Learning to Teach Inclusively: Student Teachers' Classroom Inquiries

Citation

Nevin, A.I. (2008), "Learning to Teach Inclusively: Student Teachers' Classroom Inquiries", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 46 No. 5, pp. 656-660. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230810895555

The field of special education is fraught with dilemma and paradox. Historically, special education emerged as a separate system of special classes or residential schools for children with specific categories of disability like mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or sensory impairments. Motivations for that separation ranged from providing humanitarian treatment of vulnerable children concurrently with alleviating or removing the children who were viewed as interrupting the routines of the general education system. However, throughout history there have been children and adults with disabilities, family members, and policy makers who have resisted the cultural and institutional practices of labeling, segregation, and specialization.

In the USA, recent federal legislation, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (Pub. L. No. 108‐446), have focused attention on students with increasingly diverse learning characteristics achieving high‐academic performance in general education. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Pub. L. No. 107‐110) requires high standards and student performance. Both mandates are intended to foster conditions for:

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  better instruction and learning;

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  equality of opportunity to learn; and

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  excellence in performance for all children.

In contrast to segregated special education, inclusive education or inclusion has become viewed as a process where schools welcome, value, support, and empower all students in shared environments and experiences for the purpose of attaining the goals of education (Villa et al., 2008).

Can student teachers become effective collaborators with university teacher education faculty so that they develop their own authoritative voices in creating inclusive classrooms? Oyler, the lead author of this book, practices a unique form of collaboration in her professorial role in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. As she writes in the biographical notes section of the book, Oyler et al. (2006, p. 157) “focuses on issues of social action, accessible curriculum development, and preservice teachers' ideas on diversity and social justice.”

In the process of collecting the life stories that comprise this book, Oyler collaborated with her doctoral student Britt Hamre, who had chronicled the journeys of student teachers in her doctoral dissertation entitled, “Getting it right from the start: novice elementary teachers creating accessible curriculum for all students”. Dr Hamre's role involved supervision of student teachers; Hamre and Oyler set out to develop a more empowering way to work with student teachers. The book allows the reader to peek into their vivid discussions and experience compelling working relationships with a diverse group of five student teachers who conduct their own inquiries: Carine Allaf, Scott Howard, Leslie Gore, Jennifer Lee, and Barbara Wang, the Preservice Inclusion Study Group. The stories make it clear that, unlike some educational catch phrases or buzz words, inclusion has to be a way of life for the student teachers and their community of scholars in order to be effective and successful inclusion professional. Although the book is a collection of essays written by several different people, the essays are all interconnected. The authors make it clear that inclusion is more than paying lip service to the buzzwords. This powerful group of seven tackles some of the big questions that have vexed and challenged teacher educators in these past decades of reform and demands for more inclusive educational practices:

What counts as inclusion? How can “I” plan to teach all children in my inclusive setting?

What are the roles and responsibilities of teachers in inclusive classrooms?

In what ways can the university supervisor foster critical thinking in student teachers by helping them look at and understand their teaching through various lenses?

The book is tightly written in 166 pages and organized into eight chapters, including references, a preface, a subject index and an author index, and author biographical notes. The book comes at a crucial time in the history of teacher preparation in the USA. Today's teachers are unprepared to deal with the complexities of a classroom that represents diversity of all kinds: racial, ethnic, linguistic, and ability. Learning to Teach Inclusively is a book that will be welcomed by those teacher educators who are concerned about the daunting challenges that recent data reveal. For example, Cochran‐Smith and Zeichner (2005) summarized the review by Hollins and Guzman (2005, p. 21):

[…] studies reveal that in addition to being White and middle‐class females, the majority of teacher candidates are from suburbs or small towns and have limited experience with those from cultures or areas different from their own.

Furthermore, Cochran‐Smith and Zeichner (2005) summarized the review by Pugach (2005, p. 25) this way: “Despite the trend toward preparing prospective teachers to work with students with disabilities, few studies of program effects have been studied.”

The book is not a collection of idealistic essays but rather a hard‐driving account of the trials, tribulations, challenges, barriers, and intellectual struggle to resolve profound inequalities in the way children with and without disabilities are treated. It is grounded on solid classroom‐based inquiry. For example, Hamre and Oyler (2004) described collaborative inquiries with graduate students in an inclusive teacher preparation program in a way that evoked concerns and issues about their work in the local schools. In particular, the students' concerns centered on learning to teach inclusively – how to promote equity and belonging, what defines normalcy, how does labeling impact the children and their teachers, and how do teachers differentiate instruction? From the rich descriptive text that resulted in this study, it becomes clear that meaningful dialogue can be facilitated by teacher educators working together with student teachers.

