Inclusive Practice Education Coursework Research Paper

INCLUSIVE PRACTICE
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1.1. Inclusive Practice Concept
1 Inclusion in Educational Institution
Inclusive practice focuses explicitly on inclusion in education and educational institutions. The practice is embedded in the fundamental concerns in education today pertaining to the quest for excellence in teaching and intensive efforts to offer equal opportunities for all learners. In today's classrooms, it an irrefutable reality that the traditional understanding of teaching is increasingly becoming obsolete owing to the growing population of learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds with unique educational needs and different abilities. Efforts have been channeled towards the commitment to adapt to the schooling demands for the 21st century and beyond, and one of these measures is promoting inclusive practice (Jackson, Ryndak, and Wehmeyer, 2018). As a result, the policy of inclusion in schools is being implemented in countries around the world. The development demands teachers to search for pedagogy that will strengthen their professional practices to address the diversity in their classrooms. In recent decades, the impact of cultural, technical, and social changes have added new challenges to education within the global context. In particular, increased emphasis on inclusive practice in education has raised awareness of the diversity in learner groups and hopes and expectations of communities and families. The major challenge for teachers in modern times is the continuous search for a practical approach to meet the needs of the diverse number of learners in inclusive schools. The primary idea of inclusive practice holds the assumption that every learner has equitable access to education and that schools organized learning spaces that accommodate all the pupils in the spirit of universal paradigm with the prevalence of these challenges, teachers and school systems are obliged to consider how they can respond to the requirements of inclusive practice in education. The teachers are the key to developing inclusive practices and pedagogies in schools because they are the individuals who, based on their distinctive knowledge and beliefs, choose and plan the learning the environments where students learn and work with the school system structures (Duckworth, 2006).
2. Approaches involved in achieving Inclusive Education
2.1. Focus of Inclusive Education
Inclusion is a never-ending quest and an on-going process aiming for increased participation in education for everyone involved. Some scholars define inclusion as representing the education and participation of the disabled students and special needs learners in general or mainstream education (Rogers, 1993; Salend, 2010, Booth, 2010; Slee, 2011). The view focuses on special needs as the prerequisite for inclusion, meaning that it is considered as a component of special needs education. The definition holds the worldview that difficulties learners experience in schools are consequences of their shortages or impairments. Thereby this definition excludes the possibility of learners’ difficulties being attributed to failures in relationships. It disregards the likelihood of approaches and curricula to learning and teaching not being responsive to diversity or that the difficulties can arise from diverse social pressures in the communities and homes and extend their effects on learners in schools. For others, the definition of inclusion is derived from the notion of diversity, rather than disability, and how the schools value and respond to diverse groups of learners (Lumby and Coleman, 2007; Floriana and Spratt, 2013; Petron, Angelides, and Leigh, 2009). Diversity is a natural characteristic of the schools, which mirrors the broader communities and can be explained as the range of characteristics resulting in differences among individuals. The perceptions of differences elicit responses in others that can either be unfavorable or favorable to the person in question (Lumby and Coleman, 2007). Inclusion is thus aimed at diverting attention towards the unique inequalities presented in discrimination and exclusion against diversities such as ethnic and social circumstances, religious affiliations, gender, and the ability of learners and their respective family status. Therefore, inclusive practice in education is a movement against any type of exclusions and reactions to social inequality and political segregation (Petron, Angelides, and Leigh, 2009). The goal of inclusion is to work against all forms of inequalities and foster individuals' sense of belonging in societies and schools. Inclusion is grounded in the ideologies of democracy, social justice, human rights, and full participation of all (Kurtts, Matthews, & Smallwood, 2009). Inclusive schools consider learners’ diversities as an asset and aim to find suitable ways for successfully educating all their students, work against discrimination, and lead to an inclusive and just society where everyone is considered a valid participant (Jónsson, 2013).
2.2. Inclusive Pedagogy
Pedagogy comprises the ideas and actions of teaching that are beliefs and values informing to justify and sustain the practice. In educational literature, the term pedagogy explains the complex and disparate issues relating to the teaching profession. Three consistent uses of pedagogy are intended to cover the methods of teaching, curricula, and instructional programs; serve as an all-embracing term for education within the context of poststructuralist thought; and to address and express moral discourse and education about learning and teaching (Ferguson, 2018). The development of inclusive education has shifted from creating emphasis on teaching to emphasizing learning. Inclusive education seeks to move away from the dominant trend in education of teacher-directed classrooms that emphasize the students' learning needs (Alexander, 2013). The fundamental premise in the inclusive pedagogy approach achieving inclusive education is based on the rejection of the abilities that label as deterministic notions of fixed competencies that have historically underpinned the education structure (Florian and Spratt, 2013). Therefore, inclusive pedagogy is chiefly aimed at contesting the practices representing provisions for those with different experiences because focusing on differences propagates marginalization and isolation of learners and adds to the social construction of disability (Greiner, 2010).
