Inclusive teacher education (ITE) defines the professional training of preservice teachers to work in learning spaces encompassing students from all circumstances, regardless of race, linguistic background, gender, socioeconomic status, and special education needs (SEN). This preparation includes the content, pedagogy, and formative experiences required for teachers to work in inclusive schools.
To fully understand ITE, it is necessary to examine what is meant by inclusive education (IE). Indeed, it is essential to explore ITE’s definition since scholars and teacher educators have struggled to agree on what is meant by IE. In addition to disagreements about IE’s definition, support for this idea and its implementation may vary due to the cultural, historical, and political differences specific to local contexts. For these reasons, it is necessary to recognize the inclusive policies, practices, and processes that often shape definitions and concepts related to ITE.
Notwithstanding the ambitious meanings of ITE across the globe, researchers, professionals, and policymakers tend to emphasize a vision of teacher preparation for working with students with disabilities (SWD) or SEN. Also, there is no consensus about which particular aspects matter in teacher education programs, primarily based on ideological differences about the core goals of IE. These differences in views and beliefs have resulted in limited understandings and applications of ITE. For instance, a student with an SEN may also come from a family living in poverty, with no access to books in the home, or speak multiple languages, including languages that are not a part of their first (formal) educational experiences. In such circumstances, there is no agreement about whether ITE programs should focus on students’ linguistic, socioeconomic, learning differences, or multiple factors.
We review the research on ITE in various national contexts. We also discuss how scholars have conceptualized the preparation of future teachers and the implications for greater clarity on how teacher preparation can improve IE in an increasingly diverse society.
Article
Sarah L. Alvarado, Sarah M. Salinas, and Alfredo J. Artiles
Article
Marianna Papastephanou
In its most popular sense, cosmopolitanism is taken to be a way of life and a kind of selfhood. The cosmopolitan self learns from other cultures, embraces diversity, and considers her selfhood or lifestyle defined more by routes than by roots. Thus understood cosmopolitanism becomes a descriptive concept, that is, it says something about how the person lives and acts and about what the person is like. When this cosmopolitan existence is elevated to a political ideal or virtue, it strikes a normative note. For example, to say that a society or an individual is cosmopolitan is to attribute something good to such a society or individual, that is, to see in them a commendable feature or to summon them to acquire it. Philosophy has, from antiquity to the present, formulated, debated, contested, revisited, and negotiated the descriptive and normative aspects of cosmopolitan existence and citizenship. It has thus provided rich and diverse descriptions and prescriptions of cosmopolitanism. Political philosophy, in particular, investigates the relationship of cosmopolitanism with kindred or alternative descriptions and prescriptions of how we exist or should exist in the world.
In line with philosophy, the philosophy of education also considers what counts as cosmopolitan. Often transferring philosophical insights directly to educational frameworks, educational philosophy discusses whether cosmopolitanism (and which version of it) may be a desirable pedagogical aim. Questions such as “who embodies the cosmopolitan,” “what matters as cosmopolitan practice,” or “how to cultivate the cosmopolitan subject and the corresponding citizenship” are indicative of educational-philosophical concerns. At a deeper level, educational philosophy addresses challenges to identity, contestations of Western values, and contemporary, global changes that affect educational appreciations of cosmopolitanism. And it examines how critical approaches to cosmopolitanism and to related notions may shed new light on educational cosmopolitan sensibilities and reveal ambiguities in cosmopolitan political and pedagogical operations.
Article
Jenny E. Kassen
As more young people find language to describe their gendered experiences, education as a field is reckoning with how to best support and affirm them in schools. Research centering on the experiences of transgender and gender diverse students (TGDSs) has brought to light many issues that impact on their school experiences, such as lack of curricular visibility, in-school support, and lack of appropriate facilities, illuminating the systemic forces at play that hamper TGDS participation and livability in schools and drawing attention to the violence that is enacted against them through erasure and overt transphobia. Examining the pervasive violence that TGDSs face at school through a framework of epistemic injustice provides an entry point conceptualizing of violence as extending beyond direct physical or verbal victimization to include the harm done when an individual is disqualified by others as a knower of their own experience. Cultural cisgenderism, the systemic erasure of TGD people in all aspects of society, is the vehicle by which epistemic injustice organizationally and instructionally informs and creates school climates where TGDSs come to be subject to verbal and physical aggression. Understanding the violence that impacts on every aspect of TGDSs’ academic trajectories as expressions of cultural cisgenderism and epistemic violence provides educators with options for intentionally examining the ways in which school systems are complicit in the production of a silence and invisibility around gender diversity which cultivates unsafe gender climates and thus facilitates more overt forms of harm. Examining the more insidious and normalized forms of epistemic violence opens up space to probe more deeply into how a positive—not merely bearable—school experience might be imagined for and with TGDSs.
