(Teacher) students should meet a diversity of pupils with different abilities and experiences and with different social and cultural backgrounds. ….. Through teacher education students should aquire a professional attitude that puts the pupils at the centre, that shows respect and care, that tries to understand the knowledge and experiences of the pupils. (KUF 1999 a p. 21, my translation)
Inclusion in education is concerned with overcoming barriers to learning and participation for all, according to Booth, Ainscow & al. (2000). Inclusion means that diversity is the norm, it even implies a celebration of diversity (op.cit.). I shall not discuss any further a definition of the term, but inclusion - probably in various meanings - is now an overall principle for basic education in many countries. A key factor in making the inclusive school come true is the teacher. So where do teachers stand when challenged by this task? What part does teacher training play in qualifying teachers to make the inclusive school come true?
In this paper I shall discuss some aspects of the initial teacher education in relation to the aims of inclusion in compulsory education. My comments concern the curriculum and the culture within teacher education. Examples will be given, mainly from Norwegian teacher education, where I am presently working. What happens in in-service training and teacher support programs as well as in post-graduate education is of course also crucial, but this is not focused here.
Curricula in initial teacher education
How is the idea of inclusive schools reflected in the curriculum of teacher education? Through reforms and revisions during the last 2-3 decades the national curriculum for teacher education in Norway has tried to mirror the perspectives of compulsory school for all as they developed. Key concepts have been 'integration', 'equitable and adapted education' and now 'the inclusive school'. The ordinary teachers in Norway are expected to take responsibility for all children, including those found to have special needs.
In the present national curriculum for teacher education it says: Teacher trainees should "understand how teachers can contribute to inclusive schooling in such a way that students with special needs take part in the social, learning and cultural community in an equitable way" (KUF 1999 a p. 21). The notion of inclusive schooling is here applied to students with special needs, while inclusion refers to all students, not limited to those who are conceived as "special". The inclusion concept is not used explicitly in other contexts in the national curriculum. In my opinion this gives the impression that inclusion only has to do with certain groups of students. Other groups of students in school particularly mentioned in the plan for teacher education, are the language or cultural minorities: "The (teacher) students should gain insight into the way members of cultural minorities think." (KUF 1999 a p. 22). Adapted education is a basic concept in the curriculum of compulsory education: All learners, regardless of gender, attainment, impairment, social or cultural background, language or religion, are entitled to be taught in a way that is adapted to their particular demands. Teacher education should reflect this, according to the plan. Adapted education can be seen as a means of realizing inclusive education.
Peder Haug has recently done a study in nearly half of the teacher education faculties of the country to find out how the inclusive perspective was taken care of in the curriculum, as perceived by students and teachers: To what extent does teacher education qualify students to teach all pupils in primary school, was his main question. What Haug found, is that the inclusive perspective is there all right, but the message is dual. There is usually a reservation when speaking of the inclusion of 'all'. The term 'all' seems to mean those who are able to profit from the lessons given, and does not include students in need of extensive support, according to Haug's as yet unpublished study (Haug 2000).
A curriculum question needing special attention is the relation between the traditional field of special education training and the training for 'one school for all' or the inclusive school. The thinking around integration used to be, and still is, part of the field of special education, not general education. 'Inclusion' also in many ways has come to the fore through channels of special education, whilst its ideology in many ways rejects traditional special education. How do we cope with this seeming paradox in teacher education?
The way language is used is an important part of reviewing the content of teacher education. The 'us and them'-language in all areas must be challenged. The question of altering or abandoning the traditional language of special needs and special education must be asked. An example from students' practice teaching will illustrate the need to raise consciousness about the language used in practice and theory for future teachers: The teacher trainees noticed that one boy in the fifth class was missing, but he had been there in the previous lesson. The teacher then explained: "Oh, didn't you know? He is out because he is integrated!" The boy was attending a pull-out program some hours of the week.
