Globalisation and Quality Equity Inclusive Education

Therese Tchombe Cameroon

OutLine Introduction Globalisation and its implication for education Understanding quality equity inclusive education Skills and competences for inclusive classroom practices Influence of teacher’s beliefs and attitudes on the Learners Reform and Teacher education Conclusion and recommendation

IntroductionReference to globalisation and quality equity inclusive education in African context, searches for: New knowledge, skills, competences beliefs, attitudes and values for both

learners and teachers. What does Africa expects of its children for the 21st century? What specific new profiles are required for globalisation? What type of education? Clear understanding of access How can such education shift from a focus not just on access but on quality

equity and equality to address inclusive education?

Skills, knowledge, beliefs and values acquired through education are the driving force for economic growth and social development. The intrinsic value of education therefore is inclusion of all whereby diversity is valued and respected with a sense of belonging for all.

Globalisation and its implication for education

Globalisation has generated new economic, financial, cultural and social dynamisms that have had implications in how education is seen and managed.

Today, schools need to foster equity, quality and equality in education by revisiting school infrastructure, curriculum, pedagogic practices, class size, assessment, administration, teacher education and partnership with parents and the community.

The World Education Forum (2000), reminds us of the need to adopt effective strategies for the identification and inclusion of all the socially, culturally and economically excluded.

Cont

School now has the major responsibility to develop diverse, flexible, and innovative approaches to learning and teaching.

It needs also to create an enabling learning environment that fosters mutual respect, trust, sense of belonging, interdependency and creative abilities for higher order cognitive achievement and productivity.

Cont With globalization there is need for context specific needs

analysis to identify skills required for the job market, New approaches to education should be based on these

expectations including personal development, Focusing education on the needs of the labour market,

questions how school change its traditional format of operation to respond to the demands of the global era as economic issues are directing educational trends.

Cont. Current curriculum content tend to be supply-driven focusing on

discrete subject matter, standard content and pedagogy for which teachers seem not to be well prepared.

To address inclusive education, the curriculum design should be demand- driven. The identification of learning needs would originate from the analysis of factors that will contribute to the learners’ future success and fulfillment.

The new pedagogic approaches will focus on relevant skills, competences and attitudes required for the labour market and for living.

Competency-based teaching approach is the new vogue but how is this translated in pedagogic action to address all?

Cont There is a mismatch between societal needs and education

offerings. Standardized education common in most schools is

mechanical and not flexible. To meet with today’s expectations, what can be considered

the correct way to teach, to learn, to assess or even to make decisions on policies for a quality and equitable inclusive education?

Globalization is considered as a mechanism for modernization perpetuating Eurocentric educational philosophy at the detriment of Africentric knowledge and values.

Understanding Quality, Equity, Equality Inclusive Education

Education should be participative and therefore inclusive (Dewey,1936). Education should be experiential, taking into account cultural diversity. Education should recognise values. This characterisation underlines the idea of equality through education and the direct relationship between education and participation. Educational equality, just like liberty and justice, are ideals towards which human beings work. Africentric education reflects the above. Quality reflects functional and meaningful learning for all learners (Gibson, 2004). Equity postulates that even if treatment is the same, the individual differences of

learners must be considered that is responding to special education needs (Rodriguez, 2009).

Equality is promoting and offering the same opportunities for all learners (Rodriguez, 2009).

Rodrigues argues that for teachers to be inclusive they must respond reach out to all types of children. Access is quantitative not qualitative.

Cont All children need to be supported equitably through identification and

removal of discriminatory barriers that limit their ability to achieve to their full potential.

Understanding these realities pose great challenges in making schools readiness for inclusive practices and teachers as inclusive teachers. Teachers are unskilled, class sizes are too large, curricula not flexible and teaching methods are unsuitable.

Basically inclusive education is based on the principles of acceptance, connectedness and respect for all in ways that are visible to those concerned through all school activities and actions. All of the above orients how quality and equality in education can be achieved with well trained teachers with the required skills.

