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Lessons learned from 2017
30/01/2018

The start of the new year is a good time to reflect on some of VVOB’s achievements in 2017 and to look forward to 2018. One of the aspects of our programme is to bring together officials from Inclusive Education and Curriculum Section to streamline and enrich their support to schools for the inclusion of all learners.

Breaking barriers to learning: A significant “positive” change for the direct target group

For a long time, inclusive education was perceived as a specific matter, related to special needs and rooted in a medical model. The Department of Education established a section dedicated to Inclusive Education, next to the existing sections for Curriculum, Leadership and Teacher Development. However, challenging exclusionary practices are still commonplace in schools and classrooms and are not replaced with pedagogies that are inclusive of learner diversity.

Early 2017, our study targeting district education specialists from the Curriculum section in Free State province revealed that only 8% is actively working together with their colleagues from the Inclusive Education section in their support to schools. More than half of these Curriculum specialists have only referred children with extreme cases to their counterparts of Inclusive Education. But what about the 80-95% of the learners who could benefit from preventive and proactive measures in ordinary schools?

In 2017, VVOB launched a learning trajectory which brought together 51 officials from the Inclusive Education and 90 officials from the Curriculum section, split per district. The purpose was to streamline and enrich their support to schools for the inclusion of all learners. Participants learned with and from each other.

“Collaboration with Curriculum section is very important. Our role as Inclusive section is support. We support the gap in Curriculum, whatever it is that the child can’t understand or master, to avoid misplacement.” (Inclusive Education Specialist)

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“The workshop has been an eye-opener. Many times, Subject Advisors don’t like to talk about inclusivity because they think it belongs to another section. This workshop has taught me that inclusivity is for all.” (Curriculum Education Specialist)

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Critical Success Factors

  • Bringing together education specialists from both sections. Where curriculum specialists need specialised pedagogical skills to reach certain learners, inclusive education specialists can assist. Likewise, where inclusive education specialists experience gaps in subject content knowledge, curriculum specialists can assist.
  • The approach of the learning trajectory. International research confirms that one-off initiatives often fail to have durable effects on teaching and learning. Our approach was to bring education specialists together in a learning trajectory: in workshop settings, education specialists from both sections gave peer feedback on each other’s cases.
    To facilitate and structure reflection we developed a self-reflection tool for Inclusive Pedagogy. This tool offers a profile of an inclusive teacher and school leader and supports education specialists to engage in a dialogue with teachers and principals on inclusive practices.

“Something that was quite helpful for me was the self-reflection tool because it gives you a basis from where you can advocate later on. It helped me structure my thinking and just to follow a systematic approach in solving a problem.” (Inclusive Education Specialist)

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“The VVOB workshop has enlightened me. The self-reflection tool has all these different dimensions of inclusivity and when I help the teachers, they can see that these are the different dimensions that they can follow to infuse differentiation in their lessons.” (Curriculum Education Specialist)

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Lessons Learned and 2018 approach

These positive outcomes have influenced upcoming activities for 2018. The VVOB programme will start a learning trajectory on inclusive education in Kwa-Zulu Natal province, where lessons learned from Free State will be incorporated. In the learning trajectory with the provincial and district training teams, cross-section collaboration will be stimulated.

In Free State, the cross-sectional collaboration will be lifted to the next level in 2018, by incorporating education specialists from Management & Governance, supporting school leadership. A pedagogy inclusive of learner diversity requires adequate support from the school leader, especially in creating a conducive environment for inclusivity. Volunteering district officials from the 3 sections will collaboratively engage in an action research trajectory.