This is the final report from an ESCalate Developing Pedagogy and Practice project.
Recently the University of Aberdeen pioneered an approach to initial teacher education to ensure that teachers have the pedagogical knowledge to respond to the challenges of inclusive education. Building on this work the project sought to pilot an approach to develop e-pedagogies for inclusion for newly qualified teachers.
This project consisted of a scoping survey and follow up visits to a number of mainstream schools in Scotland. The scoping survey aimed to investigate to what extent NQTs are aware of the impact that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can have on e-pedagogies for inclusion and what the main difficulties in using ICT are as part of their inclusive teaching practice. The follow up visits to schools aimed to investigate in more detail the opportunities and barriers experienced by a small number of NQTs when using e-pedagogies for inclusion and to help better prepare the NQTs in future.
The key findings from the study showed that:
- The research approach enhanced the extent to which e-pedagogies for inclusion can be studied.
- The NQTs surveyed were unaware of the main external and internal forces associated with how ICT can be used as a barrier to inclusion.
- NQT's e-pedagogies for inclusion were narrowly centred on ICT accessibility to curriculum content to support pupils with learning needs within the classroom.
- The study enhanced NQT’s ability to reflect and share knowledge and understanding of e-pedagogies for inclusion.
- A common characteristic of the e-pedagogies used by the NQTs was the replication of excluding barriers from traditional learning environments to virtual learning environments.
- The decision by NQTs to use ICT for most or some pupils as opposed to all pupils impacts on educational inclusion and that new approaches are needed which allow all children to use and share their own ICT alongside the school’s ICT resources for learning both inside and outside school.
