JOIN USNihaal(name changed) is in class 1 at a renowned private school. He loves to go to school. However, at school he has difficulty following classroom rules.
He leaves his seat, invades other students’ space or makes inappropriate noises in class. He does not play with his peers during recess; instead would walk around the playground on his own and pluck leaves and flowers.
Nihaal has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and his parents have appointed a full-time ‘shadow teacher’ for him at school. Despite this accommodation, he is frequently reprimanded for not following the school and classroom rules.
This picture is not very different from the inclusive education practiced in most private schools in the city. Children with special needs (CWSN) who are admitted into the mainstream schools are treated differently (special educators, shadow teachers and resource rooms to support them) but are held to similar standards as their regular peers. The irony here is that despite our claims of inclusion, we continue to assess our fish by their ability to climb trees!
A continuum of services: In regular schools, CWSN are usually placed in a regular classroom or an exclusive special education classroom regardless of the child’s strengths or needs. This decision is largely based on the infrastructure and the human resources available.
Inclusive education can only be provided as a continuum of services ranging from complete immersion in a regular education classroom to exclusive special education classrooms. Based on a child’s readiness to be included in a regular classroom, the child may be placed in any setting along the continuum. A child who has excellent academic skills but struggles with social interaction may be included in a regular classroom for academic instruction and pulled out for social skills training.
At the other end of the spectrum, children who are not ready to handle inclusion ought to be placed in a self-contained setting where they are provided specialised instruction and life skills training. The goal of inclusion is to provide every child an appropriate and comfortable environment to help achieve his/her true potential. The key to creating an inclusive school, and an inclusive society, is to house all these different educational environments on the inclusion spectrum within the same school building.
Individualised assessment and education: Many CWSN find it difficult to cope with the rigorous curriculum offered by most inclusive schools in India. However, assessment seems to be the biggest challenge in successfully implementing inclusion in our schools. No matter how taxing a curriculum is, the students’ understanding of the contents of the curriculum may be assessed in innovative ways. For example, assessment could be customised to ensure that we do not force a creative thinker to merely memorise facts just to reproduce them in the exam or to compel a practical thinker to come up with an original idea.
Moreover, instead of comparing a child to his peers, a child’s current level of performance is to be compared to his/her previous level of performance in the given area to monitor progress.
Every child with special needs should go through the IEP (Individualised Education Plan) process where the child’s skills in various areas are periodically assessed to understand his/her areas of strengths and needs and to prepare realistic plans for his/her instruction and training. A system where a child is not compared to a peer in any manner, is a system that is ready for inclusion!
Collaborative teaching
Some inclusive schools expect their students with special needs also to learn and behave like their regular peers in the classroom. When the students are unable to meet these expectations, the teachers and the school administration insist on a full-time support person for the child to be provided by the parents. This situation has led to the emergence and popularisation of the role of a shadow teacher.
Shadow teaching is a model that is bound to fail. The idea of assigning a child to a shadow teacher places the blame for the child's behaviour almost entirely on the child. The assumption is that placing the child under constant adult supervision will make him/her more compliant.
However, on close observation of the child, it is usually found that although his inappropriate behaviours are consistent across classes, the cause for his behaviour is different in each class (for example, difficulty with a subject, teacher or peer).
Besides, most parents report no behaviour issues at home. Hence, the difficulty to manage CWSN in a classroom cannot entirely be blamed on the disability. However, an emphasis on shadow teaching overlooks these factors and places the blame on the child alone. Moreover, when a child is under the supervision of shadow teacher, the classroom teacher tends to relinquish her responsibility over the child. Consequently, the child loses out on valuable opportunities for inclusive instruction.
To support the inclusive classroom teachers, we should move towards a more collaborative teaching model where the regular teacher is helped by a special educator within the classroom.
The co-teacher will be accessible to every student in the classroom unlike a shadow teacher who works exclusively with a given child. Such an arrangement will help make CWSN less conspicuous in their classrooms and consequently facilitate inclusive education.
As a community, we have to accommodate individuals with different needs among us rather than insisting that they be “normal” in order to be embraced into our community. To build an inclusive community, we need to start inculcating these ideas and values at a young age. Beginning to implement inclusion in schools is the first step towards helping our children open their minds to their differently-abled peers.
(The writer is a school (child and adolescent) psychologist, Mitr of the Child, Bengaluru)