3300EDN – diverse learners in the contemporary classroom

INTRODUCTION

This paper explores the importance of inclusive education and how it can be modelled within a contemporary classroom. It explores how teacher beliefs, attitudes and values impact on both making adjustment to content, instructional strategies and assessment to accommodate learner diversity in inclusive educational settings, and extending collaborative relationships to strengthen learning communities. The paper is divided into four main sections; A rationale for an approach to inclusive practices, an analysis of four inclusive teaching strategies that are responsive to the learning needs of each student, adjustments to assessment tasks to cater for student diversity and strategies that involve parents and caregivers in the educative process.

RATIONALE

Inclusive education is a fundamental approach to teaching that must be included in all aspects of educational practices. This approach considers all students as learners who obtain
The United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of many international policies which have influenced the overarching approach to inclusivity in educational contexts. Stating, every individual has the right to an education (UNESCO, 1948). The Framework for Action on Special Needs Education reaffirmed this right in 19944 and it added: "ordinary schools should accommodate all children, regardless of their intellectual, linguistic, social-emotional or physical condition" (UNESCO, 1994), providing a policy that valued diversity and called for inclusion to be the norm in all schools. It stated that inclusive schools were the most effective way to counter discriminatory approaches and attitudes towards students. In conjunction with these policies, The Australian Government are too in the attempt to articulate the rights to inclusive