Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

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Developing Welcoming Primary Schools in Egypt
"One Step Forward"

Prof. Naguib Khouzam, Assist. Prof. Samia Aziz
Ain Shams University -Cairo - Egypt

Khouzam Naguib
Aziz Samia
seti@seticenter.org

Learning is typically a "complex" activity. Most learning systems contain a number of separate parts that must work together for learning to occur. For example, a typical learning system consists of students, a teacher, a content focus, and resources. This system operates according to a fixed plan--the students follow the teacher's "rules."

In Egypt, there are two main types of schools: governmental (public) schools and non- governmental (private-owned) schools. The majority of children go to the former ones. The current education system dates back to the 19 th Century, in the form of a school system that catered to the mass production mentality. This education system was efficient and measurable, teaching by rote and following rigid academic agendas and it churned out students who were ready to face the demands of the nation's economy.

In today's age of instant information, we still educate our students as if preparing them for a life of machine and assembly line work. Our education system is outmoded.

Today's children need to learn the skills that will help them in today's job market and today's society. They need to learn how to make decisions on their own, work well with others, and sift through vast amounts of information. And it's time our schools rise to the occasion and fill this need for all children regardless of their gender, socioeconomic status or special needs and abilities.

In today's online culture, it's possible for students to access thousands of different topics in a matter of minutes. Yet our current education system is a throwback not just technology-wise, but in many cases, the techniques our teachers use to interact with and impart knowledge to our students are embarrassingly outdated.

In traditional systems, it is seen as being the fault of the children and the families if children do not come to school, or do not learn. By contrast, in an inclusive system it is recognized that schools have an important part to play in children not attending, and not learning. School systems need to accept responsibility for children's learning, by making their systems and methodologies more relevant and responsive to children's needs.

One challenge may be that the school is not adequately prepared to teach a child at a remedial level. Many schools do not provide the necessary teacher training required addressing the needs of a child's reading deficiency. At first grade and later, remedial reading classes typically do not exist. So, there is a need for an alternative that can be trusted that will teach the child the basics of reading so that he or she can become successful in their educational journey.

Teachers often face the challenge of working with multiple unidentified LD and special needs students in a single classroom setting. It is particularly difficult to provide the needed level of attention to each student as they encounter new concepts. Each student learns at a different pace. Attempting to teach all of them in a common class setting leaves some students behind while others are bored with material they have already mastered.

Tracking student progress is a tedious and time-consuming task, and requires time away from the teaching activities that students seek.

"Learning styles" is a popular issue in education these days. In previous generations, learning styles were not even acknowledged, much less accommodated. From one perspective, one could even say that the very concept of "learning disabilities" arose (and continues to arise) from an inability of some teachers and administrators to recognize and deal effectively with the different learning styles of children. In the midst of this, however, there exist a growing number of educators who recognize that children learn in different ways, but there is considerable disagreement over the exact nature of these differences.

The implementation of more inclusive systems of education was possible only if schools themselves were committed to becoming more inclusive. There are many cases where examples of inclusive practices appeared at school level long before any formal national commitment to inclusion. In these cases, schools could be the motors of development in the system as a whole.

School culture had been established with little awareness of the principles of partic­ipation, collaboration and inclusion, thus developing more inclusive practices might challenge existing values, assumptions and practices, and cause disruption. If key figures in the school were committed to becoming more inclusive, this turbulence might be reduced with careful management and new cultures and practices might emerge more easily.

The change process needed to be seen as one that was long-term and required on-going support. This support aimed to encourage the school to reflect upon the problems that would inevitably emerge, looking forward for solutions.

Conditions had to be created for schools and teachers involved. However, this might mean that the conditions were are not typical of those in the rest of the country or district. This meant that its lessons might be difficult to transfer and other teachers and schools might reject it unless they too were offered inducements.

Specialists were available to schools and teachers. They had a role, but it needed to be focused on building capacity in mainstream schools and teachers, not on deskilling them by taking responsi­bility away from them.

It was inappropriate and unhelpful to look at learner difficulties without examining the social context of those difficulties. Barriers to learning and participation arose within the educational system, and indicated a need for the system to change in order to address these barriers.

Education was seen as a process of operating a classroom or a school as a supportive community. Through this process, the school had to build its capac­ity to accept all learners from the local community, and reduce the need to exclude learners. This was approached by:

- developing a holistic, community-based approach to support services - building the capacity of school-based support teams

- facilitating the assessment of systems needs and learner needs

School-Based Staff Development Programs. Educational change within a school context is not a simple process. It is a complex process in that it involves attitudes, actions, beliefs and behavior. Ainscow (1999), basing his conclusions on international experiences in inclusive education, stated that staff development was more powerful in encouraging improve­ments in practice when it was set within the school context and addressed the day-to-day concerns of teachers.

In other words, school-based staff development implied an internally driven process. The aim was to engage staff in thinking together about their own contexts in order to develop their own school improvement and devel­opment plans.

Empowerment and enhancement of the human resources included in the school education system, whether directly (namely school administration, class teachers, activity teachers school psychologist and social worker and workers) and indirectly (inspectors and supervisors and directorate officials). This was carried on through training courses (See results in Figs.1-3)

There was a clear sequence of stages. In particular, schools were not expected to become more inclusive without adequate preparation and support.

• Adopting a whole-school approach

Schools needed to be encouraged to become self-sufficient in responding to children who were marginalized, for whatever reason. In the 'whole-school' approach, all staff members (all teachers, assistants, caretakers, etc) were involved in promoting inclusive practices.

Promoting a whole-school approach was particularly important in rural areas, which were more likely to be isolated from additional support systems. All members of staff within the school needed training and awareness-raising about the inclusion of disabled children, and good leadership was needed from education managers.

