Inclusive Education For All Example

Inclusive Education For All Example Inclusive Education For All â€" Essay Example > Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for the Teacher 2006IntroductionIn a public school environment, there are often clashes amongst children due to differing personality traits, physical challenges, belief and value systems, and cultural identities. Sadly, there are many issues surrounding the problem with multicultural and racial harmony in the classroom and this is often left to the teacher to find a resolution. Quite often, the problem stems from a lack of knowledge about another culture and when this is the core problem it is easier for the teacher to introduce ideas about another culture into the classroom. Besides, the classroom may be composed of students with different levels of physical and mental abilities and the teacher must be capable of handling them differently. What most students can learn may be extremely difficult for a student with learning disabilities. The inability of the teacher to achieve inclusion of all students â€" whether they belong to cultural minority gro ups or are differently abled physically or have learning disabilities â€" make such students feel isolated and alienated. It is not uncommon for students like Luke, then, to find a situation when ‘Luke said that going to school was like being an alien, where there was this species that tormented him. ’ (Sunday Times 12.06.05). In this paper, I will discuss some alternate situations where the teacher should adopt steps for inclusion in classrooms. Then, I will adopt why such steps are necessary for the society at large. Ways for Inclusion of Differently abled StudentsThe world over, the school systems are increasingly moving towards “inclusive” teaching whereby regular teachers need to undertake strategies that have traditionally been used by special educators. Instead of the earlier practice of “mainstreaming”, by which differently abled students were taught in exclusive classrooms most of the times and included in the combined “mainstream” class only for some time , it is now believed that an inclusive strategy is more helpful. However, it is seen that while most teachers are convinced about the superiority of inclusive teaching in principle, they do not have the confidence for such teaching. In reality, however, it is the attitude and behaviour, rather than financial resources that hinder inclusive teaching since in most cases, inclusive teaching is imposed on the regular school system. Teachers typically relate to the class as a whole rather than to individual students. But, with students with different levels of learning abilities, the class cannot be considered as a homogenous group. Demands of students will need to be prioritised, incorporated and put into practice. Most importantly, teachers need to develop a positive learning climate such that individual students grow responsible for a collaborative learning process. The basic guiding principle in this should be to recognize each student individually â€" not simply the different level s of abilities but also their differing personality traits, their inner choices and attitude â€" and not as a generic number. The teacher should develop the students’ sense of identity on the whole and not just as a learner in the classroom (Paterson, 2000). Interviewing teachers from junior high school in Australia and Canada, Paterson found that many teachers relate to individual students by their personality traits: