A Right for the Enrollment and Participation of Every Student to Schooling
Recently inclusive education has been making inroads in the educational system to develop a school environment where everyone is treated equally. The first principle of inclusive education is to ensure that every individual enrolls in a school that meets their needs (WADEPT, n.d.). Within the context of inclusive education, efforts to accommodate students with disabilities have been promoted. In T & T school, every individual can enroll and benefit from exceptional learning that supports their learning despite their particular needs. Also, parents have been given a chance to participate actively in their children’s education as partners in the school management. The inclusive philosophy gives parents an opportunity of contributing and deciding on the best options that suit the needs of their children. For example, they are involved in their children’s enrollment process and evaluate outcomes to ensure that the students reach their maximum capability.
Despite the contribution that the principle has to students’ lives, it has regrettably been faced with a myriad of challenges. The philosophy of the inclusive model postulates that every student has a right to access different educational projects and participating in every step of the learning process; however, the school management has been the core generator of the barriers towards inclusive education (Boyle & Anderson, 2020). Most students have reported experiencing problems like low access to information and technology, negative attitudes from the faculty members, and policies that do not rhyme with their needs. Although T & T school have tried to incorporate policies and technology meant to support students with disabilities, they are more likely to drop out of school than normal students because of the challenges. There is still a gap of knowledge on developing a fully inclusive environment where all individuals participate in learning without discrimination or struggling more than other students.
The Value of Diversity in All Levels of Educational System
Over the years’ specific population cohorts have been continuously discriminated against by the educational system. Today, under inclusive education, different levels of education have continued to adjust for the sake of appreciating and promoting diversity (Stepanova et al., 2018). Inclusive education postulates that every individual has a right to access high-quality education despite their race or ethnicity. Educational leaders have tirelessly tried to develop an educational system that promotes equity and fairness for all students. School communities are obliged to develop learning environments that reduce barriers due to discrimination, and positive steps like training educators on ways to support diversity have been made. Inclusive education has taken pride in diversity and tried to ensure that students with different needs participate in the learning process without exclusion.
Despite the goal of inclusive education to reduce diversity, most students are disappointingly still facing exclusion in T & T school. Pedagogical and inclusive cultural practices posit the need to recognize students’ heterogeneity through a collaborative network, but this has faced extensive barriers (Loreman. 2017). Inclusive education is a new philosophy, and the peculiarities of a collaborative network depend on the innovative strategies to be applied. It involves introducing compensatory elements of the previous model of education that perceived it as a service. Additionally, there is still a knowledge gap between educators and other students dealing with people from various backgrounds. For example, the underlying attitudes and prejudices towards individuals with disabilities are yet to be entirely changed. The new system has developed a valuable platform where every individual is valued and treated equally. However, more effort on reducing the underlying societal attitudes towards certain community members can provide an opportunity for everyone to benefit from the philosophy of inclusion.
Adequate and Appropriate Adjustments to Promote Participation
Additionally, several approaches have been applied to promote the success and the applicability of the philosophy in education. Inclusive education supports the collaboration of all the stakeholders involved in the learning process. All the adjustments meant to be made to adapt schools to the new systems are communicated to different people, such as parents. The inclusive program revolves around satisfying and meeting the needs of all students, and they are constantly involved in the decision-making process. Also, the system obliges for the consideration and support of student’s views and perceptions during the development of various programs that directly or indirectly affect their learning. In the pursuit of reducing discrimination and promoting diversity, decisions about adjustments are made locally with a consideration of the cultural practices of the immediate society.
The philosophy supports the basic principles of developing robust collaborative and social networks between the educational system and the external factors. It involves the inclusiveness of a managing team that is aware of all the prospects for enhancing education. Teamwork in the inclusive program has played a crucial role in the success of different adjustments meant to enhance adaptation (Boyle & Anderson, 2020). It has also promoted the program’s consistency by identifying barriers that could affect execution and dealing with them beforehand. For example, the development of different training programs for educators ensures they can deal with and help students with special needs. However, collaboration and networking in the system are still quite limited. There is still a weak contribution of regional and federal governments to the new program. Furthermore, inclusive education requires a lot of financial support, which cannot be acquired without the support of the municipal government. Considering the program’s contribution to the lives of students and society as a whole, strategic planning of management and integration of all the stakeholders can be a positive move.