The school should be able and willing to commit substantial amounts of time to the training and collaborative activities and there was a willingness to reflect on practice and an openness to new ideas.

• Managing schools

Good management was essential when educational changes were introduced. Local education managers, and head teachers, could ensure that schools were well supported, and could help develop networks between schools. To promote more inclusive practices in schools, education managers could:

•      Ensure that teachers were not overloaded

Careful planning by managers ensured that teachers had manageable workloads, especially number of children identified as having impairments or difficulties in learning.

•      Reward good teachers

Reward systems for teachers who showed extra skills were put in place by managers.

•      Allocate time for teachers to observe each other

One of the most effective ways of improving teachers' practice, and encouraging them to be more flexible and creative, was to enable them to observe each other.

 Managers need to prioritize this in their planning, and ensure that teachers have opportunities to reflect upon their experience. This was a valuable form of in-service training. They also needed to provide ongoing support for teachers who were beginning to work in new ways.

There were good staff relations so that teachers were likely to be willing to collab­orate with each other

The local administration responsible for the school also played a role trying to make the teaching staff relatively stable so that lessons from the project could be learned over time

Strategies were developed to help schools change their cultures and practices. These included enabling teachers to examine their practices and engage in problem-solving.

School networks and partnerships were means of offering support to schools. These included partnerships between NGOs and mainstream schools.

• Community involvement in education

There were many community members who could contribute to the development of inclusive education: CBR workers, community elders, religious leaders, parents, disabled adults and children themselves.

Making use of locally available human and material resources helped to develop links between schools, families and communities, as well as promoting community ownership of inclusive education programs. The long-term goal was to promote inclusion in society as a whole.

Attitudes of the communities could be crucial in determining the extent to which they embraced inclusive practices .

•      Involvement of parents

Families and parents were involved from an early stage. Parents of disabled children are often the strongest advocates for the rights of disabled children to access education. They deserved support to achieve their objectives.

School system in Egypt work through a core curriculum, which is a predetermined body of skills, knowledge, and abilities, taught to all students.

The core curriculum assumes there is a uniform body of knowledge that all students should know. Presumably, this curriculum will produce educated and responsible graduates for the community. Unfortunately, there often isn't much consensus on who the community is and who speaks for the community. The core curriculum is limited to basic academic subjects like Arabic, math, science, and social studies with other activities as music, gymnastics, drawing…etc.

The curriculum is built on a mandated core, which is defined and designed outside the classroom. All students learn a common set of knowledge, skills, and abilities. Academic content remains the primary focus of the core curriculum.

Instruction is based on defined core content. Rather than focusing on discovery, teaching revolves around imparting a predetermined body of knowledge. Although the core curriculum method does not preclude using critical thinking, problem solving, and team learning, it prompts teaching toward the "correct" answer.

The core content literally shapes the assessment process. The core curriculum method easily lends itself to traditional testing based on information recall, as well as the use of conventional letter grades.

In our attempt to develop schools that welcome children with different abilities, we tried to change the tackling of the rigid curriculum which in itself could not be altered.

Our approach was based on mastery and cooperative learning.

Mastery learning proposes that all children can learn when provided with the appropriate learning conditions in the classroom. It is predominantly a group-based, teacher-paced instructional approach, in which students learn by cooperating with their classmates. However, some mastery learning strategies require students to work independently, rather than with classmates.

Cooperative learning consisted of instructional techniques that required positive interdependence between learners, in order for learning to occur.

Both competitive and cooperative interactions were a healthy part of a child's repertoire of behavior. By second grade children had effectively extinguished their cooperative behavior and persist in competition, even when it was counter-productive. By developing deliberately cooperative techniques, educators aimed to correct the unconscious societal and educational bias that favored competition.

In fact, when educators introduced cooperative learning into the classroom, minority learners showed a disproportionate improvement in achievement.

It was up to the instructor to integrate the interactive exercises with the specific lesson content. The teacher gave careful thought to who should collaborate with whom and why, how to manage the classroom while unleashing cooperative activity, and how to balance the attention to both content and cooperative skill building.

"Fairness" does not exist when assessment is uniform, standardized, impersonal, and absolute. Rather, it exists when assessment is appropriate--in other words, when it's personalized, natural, and flexible; when it can be modified to pinpoint specific abilities and function at the relevant level of difficulty; and when it promotes a rapport between examiner and student. To accurately evaluate what a person has learned, an assessment method must examine his or her collective abilities. Teachers were trained to use Authentic assessment. Unfortunately this could not be applied in final or end term exams.

Authentic assessment is often based on performance: Students were asked to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, or competencies in whatever way they find appropriate.

There were several challenges to using authentic assessment methods. They included managing its time-intensive nature, ensuring curricular validity, and minimizing evaluator bias.

Conditions for a welcoming school include not only human resources but also physical environment.

Physical environment included having ramps, having classroom and toilet facilities for the children with visual impairment and physical disability. This was done in collaboration with the "Educational Building Association" which is a governmental association affiliated to the Ministry of Education in Egypt.

Fig.(1): Pre & Post-assessment of teachers in Basic Training course

Fig.(2): Pre & Post-assessment of School KGs teachers in Basic Training course

Fig.(3): Pre & Post-assessment of Community Volunteers in Basic Training course

Fig.(4): Progress of M.F. in KG1 during the school year 2003-2004

Fig.(5): Progress of O.M. (Down Syndrome child) in Primary1 during the school year 2003-2004

Fig. (6): Progress of N.M.(Hearing Impairment) in Primary1 during the school year 2003-2004

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