The Essay On Inclusive Classroom Practices In Education Is Crucial.

What are inclusive practices?

The general belief in modern-day teaching in schools and the belief in society is that no two people are the same and needless to say no two children are the same. Different children have different ambitions hence teaching different students requires different methods and strategies. This is done to make sure that every student has access to education and education materials. Hence every lesson that is taught is taught differently and uniquely for the student to understand.

Soukakou, E. P., Winton, P. J., West, T. A., Sideris, J. H., & Rucker, L. M. (2014). Measuring the quality of inclusive practices: Findings from the inclusive classroom profile pilot. Journal of Early Intervention, 36(3), 223-240.

Soukakou et al., (2014) are some of the fines researchers who have paved the way in the field of inclusive teaching. Their work has already acknowledged the importance of inclusive teaching and right now the report is focused on assessing the reliability of the various methods and techniques of Inclusive Classroom Practices. Extensive research was done based on the previous findings of the relevant research. This is done to validate the various methods and importance of inclusive classroom practices. The first thing that the report stresses on the fact that every teacher should focus on teaching students with disabilities with extra care and love as they are completely different from normal children. And their research shows that every 3 out of 10 teachers in school treat students in a very unfair way at the same time they treat students with disability in a very unsatisfactory and rude way (Buli-Holmberg & Jeyaprathaban, 2016). Research has proven that this makes the child go through the trauma that affects their adulthood. Research shows that 41.67% of the total students with disabilities receive special treatment meaning there are more than 50% of the children with disability are not treated legally. The main objective of the report is to find out the evidence of early childhood trauma due to teachers treating improperly (Soldevila Pérez, Naranjo Llanos & Muntaner Guasp, 2017). To show how the various inclusive practices can help a student in general. Their research also shows that 59% of all classrooms have at least one child with a disability. The main objective of inclusive practices is to make the children feel included and equal sing various methods of teaching that is different from the traditional concepts. At the same time, it is to be understood that the teachers must go through proper teaching and training to understand the importance and impact of their behavior and treatment of the students in their class. But according to Rouse & Florian (2012), inclusive practices will only be possible if the change and realization happen from the root of the system. They have explained that society needs to change and understand first before any other entity. Then only the upbringing will be such that every child will learn to respect every other irrespective of their differences and when they grow up naturally new generation teachers will specially treat different students and teach them differently in ways that are best suited for them with the constant thought of building a better community.

Why is inclusive teaching important?

However, there were limitations to the report that when the sample was chosen there is no guarantee that the sample will have a different or rater more diverse group of students. For example in terms of infrastructure or teacher category and degree may perhaps be different in different locations hence if the sample is chosen from a very evolved advanced metropolitan area then there will be absolutely no negative data hence the research will be inconclusive, the same problem which was most recently described in depth by Paju et al 2022 in their report how the research in such field requires heavy data from a wide variety of geographical locations (Paju et al., 2022). There is a huge ground for performing future research on the impact of family behavior on children with disability as research shows that many parents do not teach or behave properly with their children at home which results in traumatizing childhood which is always a bad thing for the children. Hence the existing research along with the new materials can be added to perform new research on the relevant field but from a different perspective.

Muñoz-Martínez, Y., Gárate-Vergara, F., & Marambio-Carrasco, C. (2021). Training and support for inclusive practices: Transformation from cooperation in teaching and learning. Sustainability, 13(5), 2583.

Muñoz-Martínez, Gárate-Vergara & Marambio-Carrasco, (2021) has conducted a primary research based on a schools in various locations. The motive was to figure out whether training and support in inclusive practices can help in the transformation of teachers and guides in a way that they are more prone to using various methods in their teaching style that can help students in growing and learning together in a fair way (Muñoz-Martínez, Gárate-Vergara & Marambio-Carrasco, 2021). They explained that inclusive education is the method that is used for the diverse needs of different students to reduce the exclusion of students. They also explain how this can be made possible if certain practices are removed from society and certain new methods and perspectives are added (Alexiadou & Essex, 2016). The education system must evolve into something better. They must focus on changing the perspective of teachers toward the meaning of teaching. Teaching is not only subject-based but there is more than that, they must help in the growth of students in the field of personality and character as well. The changes are to be essentially sustainable as well. Inclusive and equal education should be a common trend in educational facilities all over. They have explained how training the teachers in various methodologies can allow students to have a better opportunity at fair education. The article states that fundamental changes in society are also needed to make inclusive teaching a better practice and habit. This will allow a positive experience in the inclusive methods of teaching and will constantly promote inclusive teaching (Mulholland & O'Connor, 2016). There must be a significant improvement in the focus where the adults and children can establish a link the inclusive values to their actions. Cooperative learning is by far the most popular method that is adapted for inclusive teaching.

