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Instating settings of emergency education in Vienna: temporary schooling of pupils with forced migration backgrounds

PROYER, Michelle
BIEWER, Gottfried
KREUTER, Linda
WEIß, Jekaterina
2019

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In the year 2015, Austria was one of the main European destinations of displaced persons. According to education authoritiesaround 15,000 children with a forced migration background of school age who arrived in Austria over the course of a few months from late2015 to the beginning of 2016 called for immediate and partly temporary solutions. Due to Austrian legislation and unlike other countries,every child living in Austria between the ages of six to fifteen (or for nine years of schooling) is entitled to receive compulsory education. Though the school administration of Vienna generally promotes an inclusive approach to education in regular schools, schools inneighbourhoods with a large refugee population were reportedly unable to provide appropriate and adequate education for all children. Inresponse, the local school authority in Vienna decided to establish temporary classrooms in refugee accommodations. This article describesand analyses the emergence of new educational structures from the point of view of university students and lecturers who took part in theone and a half years of its implementation. The article thereby aims to document specific perspectives on educational emergency measuresat a certain point of time. In both the primary and secondary sectors, the emergence of a new temporary field of specialised and exceptional education were observed and recorded in a thick description of dynamic processes of trans-institutional, trans-organisational, transprofessional, communal, and individual development. Thus, the article presents a multifaceted picture of problems in refugee education under exceptional circumstances. The findings illustrate how insufficient educational opportunities for those falling outside the age of compulsory schooling – in particular, preschool children as well as youth older than fifteen – diminish possibilities for the inclusion of these children within and beyond education.

Teachers talk on student needs: exploring how teacher beliefs challenge inclusive education in a Norwegian context

AAS, Hanne Kristin
2019

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This study explores teacher talk in the early phase of a project in a Norwegian elementary school where Lesson Study is used as a method for professional development. The study focuses on inclusion and aims to explore what beliefs about student needs and teacher role and responsibilities become evident, and how these beliefs can challenge development towards a more inclusive practice. To this end, content analysis is applied to audio recordings of teacher teams’ planning meetings. Despite an overall positive attitude towards inclusion, and inclusive structures in the school, findings point at factors in teachers’ beliefs that can challenge the inclusion process. These factors are: student needs understood as individual problems, adaptation understood as individualised and laborious and a limited view on teacher role, where their responsibility mainly regard academic learning.

Assistive technology applications for students with reading difficulties: special education teachers’ experiences and perceptions

NORDSTRÖM, Thomas
NILSSON, Staffan
GUSTAFSON, Stefan
SVENSSON, Idor
2018

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Purpose: Reading and writing applications (with text-to-speech, TTS and speech-to-text, STT functions), used as assistive technology (AT) for students with reading difficulties are increasingly used in education, however, research has not sufficiently enough evaluated its potential. The purpose of this study was to explore how assistive reading and writing applications were perceived to function with regard to students’ possibilities to assimilate (i.e., “read”) and communicate (i.e., “write”) text.

 

Methods: Following a six-week app intervention, this follow-up survey contained 54 special education teachers’ perceptions of how the use of apps impacted student motivation, learning, and its usability in special education. A total of 59 students with reading difficulties from Grade 4, Grade 8 and from high school, were assessed. Analyses included quantitative and qualitative analyses of teachers’ responses and written material.

 

Results: The results showed individual differences in how teachers perceived app usage for text-interaction purposes, including how app usage affected student motivation and autonomy for text-based learning. Eighty-two per cent of the younger and forty-seven per cent of older students continued to use the technology after the intervention, but in various degrees.

 

Conclusions: Based on these findings, students with reading difficulties seem to be able to use AT in order to assimilate text (i.e., to read) and to communicate text (i.e., to write), and, thus, AT has the potential to promote participation in regular education. Future research should focus on how to customize assistive technology support in order to better utilize the potential.

Asia Education Summit on Flexible Learning Strategies for Out-of-School Children

UNESCO
November 2016

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The Asia Education Summit on Flexible Learning Strategies for Out-of-School Children (24-26 February 2016) brought more than 550 education and learning colleagues from across the Asian Region and world to Bangkok, Thailand. The Summit welcomed 121 speakers and over 100 government officials. More than two-thirds of the Summit’s participants were NGO representatives and educators in the region who were, and currently are working “on the ground” in efforts with and for out-of-school children (OOSC).  This report aims to highlight and give voice to the unique innovative initiatives and flexible learning strategies shared during the course of this three-day summit. Each presentation summary in this report is intended to stand alone, while contributing to the collaborative nature and understanding of the innovations and FLS for OOSC presented. Presentations inlcuded "Sustainable and Innovative Financing for Disabled and Disadvantaged OOSC in Thailand: Mae Hong Son Model"

Attitudes of Students towards Peers with Disability in an Inclusive School in Nigeria

OLALEYE, A
OGUNDELE, O
DEJI, S
AJAYI, O
OLALEYE, O
ADEYANJU, T
2012

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Purpose: The majority of children and young people with disabilities live in developing countries where they face inequalities in education and other opportunities. Negative attitudes constitute one of the major barriers to thedevelopment of their potential.

 

This study aimed to describe the attitudes of students without disability towards their peers with disability, and to assess the role that gender and interpersonal contact play in shaping these attitudes.

 

Method: A cross-sectional study involving 107 students was carried out at an inclusive secondary school located in a peri-urban area in South Western Nigeria.

 

Participants were recruited from a group of 118 students in the three junior classes and senior class one (JSS 1 to SSS 1). A semi-structured questionnaire containing items on the “Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes Towards Children with Handicaps (CATCH) scale”, which elicits responses on a Likert scale numbered 0 to 4 (0-strongly disagree, 4-strongly agree), was administered. Data analysis was done using Stata version 12. Descriptive analysis was carried out and association between variables was determined using independent two-tailed t-tests.

 

Results: The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.83. The attitudes of students in the school were generally positive (M = 22.55, SD = 3.79). Female students had higher total scores (M = 24.76, SD = 2.78) than their male contemporaries (M = 19.84, SD = 3.05), t (103) = 8.55, p = .000. Having a friend/relative with a disability was associated with more positive attitudes among female students.

 

Conclusions: In this inclusive setting, the attitudes of students towards their peers with disability were generally positive. Since interpersonal contact was associated with positive attitudes towards students with disabilities, interventions should be directed towards promoting interpersonal relationships in order to build an integrated society.

 

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