EENET asia Newsletters : Fourth issue June 2007 Contents

Empowering Teachers to Advocate for Inclusion

Vandana Saxena

Sarika, a Post-Graduate in Physics, was a cheerful, bubbly and active participant in her physics pedagogy classes. She had many queries, often raised questions and freely shared her opinion on the various issues that emerged during the classroom discussions. Soon it was time for her group to go to school for their school experience programme. There they were required to teach the subject along with many other observational and analytical tasks. Just like everyone else, Sarika was nervous yet excited. She went to the school and got classes IX and XI and was to teach physics. Usually the initial days are considered to be the adjustment period and pedagogy classes are full of lively discussions. Pupil-teachers adopt various adjustment strategies, but Sarika was unexpectedly quiet, till after a few days she asked her pedagogy teacher for some time in private. It is during this meeting that she discussed the presence of two visually challenged learners in her class. She was worried. She did not have any personal experience with people with disabilities. They were never her classmate or her neighbours. The regular teachers told her not be bothered about their presence, since the learners with disability) anyway attended a special school in the evening. This appeared strange to Sarika. She was committed to creating an appropriate learning environment for all learners in her class. She worked hard all through her programme and quiet successfully created learning opportunities for all the learners in her class, without compromising quality. At the end of her teaching practice she was not only a more effective practitioner but also a better human being.

Anyone would be tempted to raise several questions from this experience. Why and how was Sarika initiated into teaching the children with special needs? Did she feel overburdened? In such a short period of school experience, 35 days spread over three months, could she actually learn and plan something useful and effective? Would she, benefit, in her future professional life? These are only some of the prime questions.

The Process of Initiation:
The reason for her initiation is actually very simple – The Presence. “Out of sight, out of mind" is an old saying which remains relevant today. The presence of learners with diverse needs in regular schools automatically influences policy, administrative and organizational decisions. Infrastructural provisions showcasing a barrier free environment at least ensures the presence of all, everywhere. Presence is a must whether through reserving seats or through building ramps/escalators and toilets. Presence alone would raise our level of comfort and take us to the threshold of celebrating diversity.

The recently renovated building of Sarika's teacher training institution is still with staircases which help one to reach the first floor of the building. It is without any ramp and not even a single toilet can accommodate a wheelchair. The newly built corridors have no indicators for visually challenged students. These simple provisions would have given her peer group an opportunity to endorse inclusion in later parts of their life when in decision making positions.

According to census 2001, approximately 3% people of the total population in India have impairments of different intensity. This implies that in a class size of 60 students there could be a maximum of two children with different impairments. Clearly inclusion would not overcrowd the classrooms with children with disability.

With various policy decisions and educational and vocational opportunities there is a rapid increase in the number of inclusive classrooms. The number is likely to increase and as we hope soon all classes would be inclusive in character. For a successful implementation of these provisions on the one hand we need to assess the readiness of teachers already in school and on the other hand there is a need to critically reflect upon the existing teacher training programmes. Suitable modifications are required at pre-service as well as in-service teacher training.

Exploring the possibilities of empowering teachers
Any pre-service teacher training programme is significantly shorter than an individual’s life span. So while the role of social and community experience is extremely powerful in an individual’s life, the contributions of such programmes are of critical importance towards developing an effective practitioner. Basically during the programme trainees are oriented towards classroom processes and possible ways to maximize learning through various classroom interactions. The different components of the course, conceptual knowledge building, the school –based teaching practice and various other field experiences first sensitize and then empower future teachers to create more dynamic teacher - learning environments within their respective schools.

The existing teacher training programme is for one academic year. The students are engaged in a series of activities and field exposures which enable them to plan various curricular and co-curricular experiences for their learners in school. The focus till now has been non-inclusive regular school settings with some fragmented provisions to also discuss children with special needs through a small part of the foundation course and another optional course chosen by some 5-7% of the total student group each year. In addition, teacher educators’ own level of knowledge and skills in inclusive methodology are very important.

If inclusion is adopted as an institutional philosophy then even within the given time framework, teachers can be prepared for inclusive classrooms. The foundational courses would enable these future teachers to address issues related with diversity in a classroom; the pedagogy courses would prepare them to plan inclusive classroom processes and the field experience would place them face to face with the real world. And then inclusion would become a way of living inculcating in us the peace related values, contributing to self-development, taking us to a more harmonious and diversity-responsive tomorrow. We shall all then be ready to collectively advocate for Inclusion.

Sarika made simple yet effective interventions. She learnt to use Braille printer, prepared need based assignments, used peer tutoring and made some modifications in the question paper for an end-of-term assessment. All these interventions proved to be effective for all her students including the ones with visual challenges. Yes, she did have complains but even her complains were more inclusive than those of her other classmates, She did not do more work, she actually learnt to better organize the human and material resources to optimize learning according to ability ,as per the needs of her learners.

Mrs. Vandana Saxena is a faculty with Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi, India. She is actively engaged in teaching and research in the area of special educators and science educators for the last fifteen years. She can be contracted at vsaxena78@hotmail.com or
D-78, Surajmal Vihar, Delhi-92, India
Tel.: 91-11-22163195; 9891115004

EENET asia Newsletters : Fourth issue June 2007 Contents