By Wendi Beamish and Stephen Hay, Griffith University
BRISBANE, July 31 – Inclusive schooling in mainstream settings is often considered the gold standard in education for students with special educational needs.
But many students with such needs — who may be neurodivergent or live with disabilities, disorders or other learning difficulties — still end up in segregated specialist schools.
That’s in spite of inclusive education being research-backed and internationally endorsed as ‘best practice’ for two decades, including by the United Nations.
Inclusive education must be transformed from an aspiration into a tangible reality.
But for that to happen, governments and education administrators will need to address ongoing systemic challenges including inadequate teacher training, under-resourcing of mainstream schools and policy woes.
Newly published research into inclusive education throughout the Asia-Pacific region found all three of these themes remain widespread problems in Australia, and to varying degrees in the other countries and regions we studied: British Columbia in Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea.
Lack of adequate teacher training was the most pervasive challenge across the region, being identified in all seven areas in our research.
When done right, inclusive education training is integrated throughout the whole curriculum and delivered comprehensively — to student teachers, to working teachers, and to postgraduate education students.
For one example of pre-service (student teacher) training done well, look to New Zealand: its universities use embedded programs to equip graduates with the values, knowledge, and competencies necessary for implementing inclusive education, as UNESCO’s Asia-Pacific office has pointed out.
Unfortunately, in Australia and many other countries, this training is often fragmented and features stand-alone units on inclusive education, or separate special needs education studies.
Elsewhere throughout the Asia-Pacific region, the situation is arguably even worse: many countries continue to offer postgraduate programs focused on special education rather than inclusive education, perpetuating the divide between general and special education.
There’s also a widespread lack of emphasis on leadership training in inclusive education throughout the region. This highlights a significant gap in preparing school leaders to support inclusive practices throughout their school.
Adequate resourcing underpins the capacity of an education authority to address all other challenges associated with inclusion. It is crucial for the successful implementation of inclusive education, regardless of an education system’s structure.
In Australia and other countries where both mainstream and special education systems coexist such as Macau, mainstream schools often lack the funding and other resources (such as dedicated programs to assist in assessments and interventions) needed to effectively include and educate students with diverse learning problems and complex needs.
Conversely, in British Columbia, which exclusively supports inclusive schooling, reduced government funding has resulted in fewer classroom and specialist teachers — coupled with an increase in students with special educational needs and longer waiting lists.
Both school models are under-resourced in different ways. And in both scenarios, students with special educational needs lose out.
Policy development and implementation provide the framework for sustaining and scaling up inclusive education reforms. They create a clear roadmap with guidelines, standards, and accountability measures that support and evaluate the effectiveness of inclusive practices used in schools.
But policy inertia at the country level presents challenges, as do complex governance structures and gaps between policy formulation and practical implementation.
For an example of policy inertia, just look at how quickly (or rather, how slowly) countries formulated national anti-discrimination legislation in response to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007). Of the seven countries we studied, only Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan were early adopters of its recommendations.
Complex governance structures add to policy inertia. In Australia, the administration and delivery of education remains the constitutional responsibility of the states and territories.
This has led to an uneven and piecemeal approach to developing and implementing inclusive education policies across the country.
It is high time for a unified Australian national policy and practice framework for inclusive education, as other academics including Joanne Anderson and Christopher Boyle have argued.
Policy-to-implementation gaps are also apparent in countries such as South Korea, where concerns arose from national-level inclusion policies being formulated without adequate attention to practical implementation plans at the local level.
If students of all abilities are to receive a quality education in mainstream schools, it’s time to take action on these three systemic issues.
Improving teacher preparation and training could involve ensuring all graduates have the understanding, efficacy and practice needed for teaching students with special educational needs.
Similarly, all practising classroom and specialist teachers could be given a minimum annual amount of inclusion-focused professional development.
In all countries, regardless of school system structure, increased funding targeted at inclusive education would allow mainstream schools to better support students with special educational needs.
Closing the policy-to-practice gap is crucial, too. That could be achieved through governments developing rights-based policies and action plans focused on equity principles to enable students with special educational needs to thrive in mainstream schools.
The region could benefit from, country-specific monitoring bodies set up by each government to periodically audit the progress of each reform.
Some countries could benefit from addressing two further challenges to inclusive education in the region: restricted stakeholder engagement, and limited local research to inform practice. Our research chapter outlines some recommendations for those issues.
Mainstream schooling is a fundamental right, and making it available to all students is long overdue. Tackling these systemic challenges head-on will make inclusive education the new norm throughout our region.
Wendi Beamish and Stephen Hay are senior lecturers at the School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University.
Article courtesy of 360info.
