ENHANCING INCLUSION THROUGH TEACHERS’ SELF-ASSESSMENT

In last years the issue of teacher education is high on the policy agenda across Europe and globally and the role of teachers and therefore of teacher education in moving towards a more inclusive education system is being recognized.

The changing role of teachers is increasingly acknowledged, emphasizing the need for significant changes in the way teachers are prepared for their professional roles and responsibilities. This paper, based on educational challenges required today by society particularly related to demand of community, inclusion, respect for diversity, proposes to promote a culture of self-assessment that improve teaching, by training actions needed to help pupils with special educational needs. Teachers’ self-assessment is systematic process of review and revision of actions handled by a professional community.

In this process teachers can analyze, reflect, problematize, debate about their own professionalism; about the meaning of their own action; about the possible differences between what was planned and what is actually achieved in practice. The concept of self-assessment is linked also to the design changes.

In this work, we propose a tool that allows teachers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the school situation in which they are working and, at the same time, that supports them on designing development actions to improve it. This tool aims to promote integration and the effective combination between self-evaluation and development, having as goal an organic design of inclusive educational processes.

For the current study, an ad hoc survey to assess the perceived training needs for promoting inclusion of school teachers was developed. A sample of 236 pre-service teachers was considered.

The results showed several perceived training needs in teachers related to issues for participating in the processes of transforming schools into inclusive settings and to inclusive methodologies to be implemented in schools.