Session Information
02 SES 12 C, Inclusion I: Skills & Identity
Paper Session
Contribution
Since the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD 2006), inclusion became a main issue in general school systems and in education when setting up inclusive classrooms and preparing teachers for inclusive education. Vocational education (VET) though, only recently begun to face the inherent challenges of implementing inclusion. The main relation of VET and inclusion here is mostly seen as VET being a vehicle for social inclusion – via enabling people to successfully enter the labour market. This aim has opened up to students with special educational needs (SEN) due to the CRPD.
From this perspective, dual system countries with an established apprenticeship system are an exception as the vocational school has an educational mission and is part of compulsory education – and accordingly is answering to a wider notion of inclusion (CEDEFOP 2011: 62f.). In the German apprenticeship system, almost one fifth of companies have trained apprentices with special educational needs (Metzler et al. 2016). Furthermore, because of schooling for minors up to a certain age being compulsory, these countries have developed a ‘transitional system’ of varying degree (e.g. in Germany with currently more than 300.000 participants a quite substantial one) in order to school those who did not manage to get an apprenticeship placement as well as to prepare them for the world of work. Schooling in this system is carried out more often than not at VET schools including VET teachers as staff.
Accordingly, inclusion in the apprenticeship system has become an issue. In the last years, special VET schools for learners with special educational needs have been dissolved in countries with apprenticeship-based systems, and various model projects have been carried out in order to enable inclusion in regular apprenticeships as well as in the VET system in general (e.g. Schöpf/Schöpf 2015; Gottbrecht 2016; Koch 2016).
Including students with special educational needs requires VET teachers to successfully collaborate with further pedagogical personnel (social pedagogues, psychologists, etc.) – at the regular school part of apprenticeships as well as in the transitional system. Additionally, teachers have to deal with the tension between special pedagogic measures of fostering and the aim of enabling learners to face the challenges of professional work and strengthening their vocational identity (Fischer/Reimann 2018; Frehe/Kremer 2018) – as in order to successfully enter the labour market graduates have to master transition from the secondary school system to the VET as well as the transition into paid labour as qualified workers.
Routinely dealing with a considerable degree of diversity, VET teachers (at ‘ordinary’ VET classes as well as those of the transitional system) have already developed resources, knowledge, and attitudes to fulfil this task. Specific further education measures for inclusion, though, are still quite rare and their effects have not been systematically evaluated so far. Since research has shown that many teachers feel unprepared to face these challenges (Avrimidis/Norwich 2002) further education of VET teachers and other pedagogical personnel is necessary.
Against this background, a German project develops a further education course for VET teachers, containing four modules: understanding inclusion, co-operation, integrating different ways of learning and competences, and school development. A strong component of the project is the evaluation of the course's impact - using a mixed-methods design, the course's effects will be evaluated on teacher and learner level.
Method
About 50 semi-structured interviews were carried out with German VET school teaching staff as well as heads of school investigating the current state according inclusion as well as the demands on further teacher education. These interviews have been transcripted and coded using MaxQDA. They are currently analysed in depth. For the course evaluation, a mixed-method approach was developed using a quasi-experimental design of intervention and control groups at different schools. For the quantitative part, standardised questionnaires to heads of school, teachers and learners are delivered (including some pre-tests. Apart from gathering teachers' feedback from the modules, the questionnaires survey the learners' social integration, well-being, participation, and self-concepts. The qualitative survey focusses on group discussions with teachers and learners as well as monitoring the behaviour in the classroom. These surveys are carried out at various points before, during and after the intervention.
Expected Outcomes
At the time of ECER 2019, the courses will have been already carried through. The paper will concentrate on the interviews and the course development as well as showing preliminary results of the evaluation. Strengthening VET teachers’ needs in terms of inclusive education as well as the content of a further education that fulfils those needs will make the paper more suitable for a European audience, too. Eventually, all countries with (partly) school-based Vet systems are facing similar challenges here.
References
Avrimidis, E. and Norwich, B., 2002: Teachers’ attitudes towards integration/inclusion: A review of the literature. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 17(2), 129-147. CEDEFOP (Ed.) 2011: Modernising Vocational Education and Training. Fourth Report on Vocational Education and Training Research in Europe: Synthesis Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Fischer, M. und Reimann, D. 2018: Didaktik der Berufsorientierung und Berufsvorbereitung, in: Tramm, Tade, Casper, Marc und Tobias Schlömer (Hg.): Didaktik der beruflichen Bildung - Selbstverständnis, Zukunftsperspektiven und Innovationsschwerpunkte. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann. Frehe, P. und Kremer, H.-H. 2018: Didaktik der Ausbildungsvorbereitung als (eine) Didaktik beruflicher Bildung? In: Tramm, Tade; Casper, Mark; Schlömer, Tobias (Hrsg.): Didaktik der beruflichen Bildung – Selbstverständnis, Zukunftsperspektiven und Innovationsschwerpunkte. Bielefeld 2018, S. 237-256 Gottbrecht, A. 2016: Leitfaden für inklusiven Unterricht an beruflichen Schulen - Ergebnis zum Schulversuch "Inklusive berufliche Bildung in Bayern" der Stiftung Bildungspakt Bayern. München: Stiftung Bildungspakt Bayern. Koch, M. 2016: Inklusion an berufsbildenden Schulen in Niedersachsen: Zur regionalen Differenzierung von Zielgruppen, pädagogischen Kulturen und Handlungskonzepten. In bwp@ 30, Juni 2016 Metzler, C., Pierenkemper, S., Placke, B., Seyda, S. und Werner, D. 2016: Menschen mit Behinderung in der dualen Berufsausbildung: Potenziale zur Stärkung der Inklusion. Schöpf, C. und Schöpf, M. 2015: Integrative Berufsausbildung (IBA) an Tiroler Fachschulen. In: Lernen und Lehren: Elektrotechnik - Informatik, Metalltechnik 119: 103-110.
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