Communities of practice in inclusive education

The data in this paper represent the experiences and perspectives of parents and teachers who worked as communities of practice, designing support plans for the inclusion of three students with intellectual disabilities in general education classrooms. Their reflections, obtained through interviews and questionnaires, show how they constructed relevant knowledge to support these children with special educational needs in their class. The findings show the potential benefits of partnerships and local knowledge in addressing the educational challenge of inclusion.     

Teachers’ Learning Journeys: The Quality Learning Circle as a Model of Professional Development

Worldwide, teachers struggle to keep pace with demands for learning. Educational reforms mandated at a national level require teachers to reconsider their teaching, curriculum and assessment philosophies and practices. This reliance on national policy initiatives increases teachers’ dependence on others knowing what their learning needs might be. Such dependence creates problems for sustained learning because teachers are not encouraged to help themselves. This article introduces an alternative approach to professional development, known as the Quality Learning Circle (QLC), to show how it can empower teachers to become agents of change able to meet both local needs alongside national agendas.     

Social Inclusion for South Australian schooling? Trying to reconcile the promise and the practice

This paper will trace the adoption of a policy of Social Inclusion in schools in one Australian state in terms of the way in which the policy direction, its discourses and adoption reflect a rhetoric of what Ball has labelled a ‘paradigm of convergence’. The analysis will show that the policy discourse, especially in its focus on school retention, appears to endorse the vision of a neo‐liberal entrepreneurial competitor as the educated product despite being initiated and implemented by a Labor state government within a rhetoric of community concern for social justice. The second part of the paper reports on the ways in which primary school leaders have responded to this policy which reflects some older educational discourses and is more in line with a prior version of a well‐run school and an inclusive society.     

Serving,learning and mentoring through the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program

This study describes the collaborative partnership between a Big Brothers Big Sisters organization, an elementary school and the College of Education at a public university. The partnership utilized a mentoring system consisting of elementary students, college students, elementary teachers and university faculty. Benefits of the various stakeholders are discussed.     

全纳教育的实践困惑及其反思

近十多年来,全纳教育一直是特殊教育领域的研究热点。纵观其在世界范围内的发展历程,尽管已经取得了丰硕的成果,但其在实践过程中所遇到的问题却不容忽视。全纳教育在实践中所面临的社会学范式危机、心理学困境,乃至班级教学中所出现的问题,都需要我们以理性的态度反思全纳教育,认识到全纳教育并非唯一、万能的特殊教育模式,进而辩证地对待我国特殊儿童随班就读问题。     

Creating more ‘elbow room’ for collaborative reflective practice in the competitive,performative culture of today's university

We live in ‘a world of clashing interests’ [Zinn, H. (1991). Declarations of independence: Cross-examining American ideology. Toronto: Harper Collins, p. xx]. In a grapple for survival, universities choose to spend less money and time on teaching and learning, less time on robust evaluation of student learning and concomitantly less active support for collaborative reflective practice. However, the situation is even more dire than that outlined above because university management seeks to portray its focus on teaching and learning as genuine and a priority. Considerable effort is spent on encouraging teachers to compete for teaching excellence awards at the same time as universities push academics harder and harder into ‘real research’, that is, research that is not about teaching and learning. This is further exacerbated by the use of teaching quality instruments which have been criticised as unreliable indicators of student learning. This paper argues that individual reflective practitioners collecting and collaborating together can advocate for teaching in the current higher education environment but the outreach of this advocacy is likely to be limited when the advocacy remains within ‘pockets of resistance’. To further promote change from within the institution and extend the breadth and depth of an individual's influence beyond the pockets of resistance, we suggest that individuals use collaborative reflective practice-based strategies aligned with each of the dimensions of the institution's ‘cultural web’. Collaborative reflective practice has the potential to advocate for teaching beyond small groups of enthusiasts because it taps into the often hidden but heart-felt passion and commitment to teaching held by many academics.     

Exploring of new models of research pedagogy: time to let go of master-apprentice style supervision?

While the time-honoured one-to-one supervisory model of higher research degree training has its advantages, recent research suggests that the model also has significant drawbacks, including its hierarchical nature. Nevertheless, this pedagogical model remains the default for higher research pedagogy. Using the discipline of music as a case study, where growing interest in practice-based research has lately demanded considerable fluidity in supervisory practices, this research explores the benefits and challenges of one-to-one models of supervision. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, dialogue forums, survey data, the extant literature and observations of practices at selected higher music education institutions in Australia, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, it recommends and suggests ways to implement more ‘horizontal’ approaches to research pedagogy. The findings of this research may improve teaching and learning experiences and outcomes in higher research degrees in music and the creative arts, and stimulate a reflection of supervisory approaches more generally across the sector.     

国际视野中的合作伙伴教师教育:理念、模式与启示

大学与中小学建立合作伙伴关系是世界教师教育改革的重要策略,基于伙伴的教师教育强调职前教师培养、在职教师专业发展和学校改进。合作伙伴涉及到机构之间的合作和人员之间的合作,基本模式有PDS模式、咨询合作模式、结对合作模式和团队合作模式。影响合作伙伴效果的因素包括文化因素、组织因素、心理因素、情境因素、协作因素、制度因素等。基于合作伙伴的教师教育改革致力于大学与中小学的共同发展。     

‘An attempt to tip the scales’: music and embodied capital in an English secondary school

This article explores class, capital, and aspiration to social mobility in an ethnographic study of an English secondary school. In particular, the article considers the school’s musical instrument programme as a site for inculcating forms of capital, under the auspices of developing skills for upward social mobility. Bringing together Bourdieu’s conceptions of schooling with theories of materiality and situated learning, we contend that this school succeeds in cultivating new forms of embodied capital among students through the development of communities of musical practice. However, a tension remains between emancipatory aims of the programme and the sanctioning and championing of certain forms of dominant cultural practice. The learning environment of the instrument programme highlights the complex and conflicted impact that schooling can have on the development of cultural capital and on reproducing disadvantage and difference.     

Perspectives on inclusive education: learning from each other

Many courses of study are currently available that address inclusive education and, increasingly, distance education is seen as a flexible and appropriately inclusive way to deliver such courses. In this article a team of colleagues, Kieron Sheehy, Jonathan Rix, Melanie Nind and Katy Simmons, discusses the development of an Open University course, E243 Inclusive Education: Learning from Each Other, which was launched in February 2004. The team reflects on their own process of learning from each other and from the rich network of people involved, mirroring some of the course themes in their own journeys. Collaborative learning became a key theme within the course, both as a method for teaching within the ‘inclusive classroom’ and also as the process for producing a course in a contested and challenging area. This experience allowed the team to change and develop their own perspectives on important issues and, it is suggested, allowed the course to include ways in which students could be supported in having the same opportunity.