P. Grimes

Imagining inclusive teachers: contesting policy assumptions in relation to the development of inclusive practice in schools

In this article we reflect on data from two research projects in which inclusive practice in the educational system is at issue, in the light of wider field experience (our own and others’) of school and teacher development. We question what we understand to be relatively common, implicit policy assumptions about how teachers develop, by examining the way in which teachers are portrayed and located in these projects. The examples discussed in this article draw on experience in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) and Bangladesh, critically exploring teachers’ roles, position and agency in practice. Similarities and differences rooted in cultural, political and institutional contexts highlight in a productive way the significance and potential dangers of policy assumptions about teachers within the process of development. From Bangladesh, a success story is presented: the case of a group of primary and junior high schools with formal and non-formal characteristics facilitate the inclusion of young people who were previously outside the education system. In these schools, the institutional context for learning appears to sustain teachers’ commitment and motivation. These data suggest the importance of the institutional context to teachers’ practices, and raise questions about approaches to teacher development which omit consideration of that context by, for example, focusing inadvertently on features of individual teachers. We then consider teachers’ responses to the movement for inclusive education in a primary school in the Lao PDR since 2004. Inclusion here was understood to require a significant shift in teacher identity and a movement away from authoritative pedagogy towards the facilitation of a pedagogy which aimed to encourage the active participation of all students. Through a longitudinal study of teachers in one school, the conditions for such change were identified and again cast doubt on some of the assumptions behind large-scale attempts at teacher development. Reflecting on these experiences and the evidence they provide, we suggest that teacher development programmes are more likely to be effective where teachers are considered not as individuals subject to training but as agents located in an influential institutional context.

The Lao PDR Inclusive Education Project 1993–2009: reflections on the impact of a national project aiming to support the inclusion of disabled students

The Lao Peoples Democratic Republic Inclusive Education Project started in 1993 and during a 16-year period, ending in May 2009, it aimed to support the participation of all children in school, with a particular focus on disabled students. The main strategy to enable this involved working to change the education system through the introduction of child-centred approaches to teaching and learning in 539 schools across the country. In this article, we consider the success of this approach, highlighting some of the achievements of the project and also the tensions involved in trying to facilitate the evolution of policy into practice across a national network of schools, referring to evidence collected and analysed during an evaluation of the project in 2008–2009. Our findings indicated that there was some evidence of these new approaches to teaching being used in schools and also that schools appeared to be performing well in significant areas including student enrolment, retention, grade completion and primary completion. There were also significant challenges which still needed to be met. These included a lack of provision for students with more complex needs, such as children with sensory loss, and significant numbers of disabled students who did not attend school.

Considering the continuing development of inclusive teachers: a case study from Bangkok, Thailand

This article explores the barriers to and opportunities for supporting the development of inclusive teachers, based on a case study describing two schools in Bangkok, Thailand. Data were collected between 2003 and 2009 using an ethnographic approach whereby the author positioned as a consultant–researcher visited and worked alongside teachers in the schools several times a year during this period. The case study indicates that there are significant challenges to a view of teacher development for inclusion, which suggests that teacher training is a core component, such as the model presented recently by the World Report on Disability. The cultural world of school leaders and teachers needs to be taken into consideration when trying to understand the ways in which inclusive teacher development can be effectively supported. In the case study, the cultural world of the school principal gives her resources that she then used, as an agent, to directly promote teacher development. She also recognises that teachers need to be supported and then enabled to take ownership of their own development through the creation of spaces that allow meaning to be constructed at a local level, both in the school and in the classroom. These spaces are also facilitated through the author’s role as a consultant–researcher, supporting the development of reflexive dialogue with teachers in the schools. Implications for those concerned with the development of inclusive teachers would suggest that policy initiatives are more likely to be successful if they actively aim to enable teachers and all those who support and work with them, to construct meaning at a local level through dialogic space and facilitated reflection.

‘It’s better than catching frogs’: Understanding the importance of local context in the development of inclusive school self-evaluation in Lao PDR

This article is an account of a project in Laos which aimed to support schools in evaluating and developing responsiveness to diversity in student populations. Teachers, students and members of the community were involved in review, evaluation and leadership of change to improve learning and participation for all school-aged members of the community, including changing school cultures in terms of curriculum and pedagogy and also access to learning for those previously marginalized within communities. The project (in nine primary schools) led to greater shared leadership, participation and voice prompted by self-evaluation. Analysis enabled greater understanding of the challenges and issues in working across cultures to effect sustainable organizational change. Spaces needed to be created at local levels for teachers to construct meaning and develop a sense of agency in making and owning changes in practice. This shifting of responsibility is crucial in order to build sustainable development.