GarryHornby,DeanSutherland, John Everatt, Janinka Greenwood
(From previous issue)
Referring to the implementation of inclusive education, Kibria (2005) lists obstacles such as the negative attitudes of people, gender discrimination, unskilled teachers, large classrooms, and lack of awareness in the community To overcome those obstacles the author recommended strategies, such as community involvement, training teachers, and promoting positive’ attitudes towards inclusive education. Kibria (2005) suggests that teachers in developing countreis may not be ready to face the challenge of inslusive education and pointed to the lack of teacher training programmes available for teachers in implementing an inclusive education needs. Therefore, he suggested a step by step process to implement inclusive education in Bangladesh, as well as in other developing countries. The necessary steps include engaging key people in the community in workshops or seminars to gain their support and co-operation, physical accessibility for children with disabilities, curriculum modification as per the needs of children, revision of the teacher education curriculum, crash programs for teachers’ professional development, and formation of resource centres. Finally, Kibria (2005) discussed some potential difficulties regarding inclusive education : particularly that parents and professionals may have reservations about inclusion of all special needs children.
Implications for educational change: Based on the research undertaken, and consideration of the literature, the: following steps should be considered as part of the: processes undertaken to overcome the challenges towards successful implementation of inclusive education. Many of the barriers identified are not unique to Bangladesh, with attitudes and knowledge of teachers across different countries acting as an important influence: of their ability to support students with disabilities (Ring & Travers, 2005), Some barriers, however, are: likely to be the result of societal beliefs about students with disabilities which may require more specific strategies. Issues relating to people: with disabilities in Bangladesh are still dominated by ignorance and superstition. For example, a common religious-based belief is that having a child with a disability’ is a punishment for a parent committing a crime. These myths must be tackled in order to raise community, awareness of the rights and abilities of students with disabilities, To achieve this, disability awareness and rights issues should be included in school communications and professional development training. Similarly, increasing the visibility of students with disabilities in teams and cultural activities with their non-disabled peers may help to break down false beliefs and negative perceptions. Hence, although the following focus on the education system, there is a need for IE to be considered in a societal context as well.
1) Educational Service Model (ESM)
Costa Rica, a developing country, has adopted a model called the Education Service Model to implement inclusive education (Stough, 2003). There are four components in this model : consulting teachers, educational assistance teams, mobile resource teams, and resource centers, Firstly, consulting teachers assist students with disabilities in mainstream education classrooms. Secondly, educational assistance teams are established at each school to take decisions about the educational needs of all children. Thirdly, mobile resource teams consisting of an educational psychologist, a social worker, a general education teacher, and a special education teacher are responsible for the development of children with special needs. Finally, resource centres are responsible for providing necessary support for special needs children.
These four components play a vital role in providing technical support and knowledge of special education to mainstream teachers in Costa Rica. The implementation of this model requires skilled teachers, appropriate education policy and adequate funding. A similar model could be adopted in Bangladesh where the above mentioned components can be constructed and be provided with appropriate responsibilities. The Government of Bangladesh has a plan to establish at least three resource centres to provide necessary support to school teachers. The resource persons will be inclusive education trainers from the nearest teachers’ training college. This initiative could also lead to the creation of special units within regular schools that can provide a focus for specific support and even training (see point 3 below).
2) Integrating key people from the community for creating awareness
Raising awareness of key people in the community is an important factor for implementing inclusive education. Here, key people include class teachers, head teachers, members of the school management committee, government officials, health service officials, parents, guardians, religious leaders in the mosque, and representatives of the ethnic minorities. These people will contribute to establishing an inclusive society where belongingness is ensured so that every child feels welcome and safe at their school. It is important to establish a belief among the community that even child can learn, and that they can learn from each other.
Local community and school-based relationships are an important aspect of inclusion (Foreman, 2011). Relationships between teachers, teachers and students, parents and teachers, and community and schools are indispensable. To support relationship building, schools could initiate the formation of an effective parent teacher association, organising various community, events in school, and use school buildings as community centres during weekends and holidays (see discussions in Horn by, 2011). Appropriate initiatives need to be taken build a bridge between communities and schools in order to support inclusive education. Evidence shows that the community as a whole can provide better support to students (De Jong, 2005).
In order to facilitate inclusive education in regular schools, a team of volunteers consisting of teachers, students and community people might be formed. This would be one of the ways to support children with different types of disabilities to enter mainstream education. In this regard there is a chance to exchange views and opinions between children with disabilities and regular students – and it is one way to combat discriminatory attitudes (Eleweke & Rodda, 2002).
3) Training for teachers in inclusive education
Training opportunities for teachers would lead them towards becoming successful inclusive education teachers. Inclusive education is underpinned by child-centred pedagogy rather than a teacher-centred approach. Thus, teachers are one of the most significant factors in accommodating all pupils in an equitable learning environment. In this manner it is essential to staff inclusive classes with skilled and trained teachers. Teachers do not gain qualities of good instruction at birth. It requires both high-quality pre-service training and continuous professional development through which teachers can keep themselves up-to-date. Training can also give teachers clear conceptualizations of inclusive education and the skills to create local materials.