For the last 15-20 years areas of special education have been regarded as an integral part of every teacher student's program in Norway. The belief is that knowledge of the 'special' children is necessary for all teachers in order to be able to respond to student diversity. The mathematics curriculum in teacher education demands that students should learn to assess and remedy maths problems. The lecturer in mathematics as well as the practice teacher is supposed to deal with dyscalculia and learning problems in this subject. In a similar way the teaching in other subjects in teacher education should prepare future teachers to meet for instance low attaining pupils. The Norwegian lecturer should teach about dyslexia, and the lecturer in education should present the general themes of special education. But to what extent have these lessons actually taken place, and what is the implicit message?
In the inquiry mentioned above, Haug found that all students do have some special educational topics in their elementary teacher education, usually linked to main categories like "mentally retarded" or "emotionally disturbed". However, the effect of this approach, Haug says, is to maintain the division between "normal" pupils and the others. It also underlines the need for specialists when working with students categorised as having special needs. It seems that the tendency is clearly in the tradition of the psycho-medical paradigm in special education, locating deficits within individual children (Clark & al. 1995). This is a view that does not represent inclusion in education. In an inclusion perspective barriers to learning should be seen in relation to the school organisation they exist in, not primarily as something within the individual.
In spite of the national curriculum in teacher education, what happens seems to be the result of the lecturers' "private enterprise", to use the words of Haug, who makes a long list of possible reasons for this, of which some are mentioned below:
- the formulations in the national curriculum are not clear or distinct
enough
- the personnel are not acquainted with the expectations in the
national curriculum
- they do not know the meaning of different concepts
such as adapted teaching, inclusion or for that matter, special education
-
they disagree with what is written in the national curriculum
- the
existing knowledge to succeed in developing an inclusive school is not
sufficient, there is little to tell the students about the matter (Haug 2000
p.7)
As we have seen, special education is included in the curriculum for all Norwegian teacher students, at least at the formulation level. Further studies in special education is an optional issue for the teacher student. What is the content of special education studies in the age of inclusive schooling, and what should it be? We have no Norwegian study to show this, but in Denmark, Egelund (1999) discusses how special education programs tend to become more general by including more philosophy, ethics, history and related subjects. This seems to be a trend away from the limited individual view in special education. However, the general orientation in the studies is often against the wishes of the schools and the students, who want more specific themes related to categories of students, Egelund says, a wish he supports. The danger then is to remain within the psycho-medical paradigm, not qualifying the teacher students for the inclusive school.
Cultures in institutions of teacher education
At a younger age I was giving a few lectures at a teachers' training college where I was temporarily employed. I needed to make a telephone call to check some information for my lesson and asked a colleague for help since I had no office of my own. "You can't telephone here", she said firmly, without any further explanation. When I insisted and told her about the situation I was in, she excused herself by saying that she thought I was a student; of course I could telephone, and she showed me where and how. This incident made me reflect on teachers' attitudes to students in our colleges, or in schools or universities for that matter: As a student I was not regarded as entitled to a proper or even polite answer to a simple request. Another example recently observed by a colleague of mine: A student came into the staff's copying room, asking modestly if she could have two copies made, as the students' copying machine did not work and she was in a hurry. None of the busy looking staff present answered or even offered her a look.
How do the institutions of teacher education present themselves in terms of including and respecting all sorts of people, whether they are students or staff? In teacher education, learning respect for each pupil is a prescription, and there is a firm belief in the teacher as a model. How are barriers to learning and participation overcome in teacher education itself? For example, what is access like for students or staff with a physical impairment, or for students or staff with a minority language as their first language? Is diversity celebrated? Do different categories of staff and students treat each other with respect? Etc. In other words, is the institution a model for an inclusive school?
