Understanding and supporting inclusion

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Swinburne University of Technology *

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Sociology

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Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Student id: - Name: Priyanka Kumari Unit name: Understanding and supporting Inclusion. Assignment 1: Reflective Essay Due date: 10 th April 2023

This essay will start by explaining how historical developments of inclusive education has changed drastically in a broad range specially in education setting of Australia. This essay is more likely to focus on Early Years Learning Framework rather than ACARA. In this you will find out how histories have changed education system of disabled children and main thing is how the word disable is taking over by special needs children. These are all satisfied by broad range of research from the unit. I will also explain policies and practices that will underpin Australia inclusive education by inspiring through classroom practices. Furthermore, I will than discuss how educators’ pedagogical approach towards inclusive education has changed and inspired by developing their professional knowledge through various professional engagement. Lastly there will be discussion how educators play an important role in education setting to invite and make parents and children feel inclusive within the service and what are the benefits and challenges are in way to implement inclusive education provided with example. Every child has a fundamental right to education regardless of their ability, whether this is male, female, linguistic, emotional, low socioeconomic or Indigenous people (UNESCO,1994). UNSESCO has special intervention of providing children education, therefore education setting should provide inclusive environment for different characteristics and diversity of children (UNESCO, 1994). In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Right, declare the right to Education for every individual and recommencing the promise made from the community from the 1990 World Conference on Education for all reassuring the right of everyone regardless to their individual different (UNESCO, 1994). Diversity, inclusion, and disability emerged in education setting from the start of 1970 in Australia. There were many special schools which established between 1940 and 1970, to support and implement inclusive educational practices but they were unsuccessful to provide education to special need children not even the special schools. After intervention of karmel report the changes start happening from 1970 but still the process was very slow. Government has also extended their funding to support and provide inclusive education for all, even the private sector got the commonwealth funding to further support education for all. These all took long time to implement, finally in 1981 every jurisdiction in Australia had the policy for disabled students started to become reality in education setting. There is still long way to go to fully integrate education within Australia. According to Forlin, by 1990 most

school had education support worker to help special need children. By 2006, states of Australia have established their Education Support (ESC) Centre to support disabled children and trained staff to work and embed inclusive education. Education for all move forward pretty quick with the help of Salamanca statement (UNESCO,1994) and education setting and finally started implementing inclusive education within the service. While going through essential reading, I found there is a huge change in education system for special need children in Australia, start from 1970 to 2006. The data and the percentage of special schools and number of special need children in each states attend the service is remarkable. Disability discrimination act (DDA) and Disability standards for Education (DSfe) started helping education setting to implement curriculum according to the need of community, such as hiring inclusion support worker, physiologist, learning support teacher, speech therapist and physio to further support education for all (DDA,1992). As we are all aware that Australia is a culturally diverse country. Now a days teachers are also getting opportunity to upskill their knowledge how to better support in inclusive education. For example, if a child attends your service with a less gross moto skills teacher must closely observe and communicate with parents effectively and suggest them where they can go for better support and how you can assist that child to develop gross motor skills. When an education setting encourages and facilitate to improve their education system for children regardless of any differences, it gave the students as well as parents sense of belonging and motivate them to achieve same goals for everyone (ACECQA,2020b). UNICEF has emphasized on the rights of child about inclusive policies and practices implementing on education setting and describes as “ every child have rights to be treated equally and, no matter who they are, where they live, what their parents do, what language they speak, what their religion is, whether they are a boy or girl, what their culture is, whether they have a disability, whether they are rich or poor. No child should be treated unfairly on any basis” (UNICEF,2008). According to codes of conduct and ethics teachers are getting more positive attitude for taking care of children’s health, safety and wellbeing. It’s been decade the codes of conduct have established to support teacher and demonstrate their knowledge to being inclusive in their classroom. Since, then many things have changed and teacher has to demonstrate their professional behaviour with all the learners whom

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they are responsible to teach, educate for better future (Victorian institute of teaching, 2020). There are many benefits of including above policy in educational practice such as everyone within the education setting feels included with their culture, disability, gender and socioeconomic background. One example I would like to go through that which I implement in my practice is running buddy program which helps children to get know in more depth by having direct conversation by engaging in appropriate learning experience. This was possible by having a skilled inclusion support worker in service. Inclusion support worker helps service to implement and review service policies which will be beneficial for all-inclusive families and achieve their goals supporting towards inclusive families. Inclusion support worker also educator to identify. Australian Commonwealth government helps early childhood sector by providing support through inclusion agencies. These agencies help Australian education setting to provide training to educators to gain knowledge how to support to teacher to implement inclusive education for all (Department of education,2014). What I understand so far from the historical developments and policy documentation is our perception will change everything not the disability that our society is holding (Cologon,2014). Over the centuries laws and regulations has changed and that also changed people attitude towards seeing disablism, ableism as a whole community regarding everyone has interests, strengths and abilities. I believe it is our job as educators to get to know children on a more meaningful level, embracing children’s strengths and working towards and assisting in areas of difficulty. We need to take part in teamwork with our peers in our industry, and the broader community to create an accepting and diverse society. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) has set a standard for each state to follow and educate every child in our community. AITSL has special emphasis for educating every child through professional teacher by following standards which has included in AITSL. Some of the standard which mainly focuses on students with disability these are standard “1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students and 1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability” (AITSL, 2018, p. 41). Example of applying this standard within the classroom is, teacher will implement learning experience that are responsive to everyone within the classroom such as access of wheelchair those who are not able to take part into

