Inclusive Education is a new micro-journal dedicated to the day-to-day issues faced by parents and teachers in their every day lives, as we move towards more inclusive schools and society. We are informed by the coalface work of Darrell Wills and other consultants in their efforts to translate what is known in the educational science literature to real applications in the homes and schools of children. We are guided by the most pressing issues faced over the last month by families of PLEDG Projects, the projects developed by Wills over the past quarter century to demonstrate building stronger partnerships between schools and home in the development of all children to achieve greater harmony, development and inclusive lives.
Our first major topic is multi-level teaching. February is close enough to the first month back at school for most children in Australia and we have spent considerable time in case conferences and IEP meetings discussing how teachers might adapt to accommodate students whose skills are slightly to substantially distantiated from the expected levels of the groupings in which they are to be included. A common, although usually unasked questioned is, "How in the world do I alter my thinking, planning and curriculum to include a student so distant from their peers in these activities?"
In the first piece, Wills goes straight to the heart of this matter, asserting that muti-level is not something new to inclusion but is, in fact, something that every classroom grouping faces: the natural multi-levels of children that we universally get when we arrange our classrooms around age. We follow this with a description of the processes he has developed to match the New IQ with the older, slightly worn but common practice of Individual Education Planning (IEP).
In the historical article Wills primarily deconstructs the jargon of authentic, that he believes some authors have "high-jacked" to make something generic into something "special". He briefly traces the origins of what might be really "authentic" so that we can see that it is nothing special, rather something relevant to us all.
Cain adds his impressions and interpretations of a parent and an educator in an emotionally charged discussion dealing with the too common phenomenon we face as more and more students cross the paradigm from 'special' to mainstream': the phenomenon of learned helplessness. In this piece Cain attempts to capture the raw emotion as well as significant learning shared by a teacher and a parent as they come to grips with addressing this issue in their lives.
We conclude with a brief "tip" associated with a teaching concept we have addressed over and again this past month: the importance of mastery learning.
We do not attempt to give complete coverage of the topics addressed (thus the term microjournal) and therefore encourage others to reply, critique, embellish, scaffold and build a more complete understanding.
Hoping you find the small offerings informative as well as entertaining.
Wills & Cain
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