Equitable Adjustments Based on the Needs
The fourth principle to inclusive education is the promotion of child-centered learning and humanity. Learning facilities are obliged to be flexible and open in their decision-making towards implementing programs that directly or indirectly affect students. They are required to be open in enhancing their environments for students who may require adjustments, such as the development of pathways that support physically challenged students. Furthermore, essential attention is given to how the schools use different resources allocated to them. Inclusive education is complex, and it requires applying different technological facilities and science to enhance its efficiency and success. To ensure the consistency of the program, school principals and teachers are required to be responsible for all the facilities to ensure that the needy students benefit from the technology.
Inclusive education has promoted a continuous innovation and development of the educational system. Extensive research is done continuously to ensure timely identification of students with special needs for the necessary adjustments. The philosophy postulates for the creation of forms that treat students as individual beings with distinct needs. Therefore, identifying and understanding the prospects for creating a flexible educational system that accommodated every extensive individual research is done. Also, to enhance collaboration, every stakeholder is required to contribute to the research and evaluation process. Everyone is involved in the assessment of varying student’s needs and the identification of any necessary adjustments. However, poor management has acted as a barrier to the success of continuous research. For example, delay from teachers to submit assessment results leading to a delay in the necessary adjustments. To ensure continuous research, strategies such as developing a robust commanding and management team can be instrumental.
The Development of a Pedagogy to Meet Individual Needs
Inclusive education adopts an evidence-based model to maintain the continuous development and productivity of the program. The system’s primary focus is to ensure that every individual has access to quality education by evaluating the existing practices and introducing elements that can further help in their enhancement (Schuelka & Engsig, 2020). In the T& T school, the teachers must regularly assess the models used for teaching students with disabilities. After every school year, a collaborative meeting of all the stakeholders like the teachers, principal, and parents of the disabled students is held to evaluate the models’ contribution. They then identify new models to be used in the next school year, and a management team is selected to ensure that they are promoted and implemented. Furthermore, individuals from the team are selected to benchmark other schools that have succeeded in applying the inclusive system. They then develop a report of the findings and suggest whether the practices can be instrumental for students in the school.
Through an evidence-based model, the school has continuously developed measures that have had a noticeable contribution in overcoming challenges and improving student-based practice. Inclusive education is aimed at a productive education system that focuses on preventing and reducing barriers to some students’ learning (Slee, 2018). By continuously reviewing and introducing models that best suit the needs of students with disabilities, the school has maintained a continuous and consistent development of teaching practices that improve the outcomes of students with disabilities. However, the evidence-based model in the school has been faced with challenges due to insufficient finances. Implementing new models demands further training for teachers and the introduction of new technologies that can be expensive. This economic barrier affects the application of new models, which results in a slow implementation and development process.
Flexible Services
Moreover, inclusive education focuses on the production of flexible services applied to the varying students’ needs. Educators are required to integrate their lessons with the needs of all the students in class (Zagona, Kurth & MacFarland, 2017). In T & T educational centers, educators are advised to use different teaching methods to educate learners and motivate them to learn. Instructional and collaborative models are the most prevalent teaching methods applied. The teachers must provide a teaching plan to the principal with all the strategies and objectives that aim to be achieved after every class. Also, teachers are required to submit a report of continuous assessment tests, to evaluate the performance of the needy students and establish strategies that can help them improve.
Additionally, the school has continued to introduce services and strategies that support students with disabilities. Different programs have been introduced to educate the other students and teachers on treating and interacting with the students with different needs. However, the development and promotion of strategies meant to support heterogeneous classrooms have been persistently problematic (Navarro et al., 2016). T & T school did not enroll any students with special needs in the past; therefore, it has been overly hard for the teachers since most of them had to seek further training and knowledge of teaching students with special needs. Moreover, there have been several reports at school of teachers who have continuously mistreated needy students. Although steps were taken to handle the matter, the problem has been thought to stem from the attitudes and resistance of teachers to accommodating inclusive education. Different programs have been applied, such a compulsory attendance to training programs meant to prepare and orient the educators to the new systems emotionally and psychologically.
