Mobilising a lens of inclusivity within initial teacher education. Teacher education in and for uncertain times.

In uncertain contemporary times, Initial Teacher Education (ITE) educators are under considerable pressure from political, social and institutional sources to ensure that PSTs are “classroom ready”; fully equipped to prepare diverse student cohorts to lead fulfilling post-school lives in an increasingly complex and changing world. To achieve this goal, current research and policy is increasingly focusing on foregrounding inclusive teaching practice. A great deal of education literature focuses on notions of diversity and inclusion with regard to student education in schools (Blackmore, 2009, Campbell & Whitty, 2002, Nieto, 1999, Smyth & McInerney, 2007, and Smyth & McInerney, 2009). Much has also been written about the difficulties inherent in educating PSTs regarding the complexities of inclusive teaching (Blackmore, 2009, Shor, 1992, Sleeter, 2001, Smyth & McInerney, 2007, and 2018 ATEA & TEFANZ Conference: Teacher Education in and for Uncertain Times Smyth & McInerney, 2009). In addition, leading education organizations and accrediting institutions, such as the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) promote inclusion as a mandated teaching approach. While inclusion is the approach mandated in Australia for catering for diversity, the authors argue that current notions of inclusive teaching are still haunted by ghosts of integration and other non-inclusive practices in approaches that hierarchical, additive and focused on deficit thinking. In this model, students are diagnosed as having a particular condition, disorder, impairment, or other difference, which is prioritized as their chief learning characteristic. The rich complexity of a learner’s strengths, preferences, challenges and goals is then narrowed down to one major ingredient – the impairment or difference – which becomes the focus of strategies and practices recommended as appropriate for that particular condition. In this presentation, the authors ask the thorny question, how do we teach PSTs to identify the complexity of learner needs and to make pedagogic decisions to enable learning to occur for all students? The presentation contributes a way forward through the authors’ examination of a range of pedagogies used in class to facilitate PSTs’ investigation of approaches and practices that encourage teaching for inclusion. In order to facilitate PSTs’ learning concerning inclusive teaching, the authors focus on creating opportunities to enable students to work with a diverse range of learners “selecting strategies on the basis of what is to be learnt rather than what is wrong with the learner” (Florian, 2008, p. 2004). As an exploration of pedagogic decisions and teaching approaches, the paper outlines a case study that makes use of a self-study methodology as well as discourse analysis. This research mode “includes elements of ongoing inquiry, respects personal experience, and emphasizes the role of knowledge construction. The collaborative component of self-study acknowledges the important role of the social construction of knowledge (Lassonde, Galman & Kosnik, 2009, p. 10). The inclusivity of a self-study approach and its multi-faceted nature encourages reflection, collaboration and on-going dialogue between educators and PSTs providing insights into teaching practices. From observations and reflective examination of their teaching practices and course development, the authors identify and analyse the pedagogies that are being used to achieve the aims of promoting teaching for inclusion in ITE courses. In addition to a self-study methodology, discourse analysis is used to examine formal literature and policy discussing diversity and inclusion.