Hart, Drummond, and McIntyre (2017) identified three fundamental pedagogical principles necessary for fostering the development of inclusive education. The first principle is about the responsibilities that teachers have towards their students. The teacher is committed to and responsible for the education of all the students in the classrooms, not just a few of them. However, this responsibility can be shared with other staff, such as the assistant teachers or special education experts, who collaborate with the teacher to support the learners. The second principle addresses co-agency, where the learners are seen as active agents in their education, and there are some critical interplay between the students and teachers. The teacher is responsible for creating learning spaces for the students, but the students are responsible for their learning activities with assistance from the teachers. The last principle relates to trust. The teacher is required to have trust that the students want to learn and should not blame or punish them when they do not learn. The teachers are expected to inquire about what needs to be done differently to help the students who might be failing in their learning, what needs to be changed about the learning activities, materials, or environment, rather than focusing on asking what might be wrong with the students (Hart, Drummond, and McIntyre, 2017).
By incorporating pedagogical skills, knowledge, and understanding into the inclusive practice, there is the creation of the opportunity for differentiating among learners, materials, resources, methods, contexts, and outcomes in the designing of the education curriculum for all students. Teaching diverse groups of students is founded in a pedagogy that includes more than the acquisition of skills to use prescribed instructional practices. The practice entails integrating professional knowledge about students' development, learning, and teaching and mainly involves social and ethical commitments. It thus becomes possible to witness the pedagogical qualities of the professionally responsive teachers in those who have an understanding of the individual differences to meet learners’ development needs. These teachers are committed to the students' education and have a strong knowledge base enabling them to differentiate between and consider the unique needs of the learners as they develop curricula for all the students (Guðjónsdóttir, 2017).
2.3. Inclusive Practices
Inclusive practices are specifically based on the premise that the schools and the education system in entirety assume the responsibilities for organizing curriculum and teaching diverse groups of learners in ways that the learning environment is appropriate for the inherent resources of the students. All the students bring valuable experiences and resources to the classroom. These resources include the skills and talents that the students build upon their personal experiences, beliefs, and knowledge. Teachers who understand and value their students' resources are better placed to attune their teaching to the resources that the learners bring to the classroom. Rodriguez (2017) defines resources as the personal strengths and qualities that emerge from life experiences and shape actions that have been drawn upon in school and life as a whole. These experiences tend to originate from the learner's upbringing, social participation, and schooling. Wretch (1988) considers cultural resources as the meditational tools used by people to make meaning and act in the world. Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti (2015) regard culture as the funds of knowledge and resources to draw upon in the different learning processes that can empower students. The situation demands the presumption of competence in all learners, which consequently requires the teachers to believe that every student has the potential for meeting the required expectations guided by their inherent funds of knowledge and resources, rather than deciding lowered expectations or on incompetence as the starting points when working the learners that have been discriminated and marginalized (Jackson, Ryndak, and Wehmeyer, 2018).
The approach of inclusive practices also requires for the viewing of the development of learners in relation to others, rather than as isolated persons, and a view of education as "an open-ended process of becoming for each person, and not the achievements of certain pre-specified ends, it ought to have a moral purpose, principally concerned with the preparation of each individual to live a good and decent life, and it is located in particular social and historical context” (Howes, Davies, and Fox, 2009, p.5). Being committed, responsive, and flexible to each learner, coupled with the use of varieties of teaching approaches, helps create an opening vital for effectively educating diverse groups of learners in accordance with their unique funds of knowledge and resources. Furthermore, teachers who manage to develop a deep personal understanding of each student can obtain the necessary discretions for differentiating learning among students. Therefore, inclusive practice is distinct in the different ways that teachers often respond to diversity, how they make decisions concerning a group of work, and how they employ the specialist knowledge (Florian, 2010).