Collaboration with Service Providers
Nevertheless, a collaboration between the school and the service providers has been fruitful in the continuous adaptation to the new program. Inclusive education hypothesizes for the development of robust collaboration and partnership between all the stakeholders to achieve all the set goals. The school has been careful to include all the models suggested by the leaders for the successful development of school programs that support students with disabilities. Educators are required to develop lesson plans regarding the curriculum developed by the service providers in the educational system. Also, the school management has constantly involved specialists from the educational system before introducing any models meant to improve education for students with special needs.
However, there have been different barriers affecting the collaboration between the school and the service providers. Although there are different protocols suggested, the system fails to give teachers the methods of implementing the suggested strategies (Pit-ten Cate et al., 2018: Dubkovetska, Budnik & Sydoriv, 2016). Also, there has been insufficient financial support from the leaders for the successful development of inclusive education. These barriers have constantly disadvantaged and paralyzed different models meant to be applied. The teachers are yet to be fully informed about the requirements of successfully teaching and adapting to a heterogeneous teaching environment. Leaving the strategies for them to implement without an outlined procedure has acted as a challenge to adaptation. Furthermore, inclusive education is complex, and it requires facilities and technology that can be expensive for the school, considering it was initially a school for normal students only. For effective collaboration, the government needs to provide financial and psych-pedagogical support to the school and the teachers.
Reference
Anderson, J., Boyle, C., Page, A., & Mavropoulou, S. (2020). Inclusive Education: An Enigma of ‘Wicked’Proportions. In Inclusive education: Global issues and controversies (pp. 1-11). Brill Sense. https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004431171/BP000012.xml
Boyle, C., & Anderson, J. (2020). Inclusive education and the progressive inclusionists. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-151
Dubkovetska, I., Budnyk, O., & Sydoriv, S. (2016). Implementing inclusive education in Ukraine: problems and perspectives. Journal of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, 3(2-3), 99-105. https://mif.pu.if.ua/index.php/jpnu/article/download/2880/3250
Kim, J., Florian, L., & Pantić, N. (2020). The development of inclusive practice under a policy of integration. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1-16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13603116.2020.1773946
Loreman, T. (2017). Pedagogy for inclusive education. In Oxford research encyclopedia of education. https://oxfordre.com/education/documentId/acrefore-9780190264093-e-148
Moriña, A. (2017). Inclusive education in higher education: challenges and opportunities. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 32(1), 3-17. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08856257.2016.1254964
Navarro, S., Zervas, P., Gesa, R., & Sampson, D. (2016). Developing teachers’ competencies for designing inclusive learning experiences. Educational Technology and Society, 19(1), 17-27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/jeductechsoci.19.1.17.pdf
Pit-ten Cate, I. M., Markova, M., Krischler, M., & Krolak-Schwerdt, S. (2018). Promoting Inclusive Education: The Role of Teachers’ Competence and Attitudes. Insights into Learning Disabilities, 15(1), 49-63. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1182863
Schuelka, M. J., & Engsig, T. T. (2020). On the question of educational purpose: complex educational systems analysis for inclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1-18. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13603116.2019.1698062
Slee, R. (2018). Defining the scope of inclusive education. http://repositorio.minedu.gob.pe/handle/20.500.12799/5977
Stepanova, G. A., Tashcheva, A. I., Stepanova, O. P., Menshikov, P. V., Kassymova, G. К., Arpentieva, M. R., & Tokar, O. V. (2018). The problem of management and implementation of innovative models of network interaction in inclusive education of persons with disabilities. International journal of education and information technologies. ISSN, 2074-1316. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/G_Kassymova/publication/329877636_.pdf
WADEPT. (n.d.). Building Inclusive Schools Pathways to the Future . Retrieved from A Report of the Review of Educational Services for Students with Disabilities in Goverment Schools .
Zagona, A. L., Kurth, J. A., & MacFarland, S. Z. (2017). Teachers’ views of their preparation for inclusive education and collaboration. Teacher Education and Special Education, 40(3), 163-178. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0888406417692969
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