Article
Don Carter and Gregory Martin
Collectively, terms such as dialogic education and dialogic teaching are used both interchangeably and pervasively in education contexts. No single agreed-upon definition exists for dialogic or combinations of terms such as dialogic instruction and dialogic pedagogy. However, such terms are inclusive of a desire to promote meaningful classroom dialogue where students learn to reason, discuss, argue, and explain; to develop higher order thinking skills; and to transform the world around them. Importantly, dialogue as a type of exchange between individuals or groups draws upon and is expressed through the rich legacies of numerous cultures. For example, literature points to diverse texts and traditions in India and China, continuing cultural practices of “yarning” and “talking circles” in First Nations contexts, the dialogues of Plato and Socrates, as well as more contemporary models in the Western tradition. Unfortunately, Western models of dialogue enjoy a dominance that has marginalized and eroded the value of “other” cultural traditions as well as the diverse ontologies and epistemologies that give rise to them. Under this set of circumstances, Western models of dialogue have been complicit with Eurocentrism, which may also present itself in the form of paternalism within the context of teacher and student relationships. As a counterpoint, the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière has been drawn upon to disrupt the logic of Western models of education, including those that claim to be critical or “emancipatory.” Rancière’s approach represents a departure from normative conceptions of dialogue because it promotes the presupposition of equality between the student and teacher. In Rancière’s conception of education, the elevation of student to co-learner is reinforced by both the teacher’s and the student’s focus on an external artifact—a book or text, for example—which provides the intellectual stimulus for student investigation and dilutes the teacher’s traditional authority as the “master.” In this way, Rancière is able to complement the aims and features of dialogic education and extend it by casting the student as the intellectual equal of the teacher.
Article
Chris Forlin and Dianne Chambers
Special education has undergone continued transformation since societies began to provide an increasing number of specialized, segregated facilities for children with like needs during the 20th century. Since then, there has been a worldwide movement against a segregated approach and toward greater inclusion of students with disabilities into regular schools. The provision of a dual special education and regular school system, nevertheless, remains in existence, even though there has been a strong emphasis on a more inclusive approach since the latter half of the 20th century. As regular schools become more inclusive and teachers more capable of providing appropriate modifications for most students with learning needs, simultaneously there has been an increase in the number of students whose needs are so severe that schools have not been able to accommodate them. While these children and youth have special needs, they are invariably not related to an identified disability but fall more into a category of diversity. In particular, students who are excluded from schools due to severe infringements, those who are disenfranchised from school and refuse to attend, and those with severe emotional, behavioral, or mental health issues are not being serviced by the existing dual system. For these students neither existing special schools that cater to students with disabilities nor regular inclusive schools provide an appropriate education. The provision of a complementary and alternatively focused education to cater to the specific needs of these marginalized students seems to be developing to ensure sustainability of education and to prepare these new groups of students for inclusion into society upon leaving school. This tripartite approach highlights a new era in the movement toward a sustainable, inclusive education system that caters to the needs of all students and specifically those with the most challenging and diverse requirements.
Article
Arnetha F. Ball
In 1950, Erik Erickson introduced the concept of generativity in psychosocial development when referring to an individual’s desire to produce new knowledge that contributes to the guidance of the next generation. Nearly fifty years later, Epstein built on the term generativity in his research when referring to the generation of new or novel behavior in problem-solving. According to Epstein, generativity theory is a formal, predictive, empirically based theory of ongoing behavior in novel environments. Because it can be used to predict generative behavior and engineer new performances, it is also predictive of creativity and offers important contributions to the study of the transformative processes needed by teachers who desire to work effectively with students in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms. The evolution of theories of generativity can be traced from their use in studies of psychosocial development, to their use in studies of education, teacher education, and the preparation of teachers who work effectively in complex, 21st century classrooms. It should be noted that the theme that runs throughout the research literature on generativity over the last seventy years is a focus on using the term generativity theory to refer to a formal, predictive theory of creative behavior in individuals. When applied to education and the development of teachers to teach in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms, it is important to note that oftentimes teachers—many of whom have never worked with diverse student populations before—must develop the ability to translate their desire to teach into a conscious concern to serve the next generation—into a generative commitment to teach all students. They must make decisions to establish goals for generative behavior and then turn those decisions into generative actions and the creation of effective pedagogical solutions that meet the needs of their diverse students. One meaning of generative behavior is to generate things and people, to be creative, productive, and fruitful, to “give birth” to creative pedagogical problem-solving both figuratively and literally. The scholarship on generativity theory emphasizes the notion that generativity, unlike simple altruism or general prosocial behavior, involves the creation of a product or legacy. The qualities emphasized in generativity theory are the qualities needed by teachers who hope to be effective in their work with diverse populations. Generative behavior involves the conservation, restoration, preservation, cultivation, nurturance, or maintenance of that which is deemed worthy of such behavior, as in nurturing children and adapting traditions that link generations and assure continuity over time—through generative concern, action, and narration. Reflection is not enough. Rather, generative action that stems directly from teachers’ commitment, enhanced belief, and stimulated by concern, inner desire and cultural demand is needed. Generative action—which includes the behaviors of creating, maintaining, and offering to others—is the ultimate result of generativity. Narrations of generativity and the use of writing as a pedagogical tool for deep thinking are two means by which the complex relations among demand, desire, concern, belief, internalization, commitment, and action can be captured and analyzed.
