| Description of good practice: |
The process of identification of special educational needs begins with a child’s enrollment in school and the first to identify the children with special educational needs are the teachers. Parents may have not understood the child’s learning difficulties until the child goes to school and they very rarely report a child’s special needs (unless there is some visible physical disability). Therefore, the identification of a child’s conditions and needs usually begins with the process of school enrollment through teacher’s observations. Teachers detect learning difficulties even during the school year when they teach the child. The training of teachers on observing, assessing and working with children with special educational needs is of outmost importance for child school retention and completion. Only some children come to school with a medical report of the categorization commission (KMCAP), while identification of children with learning difficulties is done by the primary school teacher.
Primary teachers compose a list of pupils with disabilities and learning difficulties and the school principal sends the list to RED commission for assessment. Training teachers to observe the special educational needs of children with learning difficulties has helped them in identifying these children. Of an outmost importance, besides identification, is the work in class with these children. Prior to the project, the teachers of pilot schools had minimal knowledge of disability and education, which justified their training with concepts and philosophy of Inclusive Education. Save the Children has developed screening checklists
for teachers and parents in order to help them to identify children with learning difficulties and variety of neurodevelopment problems at school age. Moreover, the project also developed evaluation instruments for psychologist of REDs and schools based on DSM –V in order to help them in diagnosing children with learning difficulties and other neurodevelopment problems.
In order to meet the kindergarten and primary teachers’ needs on Inclusive Education, the project carried out an assessment of the training needs and an inventory list of necessary knowledge with regard to disability and inclusive pedagogy. A survey was conducted in 28 educational institutions (kindergartens and primary schools) to identify teacher training needs on Inclusive Education. The RED and school principals were massively involved in mapping teacher’s needs. The survey findings reported a vast need for training on concepts and knowledge related to disability, inclusion, support strategies, individual educational plans, special educational needs, teaching methods for children with SEN, etc. The survey findings were shared with MoES and REDs of 6 regions and a training program was designed to proceed with training modules.
The training of teachers is an ongoing process and one training session does not suffice to cover the needs for teaching methodology improvement. Therefore, the project has built the training capacity of teacher training programs within the higher education system of Albania. The education faculties of public universities of Korça and Elbasan have prepared education programmes and trained the teachers on Inclusive Education. The faculty staffs were assisted by the University of Bologna, the faculty of education to develop the training module on Inclusive Education for in-service teachers or primary education. The experts from the University of Bologna performed three missions in the universities of Korça and Elbasan. During these visits, in a participatory assessment with Albanian faculty staffs they:
(i) compared the school systems between two countries;
(ii) analyzed and revised the structure and the content of the academic programs of teacher training at university level;
(iii) got acquainted with the legislation on education
(iv) designed and developed together resource materials for pre-service and in-service teachers
(v) organized joint meetings with other faculties of education in Albania to share the best experiences achieved by the project.
After the assessment of the existing training programs, the experts of Bologna University and faculty staffs of Elbasan and Korça universities prepared three training modules:
- IEP module;
- Early identification of the special educational needs/learning difficulties;
- Inclusive pedagogy (pedagogy of inclusion).
The modules were submitted to the accreditation agency and are under the process of
accreditation. After the accreditation, the training modules can be published and used for teacher training. Professors of the Universities of Korça and Elbasan carried out training sessions on IE which were addressed to the teachers and principals of the target schools, as well as to teachers and principals of the special schools of the areas covered by the project. Teachers and school principals of 28 educational institutions (kindergartens and pilot regular schools) were trained for 12 days in topics related to Inclusive Education:
- Legislation on education (primary and secondary legislation);
- Typology of disability and learning difficulties;
- Interactive teaching methods;
- Advanced practice of supportive teachers on working with CwD;
- Bio-psycho characteristics of disability;
- Identification of needs and resources available in school for Inclusive Education of CwD;
- Supportive teachers’ role and school social environment impact on supporting children
with special educational needs;
- Techniques of boosting learning motivation in children with special educational needs;
- Bullying;
- Developing and Implementing IEP;
- Autism and support techniques in class.
The project has trained 577 in-service teachers and 132 supportive teachers on the inclusive
pedagogy. In-service teachers involved in the training activities of the project have increased their skills on inclusive teaching methods such as peer education, cooperative learning, working groups, IEP. As a result of teacher training 401 children with disabilities have benefited from the project, where 100% of them were evaluated based on ICF and had a chance to follow their education with and IEP. The individual support provided to children with learning difficulties and children with disabilities decreased retention and reduced the rate of class repetition and school drop-out. |