The common element among the strategies described by the authors of the essays is their reliance on problematizing – a procedure that positions the individual to hold seemingly opposite points of view at the same time, thus leading to an appreciation of multiple perspectives. Oyler and Hamre liberally build into their dialogues with the student teachers the problem‐posing education described by the critical theorist, Freire (1970). In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he writes (p. 66): “‘Problem‐posing’ education, responding to the essence of consciousness – intentionality – rejects communiqués and embodies communication.” This pedagogy requires and encourages dialog that validates, challenges, analyzes, and critiques assumptions, ideas, and conclusions without silencing the unique voice(s) of the students. It is most challenging to create a dialectic where two seemingly opposite points of view are held at the same time; it is cognitively demanding work. But, it results in individual students who “own” the resulting dialectic, who acquire a level of consciousness and appreciation about others' points of view that cannot be experienced without the dialectic.

The student teachers in this book do not tread lightly into these turbulent waters. Jen Lee for example poses these vexing questions: how can one size fit all? How do you become a member of an inclusive community? These questions led her to analyze the school culture and school policies. They led her into dialogues with principals at the two schools where she was a student teacher (one school practiced a segregated model, the other an inclusive model). They led her to the library to find out what current researchers are thinking. Learning about the change process helped her deal with her own emotional and cognitive roller coaster; she discovered that there were curricula and lessons where she could create communities of dialogue with the children. Perhaps, most important, she learned that teachers can and do become advocates, a role that she is surely asked to assume now that she is a consulting teacher in a school in Manhattan.

Like Jen Lee, each student teacher adds a unique voice to the dialogue. Carine Allaf's inquiry focused on her search for the “perfect classroom.” The problem she posed was to address the questions of What is normal? Barbara Wang's inquiry focused on how teachers foster peer relationships. Scott Howard investigated the challenge of managing a class full of individuals, a familiar struggle in classroom management that all student teachers must face. Leslie Gore's inquiry focused on designing accessible instruction by taking a capacity building approach in contrast to prevailing practices of diagnostic‐remedial instruction which focuses attention on deficits.

Britt Hamre poses a new vision for supervision which explains how the supervisor must enter the world of student teaching and provide multiple lenses to help student teachers make sense of their experiences. Celia Oyler begins the book with a brilliant essay on learning to teach in heterogeneous elementary classrooms. She includes an overview of inclusion in New York City as well as a description of how the Inclusion Study Group began and was nurtured in the halls of Teachers College. Throughout the chapter, she sprinkles cogent observations from the student teachers to explain both the pedagogy and the outcome. For example, she quotes Scott (p. 4):

We're not saying, “this is it, we have the answers.” Rather, we are saying, “come listen to the journeys we took during a school year as we came to inquire deeply into our experiences of learning to teach and learning from teaching.”

Co‐authored by Celia Oyler and Britt Hamre, the last chapter, Being an inclusive teacher, captures the essence of the book. They contextualize the journeys of their student teachers who emerge to pose more complex and contextualized problems from their first round of techno‐rational questions (what “works” in inclusive classrooms?) They learned together and individually to create accepting learning communities, to investigate their own assumptions about children, and to view the concept of “disability” differently. The capacity perspective allowed student teachers to identify capacities in all children, to strengthen, and then to expand those capacities. New awareness alone cannot sustain change. Oyler and Hamre emphasize that, once a vision is created, its growth must be sustained through social action. They acknowledge, as their student teachers had realized, teachers (p. 146) “must be responsive to educational mandates over which they sometimes have little or not control” (p. 146). They argue that teachers must not be (p. 146) “technicists who merely implement the work that others have mandated.” They can also become advocates and activists who join with others to help make the vision a reality.

Why should leadership personnel care about this book?

There are at least three reasons why leadership personnel should care about the principles and practices revealed in Learning to teach inclusively. First, the student teachers worked in classrooms and schools where educational leaders were required to implement the new federal l mandates that impinged on their prevailing practices. This often messy condition means that some schools practiced segregated special education and others practiced inclusive education. Those school leaders who had the foresight to establish the collaborative relationship with Teachers College and the Preservice Inclusion Study Group and their professors benefited greatly from the changes in classroom culture that the student teachers brought with them.

The second reason that leadership personnel should care about this book is that most school leaders want to hire new teachers who can survive the first three years without leaving the profession. The resilient principled implementation of a critical pedagogy process empowered these student teachers to “become” effective and confident inclusion teachers – a priceless outcome – but one that can only emerge from a partnership between schools and teachers' colleges.

The third reason that leadership personnel should care about this book is because of the impact on the cooperating teachers and children in the student teachers' classrooms. We come to care about Thomas, a kindergartner who is faced with constant removal of privileges; Steven who was frequently reminded to follow the rules, Isaac who was included in the discussion of goals for his Individual Education Plan, Amber and her difficulty with writing … countless engaging and compelling vignettes that capture the often diametrically opposed methods that pervade our teaching profession. The vignettes bring to life what a “deficit model” of education does to the child in comparison to the “capacity building” model. It is perhaps the children who provide the most compelling reason that leaders should care about this book.