Session Information
10 SES 11 B, Education for All: Developing an inclusive classroom
Paper Session
Contribution
An effective educational and inclusive programme for a child with autism requires the expertise of a team of teachers and school staff working together in a careful, coordinated manner, in partnership with parents and family members. Competence is fundamental to understanding and designing a learning plan for children on the autism spectrum. Believing in the importance of promoting effective training opportunities for teachers, inclusion for children with autism also means developing strategies and research that investigate how to implement teachers’ awareness and competence in welcome diversity in their classes.
This research examines the training needs of regular and support teachers welcoming in mainstream primary school classes children on the spectrum. The research analyses the first step (state of the art) of implementing a new training model by focusing on what is the real training need of school professionals. The research questions are:
i) Which type of training has been delivered to teachers working with pupils with autism?;
ii) What are the actual training needs that primary school teachers have related to autism?;
iii) How further training can improve the inclusive work with children with autism?;
iv) What needs to be done to implement a new training model on a local level to promote a positive community of practice?
Method
Methods: This research was designed as an action research collaborative case study using multi-methods approach, thus allowing the researcher to catch the complexity of each single case through a deep detailed analysis of selected aspects. The researcher team explored the questions described above involving primary school teachers active in the province of Monza and Brianza (Northern Italy) through focus groups (3), semi-structured interviews (9) and questionnaires (185). The qualitative and quantitative data collected during the research were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).
Expected Outcomes
The research findings highlight that there is a very high training need about autism and inclusion in mainstream primary school teachers that welcome a child on the spectrum. The delivered training hasn’t been enough for supporting the awareness and competence on this specific educational topic. Participants declare to know what autism is but they feel what they know is not yet sufficient to properly support an autistic pupil at school. The results highlight that a new training model is needed: it should be able to increase the teachers’ ability to make inclusion happen in every school through an active and participatory methodology. Mainstream primary school teachers that participated at this research has been widely trained on the topic of autism but it is not enough to be surely able to teach in an inclusive classroom. A new active and modular training can be the opportunity to strengthen teaching end educational skills, making the teacher capable to support the pupil across the whole scholastic span.
References
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