Guidance as a tool for inclusive processes in classrooms

Transkript

1 Charlotte Riis Jensen, Denmark Ph.d. fellow, IUP/AU & UCC Guidance as a tool for inclusive processes in classrooms Research questions In which way can guidance of teachers have influence on teachers inclusive practice and how may it affect practice? What kind of approaches, strategies and methods of interventions do inclusive supervisors use and how can these assist to develop including practices in the classrooms? Conceptual and Theoretical framework In my current Ph.d. project I am studying how dialectic processes between supervisors within the field of inclusive education and teachers can have influence on inclusive processes in practice. Furthermore my study focuses on strategies, methods and approaches used by the supervisors. When teachers find that up to twenty five percent of the pupils are challenging and having behavior problems, there is much to indicate that inclusive education in Danish elementary schools represents a major challenge (Nordahl, 2010). A study from EVA 2011 (The Danish Evaluation Institute) emphasizes that centrally placed resource persons are necessary for teachers in their work with creating inclusive practices in the classrooms. Approx. 61% of teachers nationwide in Denmark have already cooperated with centrally placed resource persons to create more inclusive practice in the classrooms. 1

2 Therefore this project sets out to develop the teachers educational and pedagogical competencies by studying how guidance of teachers may provide to improve inclusive processes in classrooms. Roger Slee indicates that an interface between two cultures inclusive practices implies in the schools. A pathological troubleshooter culture in which the teacher's have power to segregate children and a culture where inclusion and the thought of inclusion is a new initiative, a new way of thinking in which the contexts and the relational perspective are determining factors (Slee, 2011). In the empirical data from my study I also find that teachers preconceptions about seeing the pupil with an inherent pathology are being challenged in the guidance processes and that teachers are getting a nascent awareness about how the potentials a relational and contextual perspective contains in relation to inclusive practices. When Slee refers to the fact that an inclusive school calls for a new and different way of doing and thinking about schooling, he also refers to the teaching cultures, the political agenda of school and class culture. According to Slee the thinking is limited and unsustainable when inclusion is going to be about placing children with special needs in an unchanged public school. Instead there must be incorporated new teaching practices and new ways of looking to relate to the general school for all (Slee, 2011). My study shows that supervisors are working with several dimensions in the guidance processes, such as preconceptions, pedagogical approaches and the culture within the classroom. According to Slee diversity should be considered to be a natural part of a social learning strategy and inclusive thinking will therefore benefit all children (Slee, 2011). Furthermore a report from EVA 2013 shows that sixty eight percent of Danish teachers experience the task of creating inclusive learning environments as critical or predominantly critical. My study also shows that an intervention could support the teachers on these critical tasks by developing teachers pedagogical competencies, giving them pedagogical tools and support the teachers approaches and culture in the classrooms. Outline of presentation at ECER At the ECER conference in 2014 my research design will be presented briefly and the phenomenological approach and the phenomenological analytical method will be 2

3 elaborated. Subsequent focus will be on a model of themes drawing upon data from the project. Thus the intention is to show how different themes and meaningful dimensions can emerge from the data by using a phenomenological analysis approach. Methodology and Research Instruments The theoretical framework will focus on theories with a life-world perspective - a firstperson perspective - that can handle a high degree of reflective complexity. Therefore I find the phenomenological approach relevant for this study (Zahavi, Rønholt et al., Dahlberg, Husserl, Giorgi & Giorgi) Data is to be gathered in three municipalities. In each municipality, semi-structured qualitative interviews with inclusion supervisors as well interviews with teachers are conducted (Kvale, 2009). The interviews are collected before, during and after the intervention stages. These interviews are designed to make it possible to follow the changing of understandings, approaches, culture and the teachers experiences of the guidance process. The research also includes observations (Tjora,2012, Løkken, 2012) in the classrooms involved before and after. Other data of the study are documents as the function descriptions of the inclusion supervisor and the strategy for inclusion in the municipality. In the final analysis phase a focus group interview with the three inclusion supervisors involved in the project will be carried out (Morgan, 1997). The analysis phase will be based on a method set taken from "Descriptive pre-husserlian transcendental phenomenolgy", inspired by Giorgi and Giorgi's (2008). In the first stages of the analytical method I will deliberately focus on the three rules that Spinelli has designated (2010, In: Brinkmann and Tanggaard). 1. The Epoche rule; the researcher must put the expectations and preconceptions aside and open herself to the immediate experience of the specific and unique world that is presented. Therefore it will be an intention, as far as possible, to set my own presuppositions aside as a doctoral student (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2008) 2. The Description rule; it is important to rule out causal explanations as much as possible, and instead emphasize sensual, concrete and detailed descriptions. In the second part of the analysis, I intend to make several readings. First, several general readings where I try to get the material "under my skin" (ibid.), then more slow 3

4 readings, in order to allow meaningful dimensions from the data to emerge. (Brinkmann and Tanggaard, 2010). 3. The horizontalisation rule; In the third part of the analysis it is intended to transform the meaningful dimensions into overriding themes, categories and concepts thus to produce an overview and simultaneously avoid to give priority to the elements of the interviews (Ibid.). Expected Outcomes The expected outcome of the study is to generate new knowledge that can be related to teachers inclusive practice as well as new knowledge that can qualify this practice through intervention. On the basis of this project's empirical research, it is therefore an ambition to develop the methods, strategies and approaches that supervisors use as a response to obviate the needs from the teachers (Tetler, 2011b). Through teachers experiences of a supervisory program the ambition is to examine how processes of development can be made possible in an intervention program and how the teachers are able to transform them into a mainstream classroom. The knowledge obtained through this project will also contribute to qualify teachers pedagogical competencies, their approaches in the classrooms and their preconceptions. The study can also support the inclusive practice in the classrooms with new knowledge about the importance of centrally placed resource persons such as supervisors in relation to developing teachers inclusive practice in the classroom. Thus, that the new teaching practices and new ways of relating to the general school for all (Slee, 2011) can be incorporated in relation to the policy of inclusive education. 4

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6 Tetler, 2011b Det mangfoldige klasserum og dets udfordringer til lærerne, marts 2011 Tetler, S., 2011c: Inkluderet i skolens læringsfællesskab En fortløbende problemidentifikations- og løsningsstrategi, Dafolo Zahavi, D. (2011) Husserls fænomenologi. 2. udgave, 3. oplag. Dan Zahavi og Samfundslitteratur, ELI: EVA: EVA (2012) Ressourcepersoners rolle i den pædagogiske praksis, København: Evalueringsinstituttet EVA (2013): Udfordringer og behov for viden En kortlægning af centrale aktørers perspektiver på udfordringer i folkeskolen,