Inclusive pedagogy: addressing special needs in the classroom

Individual differences between learners are to be expected because each person’s characteristics, preferences and experiences are uniquely interrelated, and learning occurs through shared activity in social contexts. The idea of difference as ordinary is a productive way of thinking about how to understand and respond to the complexities inherent in educating diverse groups of learners.

This starting point is an alternative to traditional approaches to learner differences which assume that some will require something ‘additional’ or ‘different’ to what is ordinarily available to others. Indeed, this is the definition of special needs education in many countries. The problem is that this designation can also lower expectations about what a learner can achieve and impact negatively on learning outcomes.

In response, inclusive pedagogy shifts our thinking away from the idea of special needs education as a specialised response to individual difficulty, towards one that focuses on extending what is ordinarily available to everyone in the classroom. The importance of participation in classroom activities is privileged over judgments about what learners can and can’t do. For example, rather than setting work for learners based on teacher judgment about ability, a teacher might give the whole class a range of differentiated lesson options based on knowledge of the range of interests, previous experiences, needs and abilities of everyone. By giving everyone a choice, individual needs can be met without pre-determining who can do what.

This doesn’t mean that individual differences are unimportant. A teacher may have two learners, both of whom are experiencing what appear to be similar difficulties. However, if one is also a non-native language speaker and the other is a learner with attention-deficit disorder, then the differences between the learners means that their  misunderstanding of the topic may be different. In this case the teacher would use strategies that are matched to the purpose of the learning and adapt these strategies using their knowledge about the differences between the learners. In a lesson aimed at improving reading comprehension, the teacher might introduce a story via a discussion about a topic to support the non-native language speaker, and a graphic organiser to support the child with attention deficit disorder. Both strategies would be embedded in whole class teaching and be beneficial to everyone.

Classroom teaching is complex. It depends on responding to the particular and very different circumstances of many individuals simultaneously. When teachers encounter individual learners who are having difficulties, they need responses that work for everybody. The change in thinking associated with inclusive pedagogy does not mean that specialist knowledge is irrelevant or unnecessary. The ways that teachers use this knowledge and how they work with specialists is what differentiates inclusive pedagogy from other approaches.

Today, many learners with sensory impairments attend mainstream schools and these learners may be provided additional support from a specialist teacher for the deaf. In this situation, how the class and specialist teacher work together to support the deaf learner in the classroom determines the extent to which practice is working to include or exclude the learner. If the specialist teacher and the class teacher take a team-teaching approach, so that the deaf learner is not isolated by the presence of an additional adult in the classroom, then the additional support will be beneficial and inclusive. If the specialist teacher works collaboratively in a classroom that includes a deaf learner, rather than with the learner alone, this can benefit all learners in the classroom.

Inclusive pedagogy is an approach to teaching diverse learner groups that seeks to accommodate individual differences between learners without treating them differently to others. Classroom teachers and other specialists are urged to view learner difficulties as professional dilemmas for practice rather than as problems of learners. By working collaboratively, they can develop ways of responding to individual differences that promote a good experience of learning and good outcomes for everyone.