Short course on “Inclusive Education”

Inclusive Education is about the education of all children in regular schools. The aim of inclusive education is to build an inclusive society which can nurture, develop and use the skills, talents and strengths of all its members and also increase its collective resources. Further, inclusive education emphasises the learners’ rights and needs, and the importance of an education free from discrimination and segregation.

Having considered the importance of inclusive classroom set up, the Ministry of Education accepted in principle, the proposal submitted by the unit of ‘Education for All’ to transform the regular classrooms into inclusive classrooms.

Therefore, there will be a high demand for further education in the field of Inclusive Education (IE), particularly for short term courses. However, the available opportunities for learning inclusive education are very limited in the country. Therefore, the Department of Special Needs Education has decided to offer a short course on ‘Inclusive Education’.

Objectives

This short course will enable the trainee teachers to:-

• acquire relevant competencies in inclusive education so that they could effectively handle diverse of children in their classrooms;
• lay a strong foundation to pursue further education in this field;
• augment their skills to collaborate with parents to enhance their support in inclusive classroom.

Target Group

• Teachers who teach at pre-primary, primary or secondary level schools who wish to enhance their professional skills in this field, and those who are willing to involve in the field of inclusive education.

Applications

Applications will be called once a year. Depending on the number of applications the number of cycles to be conducted in each year will be decided by the Department of Special Needs Education. Only 25 Students will be enrolled for one cycle.

Instruction Procedure

Ten (10) Activity based workshops (one day-6 hours) are proposed as the strategy for conducting this course. Workshops will be conducted only in weekends and/or holidays.

Duration of the course

The duration of the course will be limited to three months so that the Department could be able to conduct the course at least three times a year.

Medium

Initially this course will be conducted in Sinhala. Tamil medium will be commenced in due course.

Certification

The participants will be awarded a certificate of participation by the Faculty of Education of the Open University of Sri Lanka.

Course Structure

Workshop 01  : Concept of inclusive education

Workshop 02  : Identification of diverse learners in inclusive education

Workshop 03  : Becoming an inclusive teacher

Workshop 04  : Creating inclusive classroom environment

Workshop 05  : Creation of inclusive education team

Workshop 06  : Home-school collaboration and parental involvement

Workshop 07  : Reaching all students through different instructional process

Workshop 08  : Reaching students with different learning styles and catering

to multiple intelligence

Workshop 09  : Curriculum development and adaptation for children in Inclusive Education

Workshop 10  : Alternative testing, evaluation and grading methods for students in inclusive classroom.