Preparing
educators for the management of inclusive settings has become a priority all
around the world (UNESCO, 2005). In
case of Kazakhstan, inclusive education is totally new topic in all aspects of
education. “State Program of Education Development for 2011-2020” has set quite
ambitious goal to make to 70% of schools inclusive by 2020. Consequently, it
puts additional pressure on whole system of education and especially on teacher
training programs. According to OECD report there is an urgent need to train
and retrain 90% of teachers because most teachers are not able to manage
inclusive and diverse classrooms (p.66).
Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/teacher-preparation-program-rankings_n_3456389.html
As teachers are central agents in education, it becomes crucial to
provide them with appropriate skills, knowledge and condition. Frolin (2008)
claims that successful implementation of inclusive education is widely depends
on teachers training; both pre service and in service program’s adaptation may
build sufficient foundation for the provision of inclusion. Allday, Neilsen –
Gatti and Hudson (2002) assumes that initially teachers’ education programs
have not been responsive to the inclusion movement. Therefore, it is now
difficult to reform teachers training from general and special to inclusive.
Additionally, reforming teachers education program are subjected to the heated
debates, with supporters claiming that core subjects on various disabilities
should be integrated into the general education in order to prepare new
teachers to meet diverse needs and, opponents arguing that special issues such
as dyslexia, autism, AD/HD have different in nature and teaching strategies to
cannot be incorporated to the mainstream teacher preparation programs
(Kauffman, 2010).
It is widely
known that, the responsibility to meet academic and social needs lies mostly on
educators and the importance teacher education programs was admitted by number
of scholars (Fender and Fiedler, 1990; Slee, 2001; Booth and Ainscow, 2002;
Allan 2006). In summary, Kazakhstan is doing its first steps towards inclusion
and inclusive. In this sense, teacher preparation programs require new approach
and new thinking in terms of inclusion and diversity in the classroom.
References:
Allan, J. (2006) “The repetition of exclusion”, International journal of
Inclusive Education, 10 (2-3), 121-33.
Anderson, S. L., &SakalliGumus,
S. (2006). Preparing pre-service secondary education majors for inclusive
classrooms in the USA. International
journal of inclusive education, 10(6),
529-546.
Booth, T. and Aniscow M. (2002) Index for Inclusion, Bristol: CSIE.
Fender, M. J., & Fiedler, C. (1990).Pre-service preparation of
regular educators: A national survey of curriculum content in introductory
exceptional children and youth courses. Teacher
Education and Special Education, 13,
203-209.
Forlin, C. (2008) “Education
reform for inclusion in Asia: What about teacher education” Reform, Inclusion
and Teacher Education: Towards New Era of Special Education in the Asia –
Pacific Region. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 72-88
Kaufman, D., & Moss, D. M. (2010). A new look at pre-service
teachers’ conceptions of classroom management and organization: Uncovering
complexity and dissonance. The
TeacherEducator, 45, 118-136.
Ministry of Education and Science
(2010). “State Programme of Education Development for 2011-2020, Approved by
Presidential order 1118 on December 2010. Astana: MoES.