Significant teaching approaches that provide opportunities for all students to succeed include the systematic and comprehensive ways for gathering information about learners, the connection between the students' lives and learning, and the focus on the open-endedness and flexibility of the curricula. A flexible curriculum with extensive alternatives bestows the teachers with the chance to respond to the unique diversity and differences in every class. The teaching and classroom ought to be structured in ways that offer mixed-abilities teaching coupled with numerous alternative ways of working and learning and multiple opportunities for realizing success. The achievement of this goal is rare, but a teacher who believes in inclusion needs to continually question personal actions and decisions to strive to improve (Rouse, 2008). For the teachers who have the commitment of responding to diverse students in the most effective ways possible, this is always a never-ending endeavor, but each step taken towards promoting inclusion is excellent progress. As curricula are created for the whole group of students to be responsive to every learner, the crucial element is an openness to learners based on recognizing that their resources are critical contributing factors to improving the richness of the learning environments (Guðjónsdóttir, 2017). The critical idea here is that though there is the possibility of students embodying differences across several dimensions, the essential difference is residing in how they respond to and approach the situations and tasks of learning, rather than in their cultural and pathological categorizations (Florian, 2008). The idea represents the challenge that makes it difficult for teachers to be reactive to the differences in students and employ responsive practices.
When responsiveness is coupled with pedagogical skills, the situation provides teachers with the ability to use student differences, community and cultural events, challenges and problems, subject matter, and contextual issues as opportunities that can facilitate effective learning and teaching. Responsive teachers often go beyond respecting and acknowledging differences when creating the curricula. The teachers focus on students and appreciate what they bring into the classrooms within their unique resources relating to skills, knowledge, interests, experiences, backgrounds, abilities, and attitudes. They also respond to the students' differences by designing a universal environment for learning to support all the students. Responsive teachers to be much skilled in creating curricula of learning environments and activities that bestow the students with the opportunities to succeed. The situation means that the preparations of the responsive teachers are firmly grounded in major theoretical perspectives on human development and their associated practical applications to foster understanding of the moral and social issues inherent in individual differences and strong professional commitments to the education of students (Mayer, 2014).
In responding to the diversity of the learners, from the beginning, responsive teachers build the planning on alternative and flexible approaches and create learning environments that give the students vast opportunities to learn in different but productive ways. Therefore, the comprehensive grounding of responsive teachers in pedagogy enables them to base their teaching on detailed knowledge of the unique needs of each student. It also enables the teachers to construct learning activities that are not only challenging but also enjoyable and differentiate among the learners with integrated programs and curricula. Besides, it allows the teachers to use the social and physical environment to support activities of learning. Moreover, it encourages the teachers to support learners to develop a growing sense of personal responsibility for their learning and work in partnerships with the students to modify and monitor teaching, assessment, and learning (Guðjónsdóttir, 2017).
2.4. A Whole-School Approach
It is of imperative necessity for inclusive education not to be viewed as an add-on within the mainstream schools. The implementation of inclusive education needs to be done within a whole-school approach. Considering that inclusive education is about implementing changes tailored towards improving the educational system for all learners, it should be part of the mission and vision statement of the schools and from intrinsic part of the activities and practices in the school as a whole. Despite the move towards inclusive education originating within the discourse of disability, it is presently viewed from the social justice, democratic, and human rights perspectives. As a result, inclusive education is of a much broader context than special education and should not be limited to students with disabilities. Both within the national and international spheres, it is now acknowledged that learning barriers can be intrinsic or/and extrinsic. It is thus necessary for inclusive education not to be only seen as a change in the approaches to how special education is provided but also as an opportunity for transforming the system of the whole school. It is of appropriate significance that this transformation be "addressed through the development of a whole-school policy to promote inclusive education" (Slee, 2011, p.117). The most useful and essential tool to guide schools in this transformation is the Inclusion Index, developed by Baglieri et al. (2011). The index constitutes a set of materials to be used in supporting schools to develop inclusive practices "through preparing teaching, teaching, and collaborative processes of planning, review, and implementation" (Baglieri et al., 2011, p.2125). It facilitates the provision of schools with necessary strategies to be tailored towards systematically planning, prioritizing, implementing, and assessing the development focused on the creation of inclusive schools.
A whole-school approach is thus central to the development of inclusive schools to increase the access to and participation of students in learning. The educational needs of the learners are just as diverse as the learners themselves. Some learners might often need "highly structured environments with considerable individual attention, while others tend to benefit from having access to specialist staff or sophisticated equipment" (Lambert, 2016, p.166). However, since inclusive education is much broader than cognitive functioning or disability, it has consequently become of an imperative need to make socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, and language an imp...