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Underneath the surface benefits of inclusive education, some mainstream school teachers experience difficulties as they co-operate and strive for a better quality leaning environment for their students. This blog features a fictionalised composite story¹ of Lydia, based on my research on teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion.²

“Hi, My name is Lydia. I am a special education teacher in a public high school in Taiwan. I teach a Year Three resource class and help with advocacy for students with special educational needs across the school. There are six to seven students in my class. All my students belong to different general classes, only coming to my resource classroom at specific times.  

Based on students’ individualised education plans (IEPs), my duty is to co-operate with general teachers for an effective and supportive lesson plan for students. However, there are always some general teachers unwilling to co-operate with others, or unwilling to make adjustments for students within their teaching.

Recently I had a disagreement with one of these teachers due to the pass marks of one of the students with learning difficulties. The student is brilliant: she did really well with Maths and Science, but, due to her reading issues, her English and Chinese are not so good. According to current policy, she needs to pass both English and Chinese to graduate. If only the teacher would lower the pass score³ to take account of her needs, or even use alternative methods for her English and Chinese assessment, she could graduate this year. However, in the end, the student failed the exam and will be kicked out of school before she graduates. It is really a shame and I feel sad (or sometimes even angry) to learn that some teachers are just unwilling to change their approaches.

Nevertheless, there are general teachers with a good understanding of the idea of inclusion. One of the students who attends my resource class, a boy with autism, had a hard time in his previous class last year. He showed high anxiety and depression at school. Before the boy transferred to this year’s class, the teacher gave a short introduction on autism to the other students and taught them how to support him. The boy and his peers still had a rough time in the beginning, and the teacher came to me for help from time to time during the transition period. Nevertheless, with good co-operation between the teacher, the class and me, the boy’s behavioural issues started decreasing, he started to enjoy school, and the whole class started getting along. At the end of this semester, they even made a graduation video together.

I love my job and see it as an important role that influences each student’s life. I’m also passionate about advocating for quality education as a right for students with special needs. However, sometimes I feel frustrated working in a system driven by academic performance. Since there is often lower academic performance among students with special educational needs (at least that is how it is in my school), the school seldom pays attention to us. Special education teachers like me are identified as ‘people who solve the problem’ within the school. Only when a problem occurs among our students will the school come to us.

However, I’m also a teacher and a professional, providing valuable services for all students, whether or not they have special needs. I really hope that one day they will understand me and value what I am doing as a teacher.

Inclusive education is a process of improvement, not only for students but also for teachers and the education system. We move towards a goal -that all students have the right to access quality education – together. I’m not saying it will be easy, but with a little bit of change and a little bit of willingness to move forward together, there are high hopes for a better learning environment for all of us.”

This is the story of Lydia. Does some of her experience sound familiar to you? Do you agree with what she said, or what she believed?

Please leave a comment. It will be really encouraging to learn what you think.

In my next blog, some discussion will be made based on this story, so it is to be continued…

I-Jung Lu

Notes

1. Collective story: the combination of different stories, which is stated as ‘a collective, unified, chronological narrative’ (Pringle, 2008:221)

Pringle, R. (2008). ‘No rugby—no fear’: collective stories, masculinities and transformative possibilities in schools. Sport, Education and Society, 13(2), pp.215-237.

2. This collective story is based on:

Lu, I.J. (2013) Understanding the Special Educational Trainee Teacher and Experienced Teachers’ Attitudes to and Construction of Inclusion in Taiwan. MA Dissertation,University of Manchester.

3. In the Taiwanese secondary or high school education system, the pass mark is set at 60 out of 100. However, the course tutors and the office of academic affairs could reset the pass mark for students who have special learning needs or disabilities. The course tutors could also refuse to change the pass mark for the student if they felt it is not necessary.

When I talk to teachers about including disabled children, we always get stuck on testing. In many countries there is a tough and inflexible exam at the end of primary school, for admission to secondary school. Disabled children are usually not entered for this exam. This may be because no one has considered how a child who can’t write can take the test, or because people think a disabled child is not capable of learning. Where disabled students have managed to make it to secondary school, they often find themselves with the same problem – no chance of taking formal exams at the end.

Many teachers worry whether it’s worth keeping children in primary school if they have no chance of passing exams. Some teachers will keep disabled children in lower primary for years in the hope of providing some learning, but parents can become frustrated at the lack of qualifications. Sometimes head teachers don’t want to enter disabled children for exams because they worry about bringing the school’s results down; but often it’s felt to be unfair to put a child through tests set up for them to fail.

I try to encourage discussion of alternative ways to test a child’s knowledge. If a child writes slowly, why not give extra time? If a child can’t see, why not read the questions and write the answers for them? Teachers are often enthusiastic, and discussing inclusive assessment can reframe the problem from ‘disabled children can’t learn’, to ‘disabled children’s knowledge isn’t captured well’. However, no matter how positive a teacher’s attitude, teachers rarely have the power to decide how formal testing works.

