Find out more about this component.
Watch a video that explains the Inclusive Teaching Component.
Read the detailed ‘how-to’ guide for the Inclusive Teaching Component.
Why is the Inclusive Teaching Component important?
What does the component consist of?
Why is the Inclusive Teaching Component important?
It learns from past experience
Inclusive education training for teachers is often limited. Many teachers start their careers largely unaware of learners’ inclusion rights or of the teacher’s responsibility and potential to be inclusive.
Teachers who do learn about inclusive education often do so through short, one-off, theoretical, in-service courses, which raise their awareness of inclusion but rarely give teachers the skills and confidence to fundamentally change how they work in school and class.
Decades of global research and programme experience showed that inclusive education teacher training projects were failing to deliver lasting changes in classroom practice and learner experiences. Yet each year, the same superficial approaches were repeatedly proposed and rolled out.
Read a journal article from EENET about the need for a different approach.
The ILA Inclusive Teaching Component offers an alternative. It started in Zambia and Zanzibar (2014-2019). Norwegian Association for Persons with Developmental Disabilities (NFU) and Norwegian Association of Disabled (NAD), with technical support from EENET, drew on evidence from past project evaluations to trial an approach to address the common problems with teacher training.
From late 2019 until 2024, NAD and EENET worked with other partners in the Together for Inclusion (TOFI) consortium to further adapt this teacher training approach in Uganda, Somalia, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
It focuses on long-term systemic change
The Inclusive Teaching Component supports the long-term professional development of teachers and their trainers. It was not developed for delivering isolated, rapid training workshops, so if that is your intention we urge you to keep reading and maybe rethink your plans!
The component can help you improve and reform pre-service and in-service curricula separately or simultaneously, depending on the existing needs of the Ministry of Education.
The Inclusive Teaching Component modules should be contextualised and adapted by education professionals working in your context. They are then tested in selected (pilot) schools through in-service training and further revised using feedback from trainers and teachers. The modules can then be used to educate student teachers in pre-service teacher training institutions.
When it is time to involve more schools and pre-service training institutions, this expansion should ideally be led and funded by the government rather than NGOs. With this in mind, the Inclusive Teaching Component enables government personnel to play a central role in the initial design and testing of the training by identifying and training ‘Observers’ (critical friends). These are senior or influential personnel from key organisations and government education departments who can help ensure government ownership of the training from day one.
Sustainability at the school community level is also vital, so the component encourages schools to develop school inclusion teams. These foster a collaborative culture in schools, which is essential for helping to identify and solve inclusion challenges, using contextually relevant, innovative and low/no-cost solutions.
What does the component consist of?
Core training
The core training package comprises an introductory booklet, seven core training modules, two supplementary modules, a self-assessment competency framework, and four Observer trainings.
The following core modules are used to train principal trainers who then train teacher:
- Module 1: Introduction to inclusive education;
- Module 2: School Inclusion Teams (SITs) and the role of the school Inclusive Education Coordinator (IECo);
- Module 3: Identifying out-of-school learners and supporting education transitions;
- Module 4: Screening and identification of learning needs;
- Module 5: Creating individual education plans and instructional aids;
- Module 6: Promoting active learning in the classroom;
- Module 7: Developing learner participation.Supplementary module: Including learners with additional needs;
- Supplementary module: Self-assessment competency framework and resource and guidance toolkit.
The Observers attend four trainings which are condensed versions of the seven core modules:
- Workshop 1: Introduction to inclusive education;
- Workshop 2: School Inclusion Teams (SITs) and the role of the school Inclusive Education Coordinator (IECo); Identifying out-of-school learners and supporting education transitions;
- Workshop 3: Screening and identification of learning needs; Creating individual education plans and instructional aids;
- Workshop 4: Promoting active learning in the classroom; Developing learner participation.
Mini-modules
There are six additional and smaller training modules that introduce the following topics connected to inclusive education:
- Home learning;
- Inclusive disaster risk reduction;
- Early childhood care and education;
- Monitoring and evaluation;
- Positive discipline;
- Promoting the wellbeing of refugee/internally displaced learners.
Refresher sessions
There may be a delay between principal trainers attending a module training workshop and then training teachers on that module. A set of refresher sessions (three to four hours long) has therefore been added to help refresh principal trainers’ memory of one or more modules.
Bite-size sessions
There is also a ‘bite-sized’ version of each module, which differs from the refresher sessions. Principal trainers who are college or university lecturers or tutors, can use the condensed training in the bite-sized materials to explain the content of Modules 1–7 directly to their colleagues. Education methodologists are familiar with training techniques, so the bite-size training modules quickly bring these professional methodologists up to speed on inclusive education practices so they can use the full-size modules with their trainee teachers.
