Dear Ágnes,

Dear All,

I think teachers of mainstream students should be prepared for inclusive education too, because there are more and more students with special educational needs. Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia became everyday phenomena which should be considered during teaching, explanations of subjects but also examinations. Often, teachers are not informed about these disabilities and one cannot help in time. I teach morphological subjects needing visual perception and recognition capacities which are very difficult for students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. In mainstream classes one cannot do too much because teaching time and facilities are limited. I think tolerance, repetition of the teaching material, easily available and good quality demonstrative materials are crucial. The good communication ability, the right accent and intonation can help students to understand better the essence.

Dear Agnes, I agree with Vandana and also would add - inclusive teacher need good braodly meant communication competencies as well as ground understanding of the needs of both groups - children with disabilities, children without these, and parents of both.

Greetings,

I agree with Vandana and Beata. I would like to add that in education, as well as elsewhere, we need what I call worldview competency. This is the knowledge and insight of how societies tend to be dominated by one of two primary worldviews. The first worldview entails the perception of seeing reality as separate and disconnected in a cause and effect relationship. The other is perceiving reality as intimately interconnected according to natural individual and collective uniqueness. We have built our societies on these. The so-called modern world is build around the idea of separation and the indigenous world tends to (at least historically) have been built around interconnected intimacy. When we see separation, we automatically engage in relations that are adversary, friends, allies, or those that are marginalized. When we see as interconnected, difference is not negative, but rather part of the creative process of which we are all a part. Thus, difference is affirmed, not just respected or marginalized. Worldview competency then is holding enough of the natural intimacy within our perceptions so that we can ask the question, why are we estranging people or nature when we could be affirming our natural differences and enhance our creativity and quality of life? For example, why use behavioral modification to motivate (or control) our students, when we could be affirming their natural uniqueness by creating an inquiry-based learning environment?

Best to all.

John

Dear All, Its fantastic to me to read your alternatives particularly John's one.

Dear John, I loved your new, at least to me new(!!) competence but would like to learn more about it. I think, I understand this as a paradigm being necessary to become an inclusive teacher but how can we assess our students' level in their WORLDVIEWS and how could we change or improve their awareness during the training at universities. I am ready to cooperate in a research focusing on this topic but in same time feeling hesitation probably I am not good at to study my students' attitudes. What do you think of an international comparative research on this topic, namely candidate teachers' attitudes toward inclusive education?

With expressing my honor from Hungary to you.

Ágnes

I can recommend my article "Building an ‘intercultural ethos’ in teacher education"

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/a6iZfvaGrxAWAJhzJjIM/full

Consider the work of Lani Florian and colleagues. In inclusive schools, teachers realize they must set aside their prior theories of learning and teaching that marginalize and classify their students. New ways of conceptualizing pedagogy can help them teach in more responsive ways. Florian and Kershner (2009) an inclusive pedagogy is responsive to the student’s progress and needs. They argue that teachers need a different way of thinking about causality and blame as well as a more flexible understanding of the relationship between the various pedagogical elements involved. When teaching is inclusive of all learners (i.e., inclusive pedagogy), teachers do not deny individual differences among students. Instead the

differences are not construed as problems inherent within learners. Problems

are framed as instructional design or pedagogy that lies within the expertise

of classroom teachers to resolve.

References

Florian, L., & Kershner, R. (2009). Inclusive pedagogy. In: H. Daniels, J. Porter & H. Lauder (Eds), Routledge companion in education (pp. 173–183). London, UK: Routledge.

Dear Ann, thank you very much for the reference.

Dear Ann, thank you so much for your comment. If I understand your reference well you and references say that there is no significant difference between an effective mainstream teacher and an incllusive teacher. Due to this statement both of them should have the same competences by the end of training process.

Am I correct???

Ágnes

You raise an interesting point, Agnes.

To be an inclusive teacher, one must be updated in knowledge concerning the courses he teaches. In addition to that, quality in classes is very essential.

Yes Mahfuz, I think the same.