Many questions come up about making testing systems inclusive. Who will be running the exam? Is there any law or policy which requires adaptations? How should concerns about cheating be dealt with? (For example, if a child has to give their answers verbally, should the recorder be observed? What will it cost to provide two extra people to test one child?) How much extra exam time does each child need? What if a child doesn’t understand the language the exam is written in – is that an accessibility question or a wider policy issue? How can marks be given fairly if testing is done in different ways for different children?

The same questions apply to the large learning outcomes surveys used to show the impact of donor-funded projects. This provides a huge disincentive to include disabled children in education programmes. Why would the implementing agency bring children into a project who can’t participate in testing, when this will reduce the final averaged scores? If surveys are designed from baseline stage to be inclusive, this can be avoided, but it’s rare. This in turn makes it difficult to agree what types of adaptations meet international standards for learning outcomes testing.

All these issues can be dealt with, and there is some useful experience on what has been tried in the past. (Please comment below on what has worked for you!) But inclusive testing also needs new types of advocacy. The people who work as examination developers and learning outcomes experts are often not based in the front line of teaching, and come under pressure to make testing as rigorous as possible. Efforts to make testing equitable can be seen as attempts to reduce standards.

There is little research on the extent to which inaccessible testing pushes disabled children out of school. However, my experience has made me feel that education programmes should tackle testing at the start, rather than realising too late how much it damages equity and inclusion. This would mean building relationships with new groups of people, and having discussions about inclusion and education rights from different perspectives. Where once the question was, ‘How can we get all children into school?’, it’s fast becoming, ‘How can we make sure that enrolment leads to a worthwhile education for everyone?’

Helen Pinnock

Senior EENET Consultant

Back in 2010 I was working with World Vision Armenia as an Education Expert and was managing two big projects on supporting inclusive education in Armenia. The first project was receiving funds through World Vision UK and DFID. It aimed to improve inclusive teaching practices in schools, strengthening the teachers’ capacity to adapt the curricula to the needs of children with special educational needs. The second project was funded through USAID, and focused on strengthening the capacity of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to promote public understanding of disability and acceptance of inclusive education.

According to the logframe of my first project we needed to invite an international consultant to evaluate our efforts and provide recommendations on improvements and following steps. I am so thankful to WVUK for recommending Ingrid Lewis from EENET! Ten days we spent travelling throughout the project sites. Conducting meetings and round table discussions at schools, having lesson observations and informal communications with students helped me to understand the context well, my partners’ perception and understanding of both the project’s goals and inclusive education concept. It revealed our strengths and weaknesses alike and helped me view inclusive education from a totally different angle: it is not education for children with special educational needs, it is enabled education for ALL students, so that every child can gain from the hours spent at school in proportion to his/her abilities and capacities.

This consultancy supported me to recognize good teachers in our communities and develop role models for others through the first video manual for teachers in Armenia. It also helped me learn about and understand the Index for Inclusion and discover the global EENET community!

Here’s a poster featuring the opinions of children in inclusive schools in Armenia

Two years later I was honored to enter the EENET family as a ‘Client Representative Director’ – a volunteering job, which gave me an opportunity to know in person other team members and experienced experts in the inclusive education field who are all very open and dedicated people ready to share their knowledge easily.

My role is to view EENET’s activities from the clients’ point of view (this is primarily about the consultancy clients, but I’m also interested to see EENET’s activities from the perspective of general network users). My role is to provide suggestions about what types of ‘services’ and resources the clients/users may request; in what format the information should be presented, etc.

I’ve always felt that EENET’s website provides wide access to resources on inclusive education practices; it is very supportive for teachers, offering different articles and methodologies for managing inclusive classes. It is accessible for different users (I find the on-line translator helps non-English speakers understand the core messages in all articles). I believe that this new blogging opportunity will increase EENET’s communication with a wider range of clients/users/partners.

I would love to read your views and suggestions about what you would like to see and or obtain through EENET’s website. You can leave comments here, or email me via consultancy@eenet.org.uk

Hasmik Ghukasyan

EENET’s Client Representative Director

“So do you fancy being part of the editing team?”

This was the question I was asked when I joined the EENET team as a volunteer in 2011. I had no idea, in a good way, what I was letting myself in for. Two-and-a-half years later, as Network Coordinator, I am thoroughly enjoying the email conversations I get to have with network members, the letters and cards that arrive in the post, and of course co-editing the articles submitted for the website and the Enabling Education Review.

There are many levels and stakeholders involved in ensuring that educational experiences are inclusive. Stakeholders range from practitioners, such as teachers and community workers on the ground, to those involved in developing policies for education and teacher training. We aim to reflect all of this in the articles we publish in the Review and on the EENET website.

In order to publish as many of your articles as possible in the Review we need to keep them short. However, as I know from experience, writing a 550 or 1100 word article can be really difficult! How do you keep to the word limit while ensuring that all the important elements are included? That’s why editing articles is something that we provide help with.

