Inclusive Education
Benefits and Challenges of Designing a Merged Elementary and Special Education Program
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amelia Jenkins
Dual elementary and special education teacher preparation programs focus on preparing educators with the skills to work with all students and to collaborate with their general/special education colleagues. However, many dual programs do not engage in program or curricular coordination between general and special education resulting in an absence of, or minimal, collaboration and coordination of programs. It is important for teacher candidates to be prepared in programs that model collaboration and make explicit the connections between elementary and special education content knowledge and skills. A merged, co-taught elementary and special education teacher-training program holds potential to improve the delivery of course content and field experiences to improve the preparation of teacher candidates, and produce teachers more capable of working with a diverse population of students. This paper describes the five-year experience of the Departments of Elementary Education and Special Education in their efforts to design a fully merged elementary and special education program to model best practices in preparing teacher candidates for inclusive elementary classrooms. Our process included: plan, prepare, pilot, scale-up, and evaluate. This information may be useful to other teacher educators who are engaged in integrating general and special education curricula.
From Social Services to the Classroom: Empowering Students and Promoting Cultural Competence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jessica Acuna
Having taught English at universities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, both ethnically and culturally diverse regions, I have found that my experience as a social worker, rather than my teacher training, has most adequately prepared me for my role in diverse classrooms. Before becoming an educator, I delivered services in a social program in the USA that used the anti-oppressive model approach. By striving to recognize the inherent power disparities that exist between providers and clients, we worked to reduce oppressive practices to ensure a safe, egalitarian, and inclusive environment. As a teacher, I apply the anti-oppressive model to foster a similarly egalitarian environment. Working with diverse students from various socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, it is critical to create a tolerant and inclusive environment in which each participant’s non-academic culture and experience is acknowledged and valued. With this approach, student sharing is encouraged, differences negotiated, and structural hierarchies that distract from the learning experience dispelled. Adopting the role of facilitator creates an anti-authoritative space, wherein students are given choices that influence class organization, topics, and activities. In addition to sharing power, teachers should also work to recognize and mitigate unconscious expectations carried into the classroom. Lastly, by establishing mutual accountability, students may be less likely to develop the negative emotions and behaviors that follow perceived power inequities, empowering student expression and ensuring the cultural, social, and emotional safety of participants. With this presentation, I intend to discuss methods useful in creating a culturally aware and responsive classroom in order to accommodate students of diverse backgrounds, along with how the anti-oppressive model may be applied to teaching practices in order to minimize inherent power imbalances based on differences in culture, class, ethnicity, and gender between teacher and students.
Educational Equity in Romanian Schools: Official Requirements and Student Teachers` Assumed Values
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gabriela Gruber
Educational Equity is one of the newest requirements of the current Romanian education. The definition of the term and the description of the official requirements in the field of Romanian education are realized in the first sequence of the paper. The second sequence presents a brief survey about ethical and equity values assumed by the future teachers. The research is based on analyzing the learning outcomes produced by students teachers during the seminars on Ethics. A comparison between these outcomes and students` answers to a questionnaire on their assumed ethical values is meant to lead to more objective research conclusions
