Pedagogy MAGAZINE
INCLUSIVE 1 EMULOV •91 TAS • 0202 REBMECED
EDUCATION
CONTENT 03
Exclusion in education
04
What is inclusive education?
05
What is not inclusion
06
Learning environment
07
Role of parents
08
Inclusive classroom strategies
09
Support for Benito
10
Adam makes friends
11
Cooperative learning & Carlos
12
Inclusive education & UNICEF
13
Is inclusive education expensive?
14
Inclusive education main elements
As is well known, exclusion in education is not a new topic. However, it is a subject that for various reasons nobody dares to mention. And it is suffered daily in the public or private educational sector. Exclusion can be approached from different perspectives such as the economy, lack of opportunities, geography, cultures and others, but this time I will focus attention on exclusion within the classroom due to some type of disability. Disabilities are physical, emotional or sensory impairments that affect someone. One can mention auditory, visual, intellectual, physical, malformations, learning problems, speech problems among others. Exceptional talents can also be added to this space.
Although this law exists and must be complied within many classrooms, people with special needs continue to be excluded because due to ignorance or lack of initiative of many teachers who put these special children to work different things or simply make them gain the grade without the children learn or be prepared for life. This article seems important to me to raise awareness in each of the teachers so that they prepare each day to avoid exclusion within their classes.
There are laws at the national and international level that protect all people with disabilities and the right to education is universal. Unfortunately, the reality is different, starting with parents who are not informed of the rights that their disabled children have, teachers who are not prepared to deal with the cases that arise and even so many of them do not work with love and vocation and an educational system who knows that there is information related to the laws that protect these people but does nothing to enforce their right to a quality education. It seems appropriate to write about the Adecuaciones Curriculares in Guatemala. According to decreto 58-2007 of Congreso de la RepĂşblica de Guatemala was created a Ley de educaciĂłn especial para personas con capacidades especiales..
EXCLUSION IN EDUCATION
03
WHAT IS INCLUSIVE EDUCATION?
04
Do you know what inclusive education is? Take a look and see what inclusive education is in Guatemala and what it refers to. According to UNESCO inclusive education as the process aim to target student diversity, increasing their participation and reducing the exclusion from education access to quality education. In this kind of education there is not selection, mechanisms, discrimination, integrates the diversity of students promoting social cohesion, being one of the purposes of education.
Guatemala states in its Constitution that population is entitled to receive education for free without discrimination this includes people with disabilities, Legislative decree 135-96. Also, education should ensure equal opportunities for people with disabilities in public and private institutions where they should have programs for population with especial needs. “Education is everything. It is for everyone. We all need to be educated�. As mention before: Education should be for all, no one should be excluded there are some
additional institutions who brings inclusive education. There are different types of inclusion: Inclusion as colocation Inclusion as education for all Inclusion as participation Social inclusion
WHAT IS NOT INCLUSION Inclusive education is about how we develop and design our schools, classrooms, programs and activities so that all students learn and participate together, in which the student has an educational curriculum that is adapted based to his or her needs. But is inclusive education lacking in Guatemala? The answer is yes.
In Guatemala, the Ministry of Education has already a special education department, enabling all students to attend regular schools with pedagogical adjustments. The majority of educational institutions in Guatemala ignore the fact that they can count on this department. Because of the lack of information, they perceive it as something complicated to implement, or they might think that it can get difficult to deal with the Ministry of Education, which might lead to cause fear to be open up for inclusion. Other times this openness is denied due to the absence of attitude, information or will. Sometimes even the parents do not have information about inclusive education and think that there are not opportunities for them to study.
05
Last year an investigation was made by Lidia MenĂŠndez in 2019 with the purpose to know if the teachers were aware of people with special needs who could go to the institution and if they were really prepared to help those students. The results were awesome because things that were not expected were found. One of the teachers had studies on how to help to them, others were not aware about the institutions that could help students with special needs and other were suggesting that a lot of changes should be made because at any institution where they had worked, they did not see ramps, special equipment or teacher who were capable to help to them and there were trained for special education.
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
An inclusive classroom climate refers to an environment where all students feel supported intellectually and academically, and are extended a sense of belonging in the classroom regardless of identity, learning preferences, or education.
06
Such environments are sustained when instructors and students work together for thoughtfulness, respect, and academic excellence, and are key to encouraging the academic success of all students.
Research indicates that many students may be more likely to prosper academically in settings with more collaborative modes of learning that acknowledge students’ personal experiences (Kaplan and Miller 2007).
THE ROLE OF THE PARENTS Parents play vital role in holistic development of the kids Parents are the first mentor of a kid and the teacher is the second. But parents are important because they are whom encouraging their kids to learn and the good parents support helps kids to be positive, healthy and good life long learner. Parents involvement in inclusive education programme builds positive relationships, encourages new behaviours, and increase self-satisfaction and optimism among themselves, their children and teachers. Such involvement of family is the key component which leads to student's and school's success.
A research also confirmed that meaningful parent's involvement is highly recognized as the most important ingredient for successful inclusive practice. This article critically explores and reviews research literature on the relevance and usefulness of family involvement to the implementation of inclusive education. Moreover, family characteristics influence the level of school parent partnership in inclusive settings. Finally, findings revealed parents as social actors whose involvement is related to positive outcomes of learners with exceptional needs in inclusive settings. Implementation of inclusive education: do parents really abstract.
07
1. GET TO KNOW YOUR STUDENTS AND LET THEM GET TO KNOW YOU
2. CREATE A SAFE SPACE FOR STUDENTS TO SHARE
Creating opportunities for students to share their interests, struggles, and aspirations with you and sharing yours with them builds a connection that can continue to grow. As an example you can create surveys or journals to find out more about their students.
Students also need explicit time to establish connections with their peers. Regularly split students into new small groups and use the “I see, I think, I wonder” strategy to digest something they have learned about or a current event that may be on their minds.
3. CHOOSE RELEVANT LITERATURE
4. INVITE GUEST SPEAKERS TO SHARE THEIR STORIES
Part of culturally responsive teaching includes providing students with literary works that highlight the human experience. Include indigenous, African American and refugee stories, as well as stories that include characters with a physical or learning disability.
According to an article published in the Economics of Education Review, when students can identify with a teacher or guest speaker’s racial or ethnic background they are more likely to perform higher and be more engaged as they see a potential role model or mentor in that person.
INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM 08 STRATEGIES
09 Students with severe disabilities gain much from being included in secondary subject-area classes, and so do their nondisabled peers. Here you have an example of how to make inclusion efforts flourish. Benito, 17, co-manages the football and basketball teams. He also loves art, especially drawing. The high school senior is also the youngest of four boys and the only one not in a gang. Because he has mental retardation, Benito attends a special education class for students with severe disabilities for part of the school day. He also attends an economics/government class for college-prep students. His special education team decided to include him because the class would include appropriate behavior models and fewer gang members than non-college-prep classes. To be successfully included in subject-area classes, Benito and other students with severe disabilities need supports and adaptations.
Peer support for Benito Attending class with nondisabled peers had a striking influence on Benito. He began following the teacher's directions immediately and never used profanity in the social studies class. Benito's teacher structured the class to make peer support available through cooperative learning and peer tutoring. She also used a variety of strategies and adapted most activities for him without assistance. Sandra, one of Benito's classmates, volunteered to assist in the special education class. Benito's support team —Sandra, his special education teacher, and the practicum student—used priming techniques to include him in the classroom. Sandra previewed concepts in government/economics with Benito, developed pictorial worksheets illustrating those concepts, and helped him complete the worksheets. Instead of taking exams like his peers, Benito was graded on participation in class discussions and his answers on tests based on the worksheets. Sandra, his peer assistant, also benefited from Benito's inclusion. Prior to volunteering in the special education program, Sandra had been failing social studies. After tutoring Benito, however, her grades improved.
SUPPORT FOR BENITO
ADAM MAKES FRIENDS (source: Leslie Farlow. A Quartet of Success Stories)
Adam, a junior with autism, is earning average grades in his classes. His parents hope he will graduate with a regular diploma next year. Adam sometimes has trouble making friends, however, he frequently tries to join in conversations by asking, “Do you know Barbara Bush?� and then repeating the question several times. Adam's autism also affects his ability to write essays and to answer inference questions. His peers had primary responsibility for teaching Adam to engage appropriately in conversations, although they required some instruction to do so.
His special education teacher taught all of the students in Adam's classes, and a large part of the general school body, about inclusion and friendships, then she talked about how Adam needed to learn to make friends. She taught them how to redirect Adam to join their conversations with the same topic and gave them permission to tell Adam when they didn't like what he said or did. Previously, students had ignored or avoided Adam when he tried to talk with them. Once they understood how to talk to him, his skills improved, and students included Adam in their groups more often.
Adam's teachers also let him express his learning in alternative ways. Although they worked with Adam to improve his ability to write essays, he took multiplechoice tests to demonstrate his knowledge of specific course content. Throughout the year, Adam continued his progress toward a diploma, while learning to enter conversations and stay on the topic. His peers learned to redirect Adam and to express themselves more directly.
