2.5. INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
2.5.4. Educators’ experience of inclusive education
Ntombela conducted research between 2004 and 2006 into the experience that educators’ have had with regards to the implementation and progress of inclusive education in South Africa (2011).
Through her research, Ntombela found that “teachers had limited experiences of inclusive education and what it entails in South Africa. As a result, most teachers felt inadequately prepare to implement it” (2011: p. 5). She attributed the experiences of these educators to a lack of effective staff development within the National Department of Education. In order to rectify this situation, she recommended that attention needs to be paid to the professional development that is on offer to teachers. Her (Ntombela, 2011: p. 6) study was based on:
“the assumption that teachers’ knowledge and understanding of inclusive education would be greatly influenced by, among other things, the quality and quantity of professional development opportunities available to them in terms of what it is, why it is being adopted, and how it can be implemented”.
After analysing a number of international studies based on effective training programmes specifically for teachers, Ntombela (2011) found that these studies highlighted the need for teachers to be re- trained over a prolonged period of time in a manner that is both theoretical and practical. Her research on the state of professional development in South Africa found that such training was often done in the form of workshops, which were part of a larger programme. The workshops offered were not of a stand- alone nature that focused purely on inclusive education (Ntombela, 2011).
In addition to this, she found that much of the training happening in schools was happening through a top-down approach in which one person in a school was trained and was then expected to disseminate their newly acquired ‘expertise’ to the rest of the teachers on their staff (Ntombela, 2011). This staff development model was referred to as a “cascade effect” (Ntombela, 2011: p. 10).
As part of her research, Ntombela (2011) demonstrated how any misconceptions or misunderstandings that the trained teacher had, would then be passed down to the rest of the teachers in their school. Due to the nature of the professional development offered by the National Department of Education, the teacher being trained would receive only a very limited idea of what inclusion is, and this limited idea would then be further simplified for their subsequent staff training within their school environments. This would lead to a very ‘watered-down’ version of inclusion training being offered, and in many cases, information that is simply inaccurate being shared.
Ultimately this model of training discourages the paradigm shift that is required towards implementing inclusive education as the message that the majority of the teaching population is receiving, is one that is over-simplified (Ntombela, 2011: p. 11). When questioned by Ntombela on the effectiveness of using the “cascade” model, a member of the National Department of Education confirmed the ineffectiveness of this model and stated that the reason this model was employed was due to a lack of human resources available to improve the current system in place (2011: p. 11).
The flaws in the professional development on offer from the National Department of Education were highlighted in the work that Ntombela (2011) did with teachers themselves. This research highlighted that educators interviewed simply did not have the knowledge to deal with learners who have barriers to learning. She also noted that those schools where there was generally greater confidence with regards to the implementation process had a common element, namely that they were led by principals who showed a special interest in inclusive education and had registered for courses in the field, in their private capacity (Ntombela, 2011). This further highlighted the positive correlation between effective professional development and the attitude of teachers towards inclusive education, and subsequently the effective implementation thereof (Ntombela, 2011).
In a quest to find an alternative to the once-off staff development currently being experienced by teachers, Ntombela (2011) cited a study by Schwille in 2007, which suggested that an effective professional development programme would consist of 5 elements.
1. The first element is that such a programme would enable teachers to apply their newly acquired knowledge in a supportive setting, where they can call on assistance if needed.
2. In addition to this, the teachers would be able to learn by observing the work of their more experienced peers as well as being observed by these peers and receiving feed-back on their progress, in a non-critical fashion.
3. The third element dealt with involving the staff in deciding the subject matter for professional development within the school, which would encourage the educators to become more involved in the training on offer. In relation to this:
4. There would also have to be a delicate balance between the subject matter being presented and the actual pedagogy involved in implementing inclusive education.
5. Finally, Schwille recommended that teachers be given the opportunity to become involved in action research and to share these results with others in a manner that will ‘spread the word’ of the benefits of their new teaching approaches (Schwille, 2007 in Ntombela, 2011: p.
7).
Of interest is that many of these elements discussed by Schwille (2007) and Ntombela (2011) appear in the pilot project undertaken by the National Department of Education in 2002. Whilst this pilot project noted some flaws, the baseline structure of the programme was deemed successful largely in part to the elements discussed by Schwille (2007) and Ntombela (2011). Of particular importance was the emphasis, in both studies, placed on the need for training of teachers to be supportive and
individualised to the needs of the teachers. One would assume that having experienced success in the use of this model, the National Department of Education would have employed this as a means of country-wide training. However, from Ntombela’s study (2011) it is clear that in fact the opposite format have been employed in order to offer training on a large scale (through the use of the
‘cascade model’) as opposed to offering quality training (National Department of Education, 2002;
Ntombela, 2011).