Article
Alex Kostogriz and Nikolay Veresov
The concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) emerged in the cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky as a result of the broader quest for a new psychology and forms of education in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. The project of unprecedented socioeconomic transformations created a political demand for education that would build intellectual, physical, and moral capabilities of the new generation of young people. Cultural-historical psychology, at that point in time, emerged as a result of such a demand, investigating the development of psychological functions and the role of education and upbringing in mediating this process. This meant an advancement of the study of mental activity as embedded in social and cultural practices where any intellectual function appears, first, on the social plane and then on the psychological plane of the child. The concept of the ZPD was formed as a result of this genetic law of psychological development that laid a methodological foundation of the new psychology.
In terms of developing this foundation, Vygotsky was among the first psychologists to apply the principles of dialectics, searching for a fundamentally new approach to the analysis and explanation of psychological phenomena, especially their causal-dynamic nature. The concept of the ZPD is illustrative of Vygotsky’s dialectical method insofar as it represents the development of the child as a unity of contradictory relations between her actual level of development and the potential level that the child can achieve in collaboration with others. Initially, Vygotsky introduced the ZPD as a diagnostic principle of defining the child’s abilities to collaborate with others in order to determine the area of evolving and future intellectual functions, rather than evaluating the outcomes of the child’s past development. By prioritizing the role of collaboration in the development of intellectual functions, Vygotsky’s ZPD bridged the world of psychological development and the world of education.
The ZPD, from this perspective, opens up the internal relation between development and education, with the process of education leading the development of intellectual functions. Education creates opportunities for children to build their future capabilities, wakening up, as it were, those processes that could not be possible without their participation in intersubjective encounters or dialogical classroom events. The ZPD, in a pedagogical sense, is a social space of learning and communication in which children can build their consciousness, understandings, self-regulation, and agency. Yet, this is also a space where children’s differences and particularities are most visible. Depending on how diversity is recognized, the process of education can either stimulate or repress intellectual development.
Article
Ben Bindewald
Scholars in diverse democratic societies have theorized tolerance in various ways. Classical liberal tolerance can best be understood as non-interference with forms of behavior or expression one finds objectionable. It has been criticized for being too permissive of hate speech and not demanding enough as a theoretical guide to civic education. Alternatively, robust respect is characterized by open-mindedness and respect for diversity. Critics have suggested that it is too relativistic and overly ambitious as a guide to civic education. Discriminating (in)tolerance suggests that tolerance should only be extended to individuals and groups who support the advancement of egalitarian politics and the interests of historically marginalized groups. It has been criticized for being overly authoritarian and dogmatic. Mutuality emphasizes reciprocity and sustained engagement across difference. Critics argue that it is not revolutionary enough to address past injustices and persistent inequality.
Article
Diana Lawrence-Brown
Differentiated instruction encompasses a wide range of responsive pedagogies, including individualized types and levels of curricula, teaching methods, materials, and assessment strategies. It has at its roots the impetus for effective inclusive schooling, providing supports directly within general education classrooms for students with the full range of exceptionalities (both significant disabilities and giftedness) and other diverse educational characteristics such as cultural and linguistic background and socioeconomic status. To effectively include students with higher levels of need, comparable levels of supports follow the student from the special education setting to the general education classroom. This enriched level of support in the general education classroom benefits not only students with disabilities, but the class as a whole.
The legal and ethical bases for inclusive schooling are connected with various civil rights movements (including race, disability, culture and language, gender); it can be viewed as a response to segregated schooling (and denial of schooling altogether). Schools frequently remove students when traditional educational programs fail, adding on separate programs rather than rectifying the existing system. Such special programs have been routinely promulgated without substantial evidence of their effectiveness over supportive general education classrooms (either for segregated students or for their unlabeled general education peers).
Important aspects of differentiated instruction and inclusive schooling include multilevel instruction; authentic and culturally responsive curricula, methods, and assessment; universal design for learning; assistive and instructional technologies; positive behavioral supports; and a collaborative team approach to instructional decision-making and delivery.
Differentiated instruction and effective inclusive schooling are vital for equitable access to educational opportunities, bringing more responsive curricula, methods, and perspectives to increasingly diverse classrooms and schools.
