Unit Content
Outcomes
- Identify and discuss issues, attitudes, and concepts relevant to the education of students with special education needs and consider these within a biblical worldview perspective.
- Discuss the implications and application of legislative requirements, educational policies and syllabus documents that relate to teaching students with additional needs and students with a disability.
- Describe a broad range of teaching and learning approaches, strategies and resources designed to maximise the learning experiences of students with additional learning needs and disabilities.
- Create inclusive learning processes, systems and environments that model best inclusive education teaching, learning and behavioural strategies and practices including the involvement of parents/carers and the broader community for students with additional needs and students with a disability.
Subject Content
- Overview of inclusive philosophy including the Imago Dei, the social model of disability, the least restrictive environment, normalisation, ableism, stigma, discrimination, implicit bias, labelling practices, micro exclusions, prejudice, ethnocentrism, history of segregation, eugenics, integration, partial inclusion, and full inclusion. Implications for the educational success of Australian Indigenous communities, students with disabilities and other marginalised groups. International initiatives, national and local legislative and policy requirements i.e. the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Standards for Education (2005), including teachers’ responsibilities.
- The range of additional education needs and disabilities. Issues affecting students with additional needs including developmental differences, executive functioning, theory of mind, social learning, learning difficulties, physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, language delays and disorders, and social and emotional disorders. Different learning strategies for different forms of disability; different “ways of knowing”, sociology of the family, rural, remote, urban communities, EAL/D and how these forms of diversity inform teacher practice. Understanding of the broader implications of disability on teaching and learning.
- Inclusive pedagogies including collaborative curriculum planning, utilising teacher’s aides and external professionals; referral processes, contracts and individualised education plans (IEP); Sense Perception as a “way of knowing” and the implications for differentiating teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across a full range of abilities; through behaviour management, differentiated instruction, learning content and teaching strategies; and integrated curriculum, understanding the use of AUSLAN in a variety of contexts; different models and approaches for working with students with a disability. The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) on students with disability, Teachers’ ethical responsibilities. The relationship of the above upon whole school policies, including whole school behaviour management policies to support students with special needs. The use of ICT and other resources to maximise teaching and learning for students with a disability (including an understanding of the range of applications available and adaptive technologies used).
- Inclusive, evidence-based practices designed to cater for student diversity, such as universal design for learning (UDL), differentiation, response to instruction (RTI), whole-school positive behaviour support, and inclusive educational technologies. Whole-school policies, reasonable adjustments, education ‘on the same basis’, direct and indirect discrimination, strategies for engaging parents, caregivers and the community in the educative process; Graduate Teacher Standard Descriptors and implications for supporting Australian Indigenous and EAL/D students under the social model of disability. Conceptual frameworks and how these support the implementation of strategies and approaches.
- Inclusive, evidence-based practices for promoting access, participation, and achievement for individual students with a disability requiring substantial or extensive adjustments. Responses that promote educational success, consider the concept of marginalisation. Consider whole school behaviour management policies to support students with special needs (including documentation and reporting), jointly negotiated plans for management of behaviour and learning; child protection and substitute care, issues connected to gender, culture and race such as bullying, harassment, violent behaviour, truancy, including reconciliation responses to students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds; evidence-based problem-solving approaches such as social skills training, parent/carer involvement, direct instruction and peer tutoring.
- Collaborative practices for inclusion, including strategies for engaging parents, caregivers, and the community in the educative process; and for working with paraprofessionals (e.g. teacher’s aides) and external allied-health professionals. Including a focus on professional learning.
- Consolidation and Reflection
This course may be offered in the following formats
- Face to Face (onsite)
- E-learning (online)
- Intensive
Please consult your course prospectus or enquire about how and when this course will be offered next at Alphacrucis University College.
Assessment Methods
- Critical Reflection: Forum Posts (20%)
- Inclusive Education Presentation (30%)
- Major Essay: Inclusive Education Conceptual Framework (50%)
Prescribed Text
Reference will also include the most current curriculum requirements for schools.