Booth, Ainscow & al. (2000) have developed an index for inclusive education where matters of culture are addressed, along with matters of policies and practices. Creating inclusive cultures is about "creating a secure, accepting, collaborating, stimulating community in which everyone is valued, as the foundation of the highest achievements of all students" (p. 45). The focus of the authors is on primary and secondary education, but I want to argue that the main message is not less relevant for tertiary education, even if one could discuss the limits of the use of an instrument like the index. Teacher education is not for everyone in the same way as basic compulsory education should be for everyone. Nevertheless, I think reflecting upon the culture of the faculties themselves is part of preparing a good learning environment for future teachers. How can we be trustworthy as teacher educators in preparing for an inclusive school if exclusionary cultures and practices in teacher education itself are maintained? Let us take a look at some of the items in the Index for Inclusion, which aim at trying to understand in practical terms what inclusion is about. One indicator of the inclusive school in the index is: "Staff and students treat one another with respect" (p. 52). Is there any argument that this should not apply to teacher education institutions as well as primary or secondary schools?
A new colleague in the college was asked how she was doing, and she said fine, but... And then she told about friendly offers to inform her about how we do things around here, about comments if she did not do things as they usually had been done. "Everyone answers when I ask, but no one has asked me about anything, about my experiences or my opinions," she said. According to the index, inclusion is about improving schools for staff as well as students. An indicator of an inclusive school in this material is that new staff are helped to settle. Examples of index questions worth considering in faculties of education as well as in compulsory school:
(Booth, Ainscow & al. 2000 p. 63)
Developing inclusive teacher education
Efforts to support inclusion in teacher education take place in several ways and in several countries. Institutions have been working hard to develop new structures (departments, faculties etc) like in Manchester with the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, new courses with changed curricula and new names, for example at The Open University in Britain, new ways of organising the studies in order to remove barriers for certain groups of students, such as distant education in South Africa or Australia. Further challenges remain, however. In the light of inclusion I have been looking into some of the curricular and cultural issues in teacher education. But what about the policies of the institutions of teacher education, what do they reveal about inclusionary or exclusionary practices? For instance, who gets the jobs as lecturers? Who gets admitted as students? In Scotland "Medical Examination Standards for admission to courses of initial teacher training….and for admission to the Register of Teachers" regulates entry into teacher education as well as into the teaching profession (Allan 2000). In Norway a teacher student who "is a possible threat to the rights of learners, their security and their physical and mental health, is not fit to teach" (KUF 1999 b § 1, my translation). It takes further studies to explore how these laws and rules are understood and practiced.
Addressing questions of the kind I have been posing in this paper of course raises issues of a more general kind, for instance: What is the relation between the training a teacher gets and what she actually does in the classroom? What are the main influences determining teachers' actual practice? What are the limits to the efforts of making school more inclusive in a society which is far from inclusive?
References:
Allan, J. (2000) To a Degree? Inclusion and Education in the University. Paper presented at the International Research Colloquium of Inclusive Education, Norway, June 2000. (Dr. Julie Allan, University of Stirling, Scotland).
Booth, T., Ainscow, M., Black-Hawkins, K., Vaughan, M. and Shaw, L. (2000) Index for Inclusion. Developing learning and participation in schools. Manchester: Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education.
Clark, K., Dyson, A., Millward, A. and Skidmore, D. (1995) Dialectical Analysis, Special Needs and Schools as Organisations. In Clark, C., Dyson, A. and Millward, A. Towards Inclusive Schools? London: David Fulton Publishers. P. 78-95.
Egelund, N. (1999) Den inklusive skole og de specialpædagogiske uddannelser. In Nordisk tidsskrift for specialpedagogikk, 3-4, p. 173-178.
Haug, P. (2000) Teacher Education and the School for All. Paper presented at the International Research Colloquium of Inclusive Education, Norway, June 2000. (Dr. Peder Haug, Volda University College, Norway)
KUF (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet) (1999 a) Allmennlærerutdanning. Rammeplan og forskrift. Oslo. (Department of Church, Education and Research: Curriculum for Teacher Education)
KUF (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet) (1999 b) Forskrift om skikkethetsvurdering i lærerutdanningene. Oslo. (Department of Church, Education and Research: Prescriptions for Teacher Fitness).
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