Blended Learning on Inclusion

Beginning teachers cooperatively learn to promote inclusion in school

Detail

Learning goals

  • Beginning teachers will develop a better view for each student and will learn to value the diversity of the students as benefit to the school class.
  • Beginning teachers will learn about the special educational needs of children and young people, both physical and cognitive, also those with cultural and ethnic differences to the dominant society surrounding including the language and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.
  • Beginning teachers will be able to use digital tools to collaborate with their colleagues and prepare lessons with a special focus on diversity over distance (home-office).
  • Beginning teachers will be enabled to reflect on difficult situations they encounter in school.
  • They will be enabled to identify the dilemmas connected to such situations.
  • Beginning teachers will be able to get a realistic view on their competencies and their next steps of professionalisation

Learning fields

  • Diversity and inclusive pedagogy
  • Blended learning
  • Reflection/self-assessment
  • Goal setting
  • Cooperation
  • Learning and instruction
  • Critical thinking
  • Value development

Learning path

  • Introduction to the blended learning environment
  • Uploading of a vignette of a challenging situation in the field of inclusion in school
  • Plenary vignettes session 1: Sharing experiences via these vignettes. Categorization of the dilemmas that result from these challenging situations in school, discussion of the needs of the students and the teachers in these situations.
  • Blended learning on the topics: children with special needs, school law, possibilities of inclusive pedagogy
  • Online group session to cooperatively develop a learning path for one student (vignette oninclusion)
  • Plenary vignette session 2: Presentation of possibilities developed in the online group session

Learning methods

  • Developing vignettes
  • Peer discussion
  • Cooperative learning
  • Portfolio

Learning environment

  • Beginning teachers’ lessons on pedagogy
  • Blended learning individually
  • Online meetings in groups of three or four

People involved

  • Beginning teachers
  • Teacher educator in pedagogy

Indicators of success/impact

  • Distant peer meetings of the beginning teachers
  • Presentations of the beginning teachers on their work with the vignettes
  • Mutually observed and shared learning outcomes/competencies acquired through the professional learning activities
  • Vignettes that represent the issues and or dilemmas of beginning teachers in professionally challenging situations
  • Facts and figures where possible

The process as described here may be organized as an intensive event within two or three days but
also in weekly sessions for about four weeks.