. Mel Ainscow (1994) Developing the Resource pack, Special Needs in the Classroom - A Teacher Education Guide, Jessica Kingsley Publication Ltd, London.

5. Report on Inclusive Schooling Workshop in Bangladesh on June 1999 the UNESCO Teacher Resource Pack : Special Needs in the Classroom.

6. Proceeding of the Seminar on "Integration of Disabled Children in Regular Schools", Dhaka, November 1996.

7. National Plan of Action for Children 1997-2002, Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

8. Towards Equalization - Escape Decade of Disabled Person, 1993-2002. A Review of Progress in Bangladesh.

Index