Initial Teacher Education in Scotland: Mapping Inclusive Pedagogy

Activity

University of Strathclyde, School of Education, Seminar Series

Description

Following the development of the National Framework for Inclusion (STEC, 2009 and updated 2014), the Scottish Universities Inclusion Group have been working to articulate and deliver consistent approaches to the promotion of inclusive pedagogy across initial teacher education courses in Scotland. A collaborative research project, supported by the Scottish Council of Deans, took place in the academic session 2018/19 to identify and map inclusive pedagogy across Scotland’s universities initial teacher education programmes.


We used The Council of Europe’s ‘Tool to Upgrade Teacher Education Practices for Inclusive Education’ (Hollenweger, Pantic and Florian, 2015) to map inclusive teacher education practice and to identify and record how the principled approaches of the Framework for Inclusion are evident in initial teacher education across Scotland. The tool uses an activity model that can be applied to examine the activities that are taking place on our courses, and the intended outcomes.


Mapping using the tool has taken place with qualitative data being collected through audits of programme materials, and some institutions also carried out interviews and surveys with lecturers and students. The findings suggest that while there are some instances where inclusive pedagogy and inclusive education are taught explicitly; for much of the initial teacher education courses, inclusive pedagogy is implicitly present and underpins much of the teaching, learning and assessment which takes place both in university-based learning and placement-based learning.


Conclusions and findings, which will support the further development of initial teacher education courses in Scotland, will be discussed.

Period	20 Jan 2021
Held at	University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom