In the right hands, the Catholic Institute’s Education Services handbook Together Now will be indispensable.
Its focus is the implementation of inclusive education – a challenge that is being grappled with by educationalists around the world.
Inclusivity has significant resonances in a South African context. The subject of a recent government policy White Paper, it is an educational approach that seeks to address the inequities in our education system caused by apartheid.
As such, inclusivity is the principle at the heart of our revised national curriculum. It means that all learners have the right to experience quality education. Therefore, no matter what their situation, all schools are compelled by our new national curriculum to push ahead with inclusivity. As Together Now authors Potterton, Utley and Potterton point out, any and all improvements in education quality go hand in hand with inclusion and access.
The authors observe further that these improvements in education quality will necessitate ongoing change in all our schools. According to them, Together Now was written for principals and school leaders, whose job it is to make people understand why schools need to be more inclusive.
I agree that principals and school leaders will find this handbook useful. But in my view, it could prove indispensable to a larger group – teachers. After all, they are the ones at the chalkface who interact with both the school’s physical environment and its learners on a daily basis, and who therefore have first-hand experience of potential and existing learning barriers.
Clearly, teachers are going to need every bit of help they can get to succeed in our new educational environment. And although most of them agree wholeheartedly with the principle of inclusivity,
ironically, some principals and school management teams (SMTs) exclude teachers from crucial planning and implementation sessions around issues of inclusivity.
Alienating teachers is not the way to implement change, say authors Potterton, Utley and Potterton. If schools take the implementation of inclusive education seriously, they would do well to bring teachers fully into the change process. In this regard, if only my colleagues and I had been given copies of Together Now – it is a comprehensive, clear handbook containing all the necessary information for creating more inclusive schools. It is also mercifully devoid of any complicated and confusing ‘eduspeakâ€.
I found the introduction particularly illuminating. It stresses how important it is for principals and SMTs to share with their teaching staff the creation and development of a long-term educational vision. It also includes relevant and fully contextualised extracts from influential educational thinkers such as Gardner, Fullan and McConkey.
The glossary and appendices will also prove useful to teachers and school administrators alike. Here, key concepts are explained, and there is a comprehensive list of contacts and references for those interested in engaging more fully with support groups.
The index for inclusion could prove invaluable in kickstarting and sustaining whole staff debates on inclusion. Likewise, the idea initiator could be used to structure a staff assessment model or process.
Most importantly, Together Now outlines a user-friendly framework to reshape school cultures, policies and practices in order to create secure accepting communities where everyone – including teachers – is valued.
I believe that schools would benefit from using the handbook as a basis for regular staff development workshops around issues to do with inclusive education. As the book deals with important issues such as planning, monitoring, evaluation, review and
recognising learner progress and achievement, SMTs and teachers could work through the book and adapt their findings to their own specific learning environments.
Working groups could also isolate individual chapters for open debate and planning, and could derive much from Potterton, Utley and Potterton’s experience and insights. For example, chapter one focuses on understanding what barriers may impede learning. Chapter two examines ways in which the physical school environment can be modified to make learning a pleasant experience for all concerned. Chapter three explains the need for teachers to understand what learning is, and how they should adapt their teaching to accommodate differing learning styles. Through an analysis of chapter four, teachers can refresh their lesson planning skills. They can also learn how to identify and monitor learners who experience specific barriers to learning.
In chapter five, new and experienced educators alike can benefit from learning more about effective classroom management strategies. And in chapter six, the often confusing area of
assessment is dealt with clearly and simply, giving teachers a range of accessible options to monitor student progress.
Overall, Together Now reinforces the idea that all educators need to be seen as leaders when it comes to implementing inclusion. Quite simply, no one should be excluded from creating an educational vision for schools that will result in top-notch, happy teaching and learning experiences.