Skills development required for classroom practices

Educators’ performances can be valued based on specific acts, functions, and competences defined by their expected roles. Therefore, their academic and professional training needs to be built on skills, attitudes and competences required for practices in the teaching learning and school management. Dewey (1936) had indicated that the best indicator for teacher quality is teacher’s ability to watch and respond to the movement of pupils’/students’ minds with keen awareness of the signs and quality of the responses they exhibit with regard to the subject-matter presented.

Teachers must be in tune the operations and process of the minds of pupils and students they are in contact with. As the minds of teachers move in harmony with those of the pupils/students, they appreciate their difficulties and in this way direct the skills for problem solving and transfer of knowledge.

The teacher is a significant agent in causing learning and intellectual development in the learners ( Hartley, 1992). Thus the teachers’ role can be described in terms of specific acts, functions or competences which are observable and which can be learned as student-teachers or in-service teachers. Skills required, see figure 1

Teacher Characteristics

Technology & Media Skills

Cognitive Competencies

Values &Attitudes Life Skills

Figure 1: Emerging Challenges for Achieving Quality Equity Equality Inclusive Education with Implications for Teacher Education

Cont. The dominant pedagogic practices in classrooms most

often adopt the banking model of education where the role of the learner is receptive.

Freire (1970)states that, the approach “-- transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action-- and inhibits their creative power" (Freire, 1970, p. 77).

Even Rousseau’s philosophy saw the child as an active learner.

• Dewey (1936) was very critical of the transmission of mere facts as the goal of education.

Cont

Pedagogy needs to be based on multiple intelligences to be inclusive.

It is also holistic from an interdisciplinary context. It must be remembered that identification of

specific learning needs requires also the identification of specific learning skills.

What an inclusive education seeks to achieve, is to enable all learners to learn how to learn and develop the skills to link class knowledge and jobs.

Influence of teacher’s beliefs and attitudes on the Learners

It is now well established that teachers’ beliefs and attitudes concerning students with disabilities and special needs have a very powerful influence on their expectations for the progress of such children in mainstream schools (Deisinger, 2000; Scruggs and Mastropieri, 1996, Tchombe a&b).

It is even argued that successful integration or inclusion is only possible where teachers display reasonably positive and accepting attitudes towards children with disabilities and special needs and to the basic principles of inclusion (Giangreco, 1996).

Teachers attitudes and beliefs are known to influence their teaching practices and management strategies in the classroom, and therefore directly influence students’ learning (Smith, 2000, Tchombe b).

Teacher Education

Teacher education programmes in addressing multiple intelligences will provide student teachers with skills and strategies to teach and evaluate wider range of abilities.

Successful inclusion requires the development of teachers who are adequately prepared and are supported to work in inclusive ways. Figure 2 proposes transformative dimensions for teacher education and training

Characterisation of the New School For the 21st Century

Transformative Dimensions

Inclusive Teachers &

Inclusive Pedagogic Inspectors

Reformed Curriculum: Content, pedagogy & assessment

Learner centered

teaching & learning

Resources: ICTS, Media etc

& actor’s literacy

Parents & community

partnership in education

Inclusive Education Quality-Equity-Equality: Respect for Diversity “The

Whole School Paradigm”

Figure 2: Reviewing the school system for inclusive education

Conclusion and Recommendation

Create opportunities for capacity building for teacher educators through exchange and staff mobility

Provide institutions with information communication technological (ICT)tools to enhance the development of new competences and pedagogical skills for sustainable teaching and learning

Cont.

Focus more on teacher education programmes aiming at empowering all children including early childhood

Improve teacher’s status Increase the financial support for teacher

professional development Strengthened teacher pedagogical accountability Bridge the gaps between policies and practices by

involving teachers in decision making Build teacher educators’ capacity

Cont. Schools of the 21st century should address deep learning,

address connectivity and mutual influence that are motivating with actors equipped with clear generic and specific competences.

If learning needs become the premise for designing curriculum, then the concept of multiple intelligences will be addressed. In this approach quality, equity, equality inclusive practices will direct pedagogic practices that will reach out to each child.

Inclusive schooling must be rooted in communities and service systems that value the social inclusion of learner

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