learning activities like others they can take part by having access of wheel chair. I believe that there are still many challenges in implementing inclusive practices within the education setting specially in childcare. These are lack of inclusion support worker and unable to provide professional knowledge about how to work with special need children and involve them inclusively within the classroom (Fenton, Walsh, Wong, & Cumming, 2015). There are more benefits of implementing contemporary practice when everyone works together helps to remove barries and support inclusion. For example, in my service we have two inclusion support worker where they support particular child but sometimes if we need help they are able to support whole class. The way education system has changed from 1990’s till now in Australia helped teacher to change their attitude and work towards strength-based approach to implement inclusive education. I believe applying strength-based approach within the classroom helps children to succeed and achieve outcomes. This is getting possible because of the training and courses the universities and Australian commonwealth government are providing to educational setting and education setting helps educators to gain the knowledge from these training and making it mandatory to further support their inclusive classroom with confidence and courage. By reading medical model and social model I learned how teachers’ pedagogy have changed now, rather than neglecting disable child from any education more focusing on providing and supporting through strength-based approach that helps to remove barries. I believe by reading all the histories and policy of inclusion there are resources everywhere around us, just teacher needs to change their perspective and utilise in a way to implement inclusivity within the classroom and make the appropriate steps to make the environment inclusive, but I think strength is the best way to support children and families in learning environment (Fenton, Walsh, Wong, & Cumming, 2015)According to Lev Vygotsky human has two kinds of behaviour first one is normal and another one is abnormal. They just need further support to utilise in a way that is beneficiates. These two natures of human follow certain pattern and formation. Vygotsky has put his theory about defectology. Through this theory he tries to convey that child should not be identified as disability rather than their strength (Dixon & Verenikina, 2007). Teacher plays a crucial role in student life to achieve set up outcome for a particular child or a group of children by providing

equal support. Inclusion support worker plays an important role to help educator to work with special need children confidentially and provide best education by finding out the strength of that child. Educator should also work with families with transparency that will help children to further support to achieve same goals. Educator should also consider what is the family needs because every family has different needs. When will educator have open communication about their needs it will easier for everyone to participate in education setting and support that child to achieve same goal ('family-cantered practice' mean in an early childhood setting? 2014). Education setting can create inclusion support portal where educator can support families and children by getting information from there. This will remove any kind of barriers which children experience and will help to move towards inclusion (UNESCO).I believe early years setting and educators should work together with whole communities to provide efficient training to educator to work towards inclusion and set up high standards of every child within the service (Cwlth) (Federal Register of Legislation, 2011).There is one example I want to bring it here to justify strength based approach. I have one boy in my care diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay and Hypotonia. We are working on his strength by engaging in learning experiences such as drawing, painting, cutting, playing with small tools/toys such as small Lego, connectors, peg boards to promote his eye-hand coordination and fine motor skill. We are also continuing to engage him in physical activities indoor and outdoor such as bike riding, ball/balloon games, balancing board, running games with his peers, etc. He has become more engaged in these experiences than before. This essay has explored how histories about inclusion changed and now finally in that stage to provide education for all regardless of any gender, special needs, culture etc by justifying resources from the unit. Furthermore, how histories have impacted education setting to implement inclusiveness around the service through contemporary practices. This essay has also explored policy documentation and how it looks like in our practice and impact Lastly this essay is focused on pedagogy more focused on strength-based approach and how this approach will help children and family to fully invest themselves with example.

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References Cologon, K. (2014) ‘Chapter 2: Ableism, disablism and the early years', in Inclusive education in early years: Right from the start. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press. Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cwlth). Australian Government. (1992). Retrieved from https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00763 Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cwlth). Australian Government. (1992). Retrieved from https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00763 Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cwlth). Australian Government. (1992). Retrieved from https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00763 Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Act. (2009). Retrieved from https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2011C00175 Dixon R. M. and Verenikina, I. (2007) Towards inclusive schools: An examination of socio-cultural theory and inclusive practices and policy in New South Wales DET schools. Learning and sociocultural theory: Exploring modern Vygotskian Perspectives International Workshop 2007, 1(1). Early Childhood Management Services. (2014, May 16). What does 'family-centered practice' mean in an early childhood setting? [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ffm63vGVIw Fenton, A., Walsh, K., Wong, S., and Cumming, T. (2015) Using strengths-based approaches in early years practice and research, International journal of early childhood. 47(1) 27. Forlin C. (2006) Inclusive education in Australia ten years after Salamanca. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 21(3), pp. 265-277. UNESCO. (1994) The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education. World conference on special needs education: Access and quality. Retrieved from https://www.european-agency.org/sites/default/files/salamanca- statement-and-framework.pdf . UNICEF. (2008). UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in child friendly language. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/rightsite/files/uncrcchilldfriendlylanguage.pdf Victorian Institute of Teaching. (2015). Codes of Conduct and Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/professional-responsibilities/conduct-and-ethics

Understanding and supporting inclusion

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