I think it is very important for teachers to be able and willing to adapt the curriculum at the level of the input that they give, the practice that learners are required to do and the assessment or expression of knowledge that the child is required to demonstrate. Have a look at the website relating to universal design for learning as i think that these are helpful

Probably these really are dear Judith but the question has no answered yet. Is there difference between teaching skills of effective mainstreams and inclusive teachers????

Agnes,

For me there is no difference. The primary skills are for effective differentiation, ie planning to meet each student's needs. All the rest are secondary skills, developed and honed as needed to fulfil the requirements of the chosen course. As a long time secondary school teacher, I know that even in mainstream the emotional, skill level and knowledge base differences are huge. Inclusion is also an important consideration in mainstream because there are always some students who have enough weaknesses so as to be excluded if teachers do not differentiate.

If there is no difference between an effective mainstream and an inclusive teacher then why is not every teacher who believes herself as a good one, accepts disabled students in their classes????

The short, off the cuff answer would be 'time'. Some disabilities require more time in class to provide support and so class size becomes the issue. In fact, in my school, a number of classes do have disabled students, sometimes without support, often with an aide to support the student. In many cases it works fine, in some it doesn't. I have persoally tught several asperges students wthout support with moderate success, though I think they may have done better academically in a smaller class. They did however possibly benefit socially in my class.

Our practice is something similar dear Mark.

Sometimes, teachers hesitate to accept disabled student in tehir classes but slowly slowly they recognise they can teach them together with mainstrems. The same time, some schools are opened in fromt of disabled children and these schools believe that they can do their job perfectly while they cannot.

In my reading, success of inclusion depends on awareness of the teachers. If they are good at their job and focus on "school is for all" conception they can find solution for teaching problems.

For a great teacher it is important that does not exist differences between children.

The school and the education it is ffor all kinds of children ( as Agnes said ).

I totally desagree with the difference between classes and children.

This is not education !

Dear Ana-Maria, I agree with you "school for all" is a good theory. Although we as experienced teacher educators know that attitudes toward the students are not the same. How could we influence our candidates' attitudes???? Can we????

Dear Ágnes,

Dear All,

I think teachers of mainstream students should be prepared for inclusive education too, because there are more and more students with special educational needs. Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia became everyday phenomena which should be considered during teaching, explanations of subjects but also examinations. Often, teachers are not informed about these disabilities and one cannot help in time. I teach morphological subjects needing visual perception and recognition capacities which are very difficult for students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. In mainstream classes one cannot do too much because teaching time and facilities are limited. I think tolerance, repetition of the teaching material, easily available and good quality demonstrative materials are crucial. The good communication ability, the right accent and intonation can help students to understand better the essence.

Dear András!

Thank you so much for your valuable answer. Yes, you are absolutely right. Mainstream teachers feel uncertainty when they are facing with students' special educational needs. Therefore, I think they need to have more professional courage and creativity to apply curricula and methods. If they were more confident in their profession they would not experience such much difficulty in their daily routine.

Until there is no effective protocol to select the best candidates for teacher education quality improvement cannot be expected.

I mainstream teacher will be better able to help children with special need if they are taught to specialize their lesson plans to  each sstudent

Yes Mary, you are right absolutely. IEP should be improved for each students but as we experience, teachers have some uncertainity to do that because they say they were not prepared for this activity and they have no time for this job.

Dear Agnes, I think this is a very important question. There exists a publication (project) by the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education: Teacher Education for Inclusion, TE4I (link below). Here is describe competencies in three areas: attitudes, knowledge and skills. I think this is a very good starting point. It is additionally necessary describing tasks. They contain teaching (including co-teaching!), classroom management, collaboration, basic knowledge in Special Education, learning development, positive climate, self-professionalism, subject-related preparation, and IEPs (including assessments). These are task areas we found in a literature review on general education teacher tasks or inclusive education. Special education teacher (SET) need as well inclusive competences. Additionally SET guide other teacher and teacher assistants and SET assesses more.

Most important is, that they have to feel competent and have sense of achievement, so they get good attitudes for inclusion.

https://www.european-agency.org/agency-projects/Teacher-Education-for-Inclusion

I think the use of assistive technology is a competence that should be constantly improved as the technology is rapidly improving.