We are looking forward to reading all of the submissions again this year and discovering the range of issues you are working on. The theme for this year’s Review is Inclusive Education – Beyond Schools. To find out more, read the Call for Articles. If you are not sure whether your work fits within the theme, or you are not sure what to include in your article, email me (info@eenet.org.uk) and we can discuss it.

If you need a reason why it is important to submit articles about your inclusive education work to EENET, read on.

We know from the number of hits on our website, and the emails I receive, that lots of people gain from the inclusive education ideas we share. For example, I recently received a lovely email detailing how useful EENET’s publication, Researching our Experience (based on action research in Zambia), has been for people facilitating workshops and teacher education sessions in India. Although the cultures and contexts are very different, many of the ideas cross over and the activities described in Zambia can be adapted for use elsewhere.

Sharing experiences and examples of promising practice is an important step in improving the quality of education for marginalised groups and in helping to support teachers, head teachers, community leaders, parents, etc, to develop their own knowledge and practice.

So, why not put pen to paper and have a go at sharing your experiences!

Su Corcoran

Network Coordinator

Did you know that if you type ‘inclusive education’ as a search in YouTube, it brings up 408,000 results?

Mind blowing! And incredibly confusing for anyone searching for video materials to use in their own inclusive education work. Of course you can use the search function to narrow down the number of results, but there is still an overwhelming range of options. Plus if you are based in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East many of the films may be irrelevant to the context of your work, as the majority of inclusive education videos found on YouTube were made for American or European audiences.

You could alternatively search through the websites of relevant NGOs and UN agencies, to see if they have made any useful videos. But that’s time consuming too.

So that is why EENET has decided to create a video catalogue. The catalogue will provide a categorised list of a relatively small number of recommended video materials on inclusive education. It will also provide more information about the content of each video, how it could be used and with whom, etc. The recommended videos will be made available through our website, and we hope also on DVD. Depending on the videos we shortlist, we may develop some user guides too.

So, if you have got some favourite inclusive education videos, then we’d like your help with this project! The details can be found below, and we’ll keep you updated with progress.

Thanks!

Ingrid Lewis

 What do we need from you?

We need your recommendations of videos about inclusive education!

• You can recommend films that provide an overview of inclusive education, or that focus on specific issues (disability, gender equality, inclusion for other marginalised groups, etc).

— An initial search found many videos do not offer an outline/explanation of what inclusive education is (or what it means to the film maker/organisation).

• You can recommend videos that were created for awareness-raising purposes, or as training materials, and so on.

— An initial search found that many videos talk about specific projects from an awareness-raising/fundraising perspective. Good quality video-based training materials seem less common, so recommendations for the latter would be particularly appreciated.

• We need videos that feature different countries/regions. We mostly want videos that are not filmed in Europe, America, etc, but we’ll probably select a few that are.

— The initial search (excluding material from America and Europe) found a predominance of material focusing on Africa and some parts of Asia and an under representation of Latin America for example.

• We are keen to feature videos that promote participation – for instance, they feature the voices of stakeholders, or were even made by stakeholders.

• We want videos that are interesting and engaging (e.g. not a filmed lecture, unless it is an amazing lecture!).

• Ideally we need films that are subtitled, signed and/or available in other languages, to increase their accessibility.

— An initial search has found that subtitled videos are quite common, but signing and other language availability is less common.

What to send us

• If you don’t have much time, please just email us the website link(s) for your recommended video(s) – or you can share the links here in a blog comment. If the videos are not online, you can send a DVD, CD or VHS copy to the address below; or you could use a Dropbox folder if you want to send us large electronic files.

• If you have a bit more time, please feel free to tell us why you are recommending the video(s), how you or your colleagues have used them, or how you would recommend that they be used, etc.

We will spend the next month or so viewing and assessing videos, and will then create a catalogue of the most relevant/useful. We may ask for some volunteers to review the draft catalogue in a few months, so if you are interested in doing that, let me know.

Deadline for sending recommendations: 7th April (although the catalogue will be updated periodically, so you can send us recommendations at any time after that too!)

Send DVDs etc to:

EENET CIC
37 Market Street
Hollingworth
Cheshire
SK14 8NE
UK

Please email links to online videos to:

ingridlewis@eenet.org.uk

Hello. Thanks for finding EENET’s blog!

What will we blog about?

Our blogs will all be related to education, inclusion, diversity, equality, etc – but will cover a wide range of topics. We will share practical and personal experiences and contribute to theoretical debates.

Who are our bloggers?

There will be a variety of people blogging here – EENET’s directors, consultants, volunteers, members and other invited authors.

Where else can you find EENET?

There are various places where you can stay in touch with EENET, and access the large collection of inclusive education information that we have available:

Website

Enabling Education Review (our annual publication)

Facebook

Twitter