10
COOPERATIVE LEARNING & CARLOS (source: Leslie Farlow. A Quartet of Success Stories)
Carlos, a 15-year-old sophomore with Down Syndrome, has an understandable vocabulary of about 25 words. When he first began attending Life Sciences class with nondisabled peers, Carlos spent most of the time wandering around the room, tapping students on the shoulder and grunting. Carlos's teacher used Johnson and Johnson's (1987) Circles of Learning model to structure his Life Science investigations. The teacher assigned the entire class to heterogeneous groups of three and taught them collaborative skills. To facilitate Carlos's interdependence, the teacher awarded extra credit when all members in a group completed a report on the activity and a randomly selected teammate could explain it to him. To assure individual accountability, the teacher gave students independent grades. Carlos also attended a study hall where nondisabled student tutors primed him for Life Science class by helping him practice activities in advance and prepare materials for experiments. For example, when the class had to graph various climates and compare them to their own weather, Carlos pre-drew the scales and brought the charts to class. Through this activity, Carlos made progress in his math goal—writing numbers—and the fine motor goal of drawing lines. Other groups had to prepare their charts in class, so Carlos's cooperative group members had more time to assist him in charting climates.
11
During some activities, Carlos operated as class “checker.” Students showed him their completed assignments, and he accompanied the teacher when students explained the activity, keeping a record of which groups had earned extra credit. Carlos not only assisted the teacher, but he also developed appropriate skills for the world of work. As a result of his inclusion, Carlos began saying hello to peers before class. He also took responsibility for completing class tasks and practiced his fine motor and number recognition skills. Carlos's inclusion also affected nondisabled students, who, prior to this experience, had sat with students from their own ethnic group and didn't talk much with other students during classroom activities. After initiating cooperative learning groups and teaching collaborative learning strategies, Carlos's teacher noted that the on-task behavior of all students increased and that they began to interact across ethnic groups.
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION BY UNICEF
"Every child has the right to quality education and learning" An estimated 93 million children worldwide live with disabilities. Like all children, children with disabilities have ambitions and dreams for their futures. Like all children, they need quality education to develop their skills and realize their full potential. Yet, children with disabilities are often overlooked in policymaking, limiting their access to education and their ability to participate in social, economic and political life. Worldwide, these children are among the most likely to be out of school. They face persistent barriers to education stemming from discrimination, stigma and the routine failure of decision makers to incorporate disability in school services. Disability is the single most serious barrier to education across the globe. Nearly 50 per cent of children with disabilities are not in school, compared to only 13 per cent of their peers without disabilities. Robbed of their right to learn, children with disabilities are often denied the chance to take part in their communities, the workforce and the decisions that most affect them.
To close the education gap for children with disabilities, UNICEF supports government efforts to foster and monitor inclusive education systems. Our work focuses on four key areas: Advocacy: UNICEF promotes inclusive education in discussions, high-level events and other forms of outreach geared towards policymakers and the general public. Awareness-raising: UNICEF shines a spotlight on the needs of children with disabilities by conducting research and hosting roundtables, workshops and other events for government partners. Capacity-building: UNICEF builds the capacity of education systems in partner countries by training teachers, administrators and communities, and providing technical assistance to Governments. Implementation support: UNICEF assists with monitoring and evaluation in partner countries to close the implementation gap between policy and practice.
12
IS INCLUSIVE EDUCATION EXPENSIVE?
Inclusive education is not more expensive. In fact, an inclusive system is economically effective and efficient because instead of taking resources out of the regular system to educate groups of students with particular needs, all of the resources stay in the system.
13
In countries where most students with disabilities are currently in school, transferring the resources currently supporting segregation and moving those resources to support inclusion helps to strengthen the system for all students by creating a culture of inclusion and training teachers to better meet the needs of all students.
Funding mechanisms must be reformed so that schools that enroll students with special needs receive the necessary additional financial resources. When students move from special schools to mainstream schools, the funding should also follow.
Relationships
Advocacy
Through developing a relationship with the students of the unit and learning support classes in the subject school I was easily able to spot their non-participation during school presentations.
Lack of advocacy not only results in non-participation but the lack of voice. Without an advocate to push for inclusion, and lacking the skills to effectively speak for oneself, a situation of exclusion more readily emerges.
Shared experiences Shared experiences, doing and celebrating together, creates a familiarity in which those unknown become known. Shared experiences, such as whole school sports day, a water sports day, an art exhibition featuring a wide variety of student art, creates a space in which community members are able to be with each other in non-threatening or non-judgemental circumstances.
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION -MAIN ELEMENTS-
14
- IGNACIO ESTRADA
IF A CHILD CAN´T LEARN THE WAY WE TEACH, MAYBE WE SHOULD TEACH THE WAY THAT THEY LEARN
Pedagogy MAGAZINE
Team members Kérlyn Diaz
Lidia Stephanie Menéndez
TEXT EDITOR DIRECTOR
DESIGN DIRECTOR
Carla Mota
Lourdes Cifuentes
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Aura Marroquin
Sandra Veronica Hernández
SPECIAL ADVISER
EDITOR CHIEF