Heading for Inclusive School in Europe
Diversity and inclusion at school.
Firts part
What can we do for a true inclusion? How do we successfully include all students? Inclusion starts with a belief in what is possible not in what is impossible. True "school inclusion" is only possible if we stop seeing diversity as a problem and if we try to make “normal” the specialty.
This sheet has four main objectives:
- to demonstrate how the growing diversity of the student population in schools makes ever more necessary the practice of differentiating education in classroom;
- to explain what is “inclusive education”;
- to show how inclusive practices make effective use of a school's resources;
- to show that behavioral supports help maintain a positive learning environment for everyone.
Survey of inclusion methodologies
Second part
According to inclusive didactics, teachers are supposed to know a great amount of methodologies and techniques which may allow each student to learn in the most proper way. Do teachers have these competences?
We would like to show that knowledge and practicing different methodologies can simplify and reassure teaching.
Baseline sources are classic pedagogical texts, from Dewey to Vygotskij, from Bruner to Gardner, from Freinet to Morin.
Metacognition and teaching / learning styles
The School of Multiple Intelligences: diversify to improve
Third part
Importance of a metacognitive teaching approach; reflection on the learning and teaching styles.
The first sheet is inspired by the reflection on the importance of a metacognitive teaching approach. Since this approach cannot be estranged from the reflection of cognitive styles, afterwards we analyze the influences of the above mentioned styles on the teaching / learning processes. We finally propose a simplification and a reduction of the polarities of the learning styles (and of teaching) to two fundamental reference fields: a systematic analogical and a digital-holistic one. Simplification aims to manage with stronger effectiveness the different individual
situations and to promote and encourage in the students a greater strategic flexibility.
The complexity of the contemporary world and the different educational needs of pupils require to the inclusive school the development of new strategies and modes of intervention in the form of personalization of training proposals.
The second sheet intends to demonstrate that through the theory of multiple intelligences it is possible to achieve a good level of school inclusion thanks to the different forms of intelligence, as well as postulated by Gardner and, consequently, the different ways of learning of each student.
This theory allows to focus the attention on differences in learning processes and to consider diversity as a resource.
Computer technologies and school inclusion:
what design for a difference in value?
Fourth part
Applications for computer technology in teaching (the field of computer science applied to schools and education); computer technologies and school inclusion.
This research is part of studies concerning applications for computer technology in teaching. It places particular emphasis on the possibilities that tools and languages offer to breaking down barriers to learning, and enhancing differences: the unconditional and non-exclusive accessibility of educational materials and contexts is the pivotal theme of this work. When we examine the field of computer science applied to schools and education, contact between different disciplines is as inevitable as it is challenging: any work that sets out to consider potential uses and meanings of IT tools requires an interdisciplinary approach which combines humanities and social sciences with information and communication sciences.
Prospects for the future:
the Flipped Classroom
Fifth part
In this sheet we will focus on what could be one of the most appropriate methodological solutions to address the educational problems related to Special Educational Needs: the Flipped Classroom.
We want to think about the urgency of creating a positive and welcoming School-context, in which to promote the scholastic and social success of each student, through effective planning, methodological, organizational and didactic choices.
This actually responds to a more complex need for the opportunity to change "way of doing school" in order to keep
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- What can we do to achieve a real inclusion? How can we successfully include all students? - To what extent a metacognitive educational approach and a reflection on learning and teaching styles can help to achieve scholastic inclusion? - What are the most appropriate methodological solutions to address the educational problems related to Special Educational Needs? - What behavioral supports should be used to create and maintain a positive learning environment for all? - Can multiple intelligence theory be considered an effective tool for recognizing students' potential, diversifying training and guaranteeing everyone opportunities for success? - What tools and strategies for breaking down access barriers to learning and making the most of differences? - How to make materials and educational contexts accessible to all? - IT technologies and school inclusion: which design for the enhancement of differences? |
Presentation
In the midst of the epochal transition that we are all experiencing, the figure of the teacher-social, a teacher with the 2.0 mind is more than ever necessary: a communicator and facilitator, ready to learn and update through the Net, able to produce digital contents and willing to share them with colleagues, capable of transforming technology and the Internet from tools such as real learning environments. An educator who knows how to find new teaching strategies and try out new methods.
On the other hand, the development of a technology for everyone, even those who possess basic computer skills, combined with the diffusion of the Net and the spirit of sharing that has always characterized the basic philosophy, pushing users to become content editors digital, have allowed the proliferation of software intuitive and easy to use, as well as the creation of free educational resources, produced and shared by teachers all over the world.
This scenario, together with the scientific studies of numerous pedagogists (from Freinet and Dewey's Activism to Rutherford’s Inquiry Learning, to the principles of Jonathan's Social Constructivism and the Connectivism of Siemens), have led to the emergence of new teaching methods, like that of the "flipped classroom", in which the student compares himself at home with the study contents - always transmitted frontally at school - following his own learning rhythms and needs, and then once back in class, under the teacher's guide carries out workshop activities based on learning by discovery, by research, with which he becomes a publisher of study contents and a true protagonist of his own knowledge.
Aims
Recipients
• Teachers of every order, degree and discipline, educators, social workers, psychologists and other professional figures who in daily work come into contact with children / teenagers with special educational needs and want a more specific training or updating;
• Parents of children with S.E.N. who want to acquire useful tools to concretely help their children learn.
Materials and methodology
Materials:
Study notes, in-depth materials, examples of good practice, explanatory videos, links to resources.
Teaching methodology:
Discussion through forums to discuss the issues addressed in the modules, answer any doubts and requests for clarification, share experiences and cases presented by individual students.
