Preparing beginning teachers for inclusion: designing and assessing supplementary fieldwork experiences

ABSTRACT

Inclusive education requires restructuring educational provision so that mainstream schools are able to provide for the needs of all students in their communities. To help realise this goal, initial teacher education programmes need to better prepare new graduates for teaching students with complex special education needs, including students with intellectual disability. Concerns about the capacity of current school-based placements to prepare new teachers for inclusive classrooms have led some teacher education institutions to develop supplementary fieldwork experiences. The current study involved an investigation into such an experience and looked at the benefits to pre-service teachers (PSTs) of tutoring a young adult with intellectual disability. The findings indicate that PSTs learned effective strategies for differentiating a programme of work and, in their first year of study, were developing a teacher identity. The importance of aligning experiences with coursework units is highlighted and the need for valid assessments of how well initial teacher education programmes are preparing beginning teachers for inclusion, and what these assessments may look like, is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusion
• differentiation
• teacher education
• intellectual disability
• PSTs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Ian Potter Foundation [Education Grant No. 20150655].

Notes on contributors

Sarah Lisa Hopkins

Sarah Hopkins is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University and has many years of experience in primary and secondary teacher education. Her research interests include teacher education, maths education, and computational fluency.

Penny Norma Round

Penny Round is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University and has been working in the area of students with special needs for 25 years. Her research interests include teacher education, students with special needs and gifted education.

Karen Dawn Barley

Karen (prefers Karina) Barley is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Her research interests include teaching children with Autism and Special Needs using iPads.