Time to stop polishing the brass on the Titanic: moving beyond ‘quick-and-dirty’ teacher education for inclusion, towards sustainable theories of change

ABSTRACT

Interest in inclusive education in the global south has grown significantly since the adoption of the Salamanca Statement in 1994. Increasingly, those who fund and provide education want to be seen taking action on inclusion generally and disability inclusion specifically. However, the much-welcomed enthusiasm to respond to global commitments is not always matched with the necessary expertise and commitment to longer-term action and change. The growth in inclusive education policies and pilot projects in the last decade is hard to miss, but changes resulting from these interventions are often less apparent. Why is that? Drawing on the Enabling Education Network’s 22 years of experience as a global inclusive education network and consultancy provider, we present alternative pathways for change in teacher education for inclusion. We stress that change in teaching practice remains limited not because inclusive education is a fundamentally flawed concept, but because too much focus is given to ‘quick-and-dirty’ trainings that quickly yield donor-pleasing statistics and publicity-attracting case studies, but fail to elicit sufficiently extensive and sustainable change to education systems and cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Theory of change
• sustainability
• teacher education
• teacher training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ingrid Lewis is Managing Director at Enabling Education Network (EENET), a free-to-use global information network supporting quality inclusive education in resource-poor contexts. Her interests include participatory school improvement and child voice approaches in school communities.

Su Lyn Corcoran is a Research Associate at Manchester Metropolitan University with a PhD in Education from University of Manchester. Her research interests include street-connectedness and inclusive education. She is a volunteer Programme Officer in EENET.

Said Juma is an Assistant Lecturer as the State University of Zanzibar, focusing on teacher education, inclusive education and action research. He has a PhD from University of Jyväskylä, Finland and supports EENET with consultancy assignments in Zanzibar.

Ian Kaplan is Knowledge Management and Education Specialist for Norwegian Afghanistan Committee in Kabul. He has worked extensively as an academic researcher and consultant, with a focus on inclusive education, teacher education and participatory research. He is an EENET Director.

Duncan Little is a Director and Senior Consultant in EENET, specialising in inclusive education and teacher education policy and practice. He is a qualified teacher specialising in children with learning and behavioural difficulties, and a highly experienced teacher educator.

Helen Pinnock is a Senior Consultant in EENET with extensive experience of research, programme and policy development. Her interests include inclusive education system development, participatory school improvement and multilingual education.

Notes

1 https://data.worldbank.org/topic/education Last accessed 25/02/2019.

2 EENET’s Theory of Change is explained within an accessible PowerPoint presentation that includes an audio soundtrack. It can be requested using the link on the website: www.eenet.org.uk/about/eenets-theory-of-change/

3 Real time evaluation is ongoing evaluation which seeks to learn lessons during the course of an initiative to enable changes or improvements to happen before the end of the project.