Research has indicated that adequately trained professionals are required for students with special needs in regular schools to have meaningful educational services (Eleweke & Roda, 2002), Indeed, reviewing pre-service teacher training activities to ensure programmes and practice experiences support inclusive education initiatives will be a major factor in supporting the movement towards a more inclusive education system. This is similar to recent developments in training colleges in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, many of which are now focussing on integrating inclusive teaching philosophies and strategies into pre-service teacher education programmes to better prepare teachers to support students with diverse learning needs (Arthur-Kelly et al, 2013).
Similarly, in Bangladesh, secondary school teachers need to gain specific knowledge and skills about IE through undergoing appropriate training (Ahsan & Burnip, 2007; Khan, 2012). The TQI-SEP project in Bangladesh has taken some initiatives to facilitate training in inclusive education through continuous professional development activities with secondary’ school teachers (Khan, 2012). However, professional qualifications, like the B.Ed. or M.Ed., are not offering courses related to inclusive education at this moment. In the present curriculum of the B.Ed. there is only one chapter about inclusive education in a course called Educational studies (ES- 101), which is not sufficient for trainee teachers. Therefore, a recommendation needs to be made to the Government of Bangladesh to include more courses on inclusive education within the B.Ed. and M.Ed. programs, so that educational professionals can develop their knowledge about inclusive education and apply that knowledge in their practice. The proposed course Content should include topics such as: gaining a clear understanding of inclusive education, inclusive teaching materials, inclusive classroom practices, and the responsibilities of inclusive education teachers.
Developing teachers’ skills in catering for students with diverse needs is particularly relevant to the Bangladesh context as, when asked, no participants in the research undertaken by Rahman (2011) reported having access to specialist services or information that would support students with a disability. The development and provision of these services is likely to be costly and take many years to establish. However, in the meantime, it may be possible to include appropriate specialist information within pre-service teacher education and on-going professional development training activities. This might involve educating pre-service teachers about the importance of classroom acoustics for supporting students with hearing impairment, or setting up classroom seating to ensure that students with disabilities are able to see and access information more easily. Similar”, teachers could be taught strategies to support the oral language development of students who experience language difficulties. Improving the knowledge of, and skills in, evidence-based teaching strategies that support inclusive education, such as those reported by .Mitchell (2008), will further increase the skills of teachers to support all students in their classroom.
In service training continuing professional development is another area where training in inclusive practices can he implemented. Again, examples from other countries may provide the basis for training initiatives. For example, a project in Kuwait (see Al- Manabri et al., 2013) has shown how a special school can become the focus of inclusion work within an educational context in which inclusion is a relatively new and poorly understood concept.
This project aimed at improving current Kuwaiti mainstream teachers’ attitudes, knowledge and teaching practice related to inclusion, with a focus on children with learning disabilities who were the primary population of the special school. The project involved about six months of awareness events and another 12 months of training in which special school staff provided the mainstream school teachers with first hand experiences of inclusive practices that could be implemented in their own schools. As part of this, teachers and related school staff from 28 schools in the district around the special school visited the special school to view teaching methods targeted at children with special needs, and special school staff visited the mainstream schools to support mainstream teachers in implementing inclusive teaching practices, Such in-service training led to more positive attitudes towards children with special educational needs among trained teachers compared to teachers from another area in Kuwait, as well as improved inclusive practice indicators in the majority of the inclusion area schools.
4) Adequate policy making with clear instruction
Education policies and legislation are required to provide education for children with disabilities in their neighbourhood schools (Eleweke & Rodda, 2002), The Government of Bangladesh has enacted such education policy in 2010 and included a chapter on IE However, this is not sufficient for a full understanding of the concept and its implementation. There is still a need to provide necessary and clear instruction about IE in the policy. Hence, central and regional governments must provide the leadership and direction for inclusive education in Bangladesh.
This includes clarifying the inconsistencies between “full inclusion”, as stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006), of which Bangladesh is a signatory, and the country National Education Policy of “partial inclusion” (with a provision of special schooling) stated in the National Education Policy (Ministry of Education, 2010). Policy direction and specific strategic planning, supported by appropriate internal resource allocation and international support is needed for local communities and schools to be supported in developing inclusive schools.
5) Extended budget allocation for implementation of IE and for research on IE
Financing education is considered as an investment in future development through the enrichment of human capital. As a developing country, Bangladesh has always given priority to education and has often indicated its commitment to providing education for all its children. As a result, a number of plans have been taken up by the Government of Bangladesh, such as the Five Year Plan, the Bangladesh Perspective Plan, as well as its active responses towards international commitments such as Education for All and Millennium Development Goals. For this reason, the Government of Bangladesh needs to invest resources in breaking down challenges to inclusive education (Mahbub, 2008). An inclusive education systern needs resorting from central government and local communities in order to provide services for all students (see also discussions in Foreman, 2011).