Current research on inclusive classroom practices

When it comes to using a systematic method the experts have carefully planned and executed every part with dedication and careful commitment. They have chosen three schools from a specific region to increase the diverse category of students to extract better information. They have also selected a diverse age group of students. Then they selected different teachers from different schools around 40 teachers were selected to make the research participants as different as possible to generate the best results. The primary research method was to ask the participants various relevant questions and record their answers to find out a pattern if there is any. A qualitative method was used by the experts in this research with a descriptive approach. The research will mainly focus on the experiences and responses and create the outcome based on those. The outcome was such that the experts suggested that cooperative learning is one of the many solutions to the problem. Another possible solution changing the organizational model of the educational institute. They have also proven that many barriers in the school change process are just not willing to accept the new ideologies and methods. Empathy is one of the most important traits that an individual can have. It can be concluded that this research has plenty of theoretical concepts involved with logical explanations. However, the project has various limitations where the first one is that the voices of students cannot be properly analyzed as the younger age groups may not be able to explain properly their experiences. In the future perhaps organizing group discussions will allow more students to open up and share their experiences which can create better research on the grounds of how inclusive teaching practices can create a positive atmosphere and method of education (Akalin et al., 2014).

The first and most important thing that I have learned from this project is that everyone irrespective of their challenges or rather disabilities is to be treated equally. I also understood the fact that every teacher needs to have a significant amount of empathy to understand the students better and teach them in a much better way. The most important learning was that understanding students better and letting them get to know the teacher is a much better practice at school. So when students get to know their teacher more a bond develops between the teacher and student, teachers will automatically understand the student better and know their strengths and weaknesses and teach them or rather treat them accordingly.  When students are given freedom in creativity naturally they become happy as they feel freedom. Teachers must always have a variety of methods for delivering instructions to various students as each student have their strength in grasping knowledge. For example, some students prefer or rather understand instructions better when provided in written format and some understand or comprehend better when told or explained verbally face to face. It is not an easy task to teach a student the much more difficult task for teachers is to understand students. As children at tender age tend to hide their actual personality or perhaps in many cases their personality is clouded by trauma. Hence as a teacher, it is of the utmost importance for every one of us to first understand the student, then bring them closer to a community so that they feel included then understand them further to figure out how to best tackle them and teach them.

Conclusion

Teachers always play an important role in the lives of every human being as they are the primary source of learning and are responsible to shape or guide human beings towards their careers. They can have a great impact on children. Inclusive practice in modern-day society is of utmost importance and needless to say every child must feel that they are a part of a community, they must feel accepted and most importantly they must feel like they have a purpose. A teacher’s job is not only to teach but also to guide and fix any broken souls. 

References

Akalin, S., Demir, S., Sucuoglu, B., Bakkaloglu, H., & Iscen, F. (2014). The Needs of Inclusive Preschool Teachers about Inclusive Practices. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 54, 39-60.

Alexiadou, N., & Essex, J. (2016). Teacher education for inclusive practice–responding to policy. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 5-19.

Buli-Holmberg, J., & Jeyaprathaban, S. (2016). Effective practice in inclusive and special needs education. International journal of special education, 31(1), 119-134.

Buli-Holmberg, J., & Jeyaprathaban, S. (2016). Effective practice in inclusive and special needs education. International journal of special education, 31(1), 119-134.

Mulholland, M., & O'Connor, U. (2016). Collaborative classroom practice for inclusion: Perspectives of classroom teachers and learning support/resource teachers. International journal of inclusive education, 20(10), 1070-1083.

Muñoz-Martínez, Y., Gárate-Vergara, F., & Marambio-Carrasco, C. (2021). Training and support for inclusive practices: Transformation from cooperation in teaching and learning. Sustainability, 13(5), 2583.

Paju, B., Kajamaa, A., Pirttimaa, R., & Kontu, E. (2022). Collaboration for inclusive practices: Teaching staff perspectives from Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 66(3), 427-440.

Rouse, M., & Florian, L. (2012, September). Inclusive practice project. In Keynote at EIS & University of Aberdeen School of Education Enhancing Inclusive Practice conference. May, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Soldevila Pérez, J., Naranjo Llanos, M., & Muntaner Guasp, J. J. (2017). Inclusive practices: the role of the support teacher. Aula abierta.

Soukakou, E. P., Winton, P. J., West, T. A., Sideris, J. H., & Rucker, L. M. (2014). Measuring the quality of inclusive practices: Findings from the inclusive classroom profile pilot. Journal of Early Intervention, 36(3), 223-240.