Contributions from: Peter Clough, Jenny Corbett, Harry Daniels, Deborah Gallagher, Elaine Daack, Lori Hugen, Jan Nicholas, Angeles Parrilla, Elena Hernandez, Bengt Persson, Roger Slee and Mark Vaughan.
Abstract
The symposium will focus on the following questions:
Approaching a pedagogy which supports inclusive education
Jenny Corbett, Institute of Education, UK and Peter Clough, University
of Sheffield, UK
This paper will look at major ideological influences on the development of an approach which can support the inclusion of a diversity of learners in mainstream education. It will also link an analysis of ideological strands and their inter-connections with specific examples of current pedagogic practice which is illustrated to support inclusive learning. The paper will draw on two current research projects. The first is one which has run from 1998 to the present and is a collaboration by the two presenters. The other element of the paper concerns a current research project which Jenny Corbett is undertaking with teachers working in secondary, primary and special schools. In drawing from these two projects, one examining theory and the other practice, this paper seeks to relate ideas on what works in inclusive practice to examples of how teachers are learning how to translate this into action. It seems to us that we cannot effectively address the one without the other.
Gender and Learning a discussion of findings of a recent research
project
Harry Daniels, University of Birmingham, UK
This project aimed to investigate boys and girls achievement and underachievement in Key Stage 2 of the National Curriculum. The following findings emerged. These will be discussed in the presentation Boys tend to bring an orientation to individual or pair work. When working in groups they introduce or work within established hierarchies *Boys can shift their masculinities under collaborative pedagogies which explicitly teach how to listen, build on ideas and respect difference. Such group work allows boys to access peers for help in learning in addition to the preferred model of receiving help from the teacher. Competitive pedagogies do indeed allow some boys to win - but these are boys who would probably win whatever the pedagogy. In competitive pedagogies the losers are other boys - who, finding they cannot win, may chose to find a place in the sun through other means. Other boys are silenced by these competitive and individualistic pedagogies and are left vulnerable and alone. Girls bring an orientation to collaborative learning. When a pedagogy denies them the possibility of working together, they find ways to turn individual learning tasks into collaborative ones. Middle class girls working within competitive cultures flourish. They learn to better compete as well as retain their capacity to help one another in learning groups. Working class and ethnic girls are less likely to learn these competitive skills unless directly encouraged by their teacher to do so. Teachers pedagogies are also gendered so that a female teacher may develop a very competitive pedagogy while male teachers may develop facilitative one. In the current educational climate competitive pedagogies have more value than collaborative pedagogies.
Searching for Something Outside of Ourselves: The Contradiction
Between Technical Rationality and the Achievement of Inclusive Pedagogy
Deborah Gallagher, Elaine Daack and Lori Hugen, University of Northern
Iowa, USA
I have spent my entire career searching for the next curricular program or set of materials that would get my students to achieve their prescribed learning objectives. Somehow, I believed that just around the corner I would find the right techniques, the right methods, that would work. I just never believed that teaching my students came from inside of me." These were the words of a veteran special education teacher during a graduate seminar led by the senior author of this paper. In this paper, we explore the contradictions inherent in this mind-set and offer an alternative based on constructivist teaching-learning principles. We make the case that this alternative holds a great deal of promise for achieving inclusive pedagogy.
Inclusion: the politics of pedagogy
Jan Nicholas, Parents for
Inclusion, UK
My approach to the title "Inclusion: the politics of pedagogy" will be to emphasise the need for pedagogy - to be far more inclusive of the wider social context - to be grounded in understanding of the social model of disability - to recognise that the voice of the child needs to be more central to our planning for the way teaching is delivered as well as the content - to recognise that parents are experts on their children and their needs and that they should be listened to and involved, not just through the formal structures of Boards of Governors but through having a more open school policy. I promote applying the "Investors in People" ("IIP") quality assurance model in schools. The children and the local community are its customers, or consumers, a Staff Training and Development Plan, based on the social model of disability, is an essential ingredient to this model, which is embodied in the achievement of the overall Business Plan. My renaming of this model is "Investors in Children".
Institutional changes for inclusion?
Parrilla & Elena
Hernandez, University of Seville, Spain
One of the issues for which countries and educational systems, immersed in the task of creating inclusive societies, most urgently demand a resolution is, the design and development of a curriculum for inclusion. The work that we will discuss has been concerned with the analysis of institutional and educational innovations developed in schools as a way to answer to diversity of learning needs and students. Specifically, it was concerned with the study of types and processes of innovations developed in primary and secondary schools currently being run in schools in Andalucia (Spain). It reports different kinds of innovations and changes perceived as needed by teachers, the arrangements for running them and the impact at three levels: institutional, personal and didactic.
Teachers' and learners' interaction as decision-makers
Bengt
Persson, Sweden
The notion of inclusion has a central position in Swedish compulsory education. In this paper my purpose is to discuss the relationship between political rhetoric on one hand and practical realities in schools on the other. I will use experiences from a successful, long-term work in a multi-cultural suburban school as a basis for this discussion. I will also emphasize the importance of pupils' own engagement in decision-making on different levels comprising not only the "tool-level" but also the "goal-level". This includes transfer of fundamental knowledge and values as well as skills for critical examination of facts and the state of things in order to develop capacity to work independently and solve problems in everyday life. Inclusive education involves all pupils to share such experience irrespective of their learning potential or difficulties in school.
Index for Inclusion: Developing learning and participation in schools
Mark Vaughan, Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, UK
This talk will attempt to answer the symposium questions by focussing on the major new CSIE publication, 'Index for Inclusion: Developing learning and participation in schools' which was launched in March 2000 in collaboration with the Centre for Educational Needs, University of Manchester and Canterbury Christ Church University College. As well as describing how the Index process works, the talk will draw on the experiences of the schools that used the trial versions of the Index over the last two years.
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