(To be continued)
During the last two decades, budget allocation for the education sector has been between 12 and 15 percent of GDP, which is, however, far from the UNESCO prescribed level of 20 percent of GDP. It is also noted that budget allocation for education has been decreasing in recent (Raju & Rahman, 2012). This is a concern, as an increase in the allocation fm education will be needed in order to successfully implement inclusive education. In addition, the Government of Bangladesh needs to provide an allocation for researchers in the field of inclusive education. This support is required to ensure that research continues to support the government, as well as policy makers, to implement inclusive education in schools.
For example, in the research that has formed the background to this chapter, interviews of teachers have reported that a lack of resources, such as assistive technology, is limiting the provision of inclusive education. Assistive technology is well documented to support students with disabilities in regular classrooms. (Mitchell, 2008). For example, the absence of Braille materials or hearing aids creates learning obstacles for students with visual or hearing impairment. Educational professions, such as speech therapists, audiologists and educational or school psychologists are needed to support general teachers. The establishment of school-based resource centres and support services could also go some way to solving some of the barriers identified (see also point 1 above). These services are likely to be costly and would need to be supported by ensuring teachers were capable of providing appropriate assessment and teaching strategies.
In addition, further research is needed to provide a more complete picture of teachers’ perspectives of inclusive education and ways to overcome barriers. For example, additional data on the number of students with disabilities and their educational needs will contribute to understanding the resources needed to support. IE in Bangladesh.
Another line of research that focuses on supporting teachers to determine how much adaptation of curriculum, or change of the learning environment, will be needed to support the participation of students with disabilities will enhance the development of inclusive education settings in Bangladesh.
6) Strategies for inclusion of marginalised groups without disabilities
Some of the initiatives described above can also be applied to facilitate inclusion in education of economically disadvantaged and ethnically different groups as well as the retention In education of girls. In particular, inclusion of marginalised groups can be helped the raising of community awareness, development of home-school relationships, encouragement of community events in the school and the development within teachers’ training and professional development of courses that prepare teachers to understand difference and to adapt their teaching to the needs and life experiences of disadvantaged groups.
International practice and research indicates that learning in the mother tongue (Glynn, Berryman Loader & Cavanagh, 2005) leads to readier assimilation into the environment of schooling, to the development of literacy (in other languages as well as the mother tongue) and to belief that education is a useful too] for community development as well as personal employment opportunities. Initiatives that have been found to be effective in other countries are the training of community members as teachers and the development of a core repertoire of teaching resources written in the mother tongue and grounded in the values and life Contexts of the community. The experience of New Zealand suggests that integration into mainstream is not only option for inclusive access to education. Many indigenous tribal groups have developed their own schools within the government system and not only use their own language for instruction but also base all the protocols of the school and the context for curriculum content on their own cultural values (Macfarlane, 2004) In addition there are a number of strong nationwide professional development programmes to develop teachers’ cross-cultural awareness and to make them more responsive to the needs of their culturally different learners (Berryman & Bishop, 2011).
It needs be acknowledged that educational reform and innovation alone cannot change widespread poverty. Poverty has international as well as local causes and global solutions are required. Nevertheless, while poverty makes it harder for families to support their children’s schooling, it need not prevent it if schools are within walking distance and free, if teachers are sensitive to the needs and life styles of the students, and if families are encourages to see the school as part of their communities and feel welcome within it.
Conclusion
It is evident that a concerted effort at the national level is essential for the implementation of inclusive education in Bangladesh. In this regard, government initiatives like the Teaching Quality Improvement in Secondary Education Project, and the Primary Education Development Programme are helpful for implementing inclusive education, These projects provide continued training and learning teaching and learning materials for primary and secondary school teachers. However, these projects will need further support to overcome the barriers discussed in this chapter. Inclusive education is currently one of the greatest changes in the educational sector in Bangladesh, and on the way to the implement of IE in Bangladesh, there will be enormous challenges. The aim of this chapter, and the research on which it was based, was to explore the key challenges to IE implementation and to highlight some recommendations for educational changes. The main barriers identified were insufficient teacher training, negative society and educational attitudes, a lack of knowledge of IE and policy clarity, the inadequacy of teaching materials and resources, and large class sizes. Recommendations included involving key people from the community, creating special units and professionals in the work of regular schools, training teachers from minority groups and disadvantaged communities, enhancing teacher training provisions both pre-service and as part of continuous professional development, and the allocation of sufficient resources to support teachers and students in their teaching and learning activities. These recommendations for addressing the challenges associated with the effective implementation of inclusive education in Bangladesh will need to be introduced over a period of time and built upon following the initial introduction phase. However, they have the potential to provide Bangladesh ‘with the opportunity to fulfil its educational goals for the 21st century. They will not only lead to greater inclusion, but should lead to better trained, more informed and effective teachers, as well as communities that understand the importance of education for the learner.
