Inclusive Education
Leave your reflections here on the topic we discussed in our lesson this week.
Did you find the ideas useful? Which ideas do you think you could apply in your classes?What difficulties do you envision you could have while trying to implement these ideas?
After you post your own perspective, could you please provide feedback for at least one post?
I couldn't be present in the class due to internet connection difficulties. But I think the topic of inclusion in the classroom is very important. Every group is heterogenous and it is important to keep that in mind when planning our lessons. Still, sometimes it's easier said than done. The idea of dividing them into groups is great. I find that some students feel more comfortable working that way and making themselves heard. It is also helpful for the teacher because is easier to walk around different groups, hear their ideas and help whoever needs it. There are different ways to group students, but there is one that I think would be more difficult than the others. That is grouping the students according to their level. If we do this, then probably the students who have a higher level will always finish earlier so we need to make sure that they have an extra challange or follow up activities. Otherwise they would be left with nothing to do. That is why it is important to take their differences into account when planning, and be flexible to adjust that plan within our own group of students if necessary.
ResponderBorrarI wrote my comment before reading yours, but both of us said that it is easier said than done! haha
BorrarI agree with you that we need to be flexible and adapt our plans to our students' needs.
Ale Perez.
I found the topic interesting and relevant. I think that nowadays we need to pay attention to the different needs our students have and do something to guarantee that everyone can learn. However, this is easier said than done. I think that one of the main difficulties about turning education inclusive is the fact that it takes a lot of time and work if we do it on our own. I consider this should be an institutional aim, and not an individual desire.
ResponderBorrarAle Perez.
I agree with Ale in the sense that I think inclusive education has to be encouraged by the institutions as well. We may strive for inclusive education in our classes but if institutions support teachers and their individual aims to have a more inclusive education, the results will be greater.
BorrarI completely agree with both of you! I think everyone should be involved, teachers, authorities, and families.
BorrarCouldn't agree more! When the institution and coworkers follow the same path it is definitely much easier to work on new things. Moreover, we enrich our experiences learning from others and their perspectives
BorrarI found the lesson very interesting and enriching. The idea of inclusion is wonderful and I am sure we would all like to apply it in our classrooms but at the same time it is really challenging and it requires a lot of hard work. For this reason, I think that it is great to have lessons -and even whole subjects- in which we can learn various strategies for us to integrate every student, and get everyone involved in the lesson, even in groups in which there are people with different types of intelligence, different ways of learning, and different needs.
ResponderBorrarI completely agree that it is challenging! Having the tools to be able to plan inclusively is really important because without them we don’t have foundation to go on from.
BorrarI think it was a very useful lesson because we have to be aware of our students' needs as individuals and see how we can help them learn, paying attention to their abilities and needs. I liked this idea of planning different activities with the same material, depending on the level and the skills that the groups have. It's interesting because you can ask them to focus on different parts or they may have to find the same information or answers but you show them that there are different ways to achieve that goal. I think that there are some difficulties in connection to inclusive education that we may face. For instance, it takes a lot of time to plan differentiated instructions and organize the groups. It's also difficult to make students understand the purpose of these adaptations, because some of them may not like belonging to the "weaker" group. However, I think that this can be done, because it's necessary for students to see that not all of them have the same difficulties and abilities, and it's important to work on them. And, even though it takes more time to plan the activities, at the end it will be satisfying because you'll see that you've made an effort to facilitate the knowledge to your students.
ResponderBorrarI loved the idea of doing different activities with the same materials too! I also agree with you that some students may feel bad about the organization into different levels, so it is very important to let them become aware of their strengths and weaknesses.
BorrarI think this was a very interesting class. The ideas were definitely very useful and made me rethink how I usually go about the activities that I plan. One of the best things of rethinking our teaching practices is learning from what we have done and thinking of new ways in which we can recognize and meet our students' needs.
ResponderBorrarI consider that planning according to their needs and adapting the material so that everybody in the class can take an active role is definitely a very important thing to do.
What may happen is that we may encounter some kind of resistance from the institution, students or even parents. As with every new change, it may be difficult to make them look out of the box and some complaints such as "Why don't you give the same to all students?" may arise. However, I think it is definitely worth trying so that we somehow get to change the out-dated system and we adapt to what our students need in these times.
Twenty years ago Inclusive Education was defined as an "ongoing process" by Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow ("Index for Inclusion", 2000). Yet, not all the teachers and education institutions are currently dealing with such process, this happens because of numberless reasons. On the one hand, we could mention that some people do not care about social inclusion and the key role education institutions play in this regard. On the other hand, some people are aware of the importance of this issue but argue that the education system lacks too many resources needed to implement inclusive teaching practices. Among the most required resources I could mention: teachers' acknowledgement of inclusiveness as a key attribute of professional work which should pervade all the stages of work (planning, teaching, evaluating, assessing, marking, etc), transdisciplinar articulation to support and complement teachers' work; more teachers' aides and assistants; proper regulation updates to protect teachers as well as students; some supervisor entity which could revise what happens inside both state and private education institutions at all the levels of the education system and, of course, more research contextualized along the whole Argentina.
ResponderBorrarEste comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
BorrarI forgot to mention that within the Lenguas community I have witnessed many contradictions in teachers' procedures and a lot of instances of double discourse in relation to inclusive teaching practices. In spite of being the first tertiary education institution to implement "Inclusive Education for Foreign Language Teaching" in the curriculum, quite a few professors still attach to fixed structures and criteria; which does not coincide either with today's paradigm or the new approaches they are meant to transmit to the teacher-to-bes these days.. According to Argentine National Law of Education (2006), institutions and educators should adjust school curricula and syllabi to actual students´ needs, let´s hope that our "ongoing process" towards Inclusive Education keeps going along this challenging path!!
Borrar