World Bank Teacher Training for Inclusive Education Database
SECTION I: Training Manuals, Modules, Packages, Programs, etc. (Last updated on 1/2/2006)
Entry ID: NA**-3 / PermissionCOUNTRY: Detroit, USA / YEAR: / LANGUAGE: English
TITLE: Whole School Tool Kit & Other Professional Development Resources /
AUTHOR/DEVELOPER: Whole School Consortium
CONTACTS/AVAILABILITY:
· Various materials available online from the website: http://www.wholeschooling.net
· Whole Schooling Consortium
Website: http://www.wholeschooling.net
Email:
· Michael Peterson
Executive Director, Wayne State University
Email:
[Adopted Definition/Focus of Inclusive Education]
This language is taken from the Consortium’s online description of principle # 2, Include all in learning together:
As members of a community, all are resources and agents for change. Before positive change can happen, however, we must create an environment where positive change is possible. To do this, schools must build relationships, trust, and a common language that make community dialogue possible across the differences of culture, ethnicity, language, ability, gender, & age. Inviting all children to learn together in classrooms creates an environment where they learn to work effectively with those different from themselves, where learning increases for all, and where a sense of belonging is pervasive. Including all in learning together is not only smart but right.
[About the Whole School approach]
Whole Schooling is an approach to school improvement and teacher education and training that is based on a vision of effective schooling and learning for all children together. This program is part of the work of the Whole Schooling Consortium, an international organization dedicated to building local resources to “promote equity and excellence to build inclusive and democratic societies” (see www.wholeschooling.net for many professional development resources). The approach is founded on Six Principles:
1. Empower citizens for democracy.
2. Include all in learning together.
3. Provide authentic, multi-level instruction.
4. Build community
5. Support learning.
6. Partnering with families and the community.
[General Descriptions of Selected Materials]
Material 1: Creating Schools That Work: Promoting Excellence and Equity for a Democratic Society by Peterson, M. & Tamor, L. (2003)
This paper discusses key problems in schools that lay the foundation for the need for Whole Schooling approaches. This is followed by a brief discussion of the Six Principles of Whole Schooling and a description of how they may look in practice. Available at: http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/WSPress/SchlsThatWrk.pdf
Outline/Excerpts
· Six principles of Whole Schooling
· The principles of schools designed to leave many children behind (p. 5)
o Demanding compliance and obedience of staff and students.
o Segregating, tracking, and ability grouping.
o Teaching to the middle using one size fits all instruction.
o Creating a culture of pressure, tension, and competition.
o Isolating adults from one another and assuring professional turf.
o Parents and educators blaming each other.
· Six Principles: A framework for self-assessment and change (p. 10)
o Empowering citizens in a democracy.
o Including all in learning well together.
o Providing authentic multilevel instruction.
o Building community
o Supporting learning.
o Partnering with parents and the community.
Material 2: Power Point Presentation: Whole Schooling – An Introduction
Available at: http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/WSToolKit/WSIntro.ppt
Outline/Excerpts
· Whole Schooling Six Principles =
o Building a Culture to Support High Learning For All Students
§ Meeting Emotional Needs
· Supporting Learning
o Challenging Teaching for All
§ Personal Best Learning
· Cycle of Learning in a Professional Community
§ Analyze
§ Beliefs
§ Inquiry
§ Experiment
· Key Questions
o Empower citizens for democracy - Do students have multiple opportunities for daily decision-making, choices in their studies, opportunities to use power, involvement in resolution of conflicts?
o Include all in learning together - Who is in the school? Who is not? Where are students who would typically come to this school?
o Engage in authentic, multi-level instruction - To what degree are instructional strategies used in the school to help students with very differing ability levels learn well together? What assistance does the school staff need in learning how to do multi-level instruction?
o Build community
o Support learning
o Partner
· Child-Centered Inquiry
How is the student experience our class? What is the impact? What might be improved?
§ The Child
· Authentic, multilevel learning
· Support
· Democracy
· Include All
· Community
· Examples
o Isaac in 4th Grade
o Sydney’s Moose Project
· Circle of Friends
Material 3: Whole Schooling: School Assessment and Action Planning Tool by Peterson, M. (revised 2003)
This document provides detailed descriptions, for each principle, regarding what we would hope FOR, and hope NOT to see in schools working to implement Whole Schooling principles and practices. This can be used as an assessment tool for the entire school or a team. Additionally, the tool can provide a menu of potential options for school improvement and fertile ground for staff dialogue. Available at: http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/WSToolKit/WSPrincAssess%2B-.doc
Material 4: Whole Schooling Assets and Capacity Survey
Any school improvement must build on the strengths of individuals in the school. It is very helpful to identify the assets and capacities that school staff and parents possess which they will be willing to share with others. This simple survey provides an open-ended request that can be used to develop a School Catalog of Assets. Available at: http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/WSToolKit/WSAssetsSurvey.docMaterial 5: Authentic, Multi-level Teaching: Teaching Children with Diverse Academic Abilities Together Well by Peterson, M., Hittie, M., & Tamor, L. (2002)
This 46 page document discusses how schools typically deal with the highly diverse abilities of students in classes and describes principles and practices for authentic multi-level teaching, instruction that supports students with dramatically differing academic abilities in learning well together. Available at: http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/WSPress/Authentic%20MultiLvl%206-25-02.pdf
Outline/Excerpt
· Approaches to Ability Differences
o One size fit all – segregation
o Stable ability grouping
o Pull out/pull aside instruction
o Adapting curriculum
“In curriculum adaptation, they overall lesson itself is taken as a given, so that the goal is to provide individual adaptation that will allow a student to participate at some level….Most of the literature on inclusive education centers on adaptations as a central strategy….There is little discussion in the inclusive education literature regarding how best teaching practices can accommodate all children learning together by designing from the beginning, thus minimizing the need for individualized adaptations and modifications and increasing the degree to which students with differing abilities are simply part of the study body rather than ‘special’ add-ons that require treatment outside of the typical norm….(p. 9)
Such curriculum adaptations that alter curriculum content, rather than the manner in which students interact with that content, were problematic in our observations. They had the effect of perpetuating the misconception that all the other students in the class are academically identical, with only the student with a disability needing curriculum adjustments. (p. 10)
o Differentiated instruction
Differentiated instruction is intended to allow students work at different levels in pursuit of a common curricular goal….Such strategies seek to provide differential tasks and levels of functioning but also often have the following characteristics: (1) use ability grouping, (2) tasks of differing levels are designed by the teacher, and (3) students assignment to the tasks by the teacher, based on the teacher’s evaluation of abilities of the student. In effect, most of what was referred to as “differentiated instruction” was simply a complex form of ability grouping. (p. 10)
o Authentic, multi-level teaching
§ Key tenets of accessible instruction (by Celia Oyler)
· Searching for strengths in all learners
· Expanding beyond the whole class uniform lesson format
· Utilizing flexible grouping strategies
· Fostering collaborative problem solving
· 14 Principles of Authentic Multi-level Instruction (p. 12-)
o Authentic learning
§ Motivation
§ Connection/Relevance to students’ lives
o Multi-level
§ Learning activities that allow students to function at their level of ability, yet are challenged at their zone of proximal development.
o Scaffolding
§ Students are given support and assistance to reach his/her next level – Building blocks
§ Students are explicitly and systematically taught to help, support, and challenge one another as part of building community in their classroom.
o Higher-order thinking
§ Borrows Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational outcomes (p. 13)
§ Teachers seek to involve all students in higher order thinking (=high expectation) in complex learning and projects at the higher end of Bloom’s taxonomy (=Greater degree of multi-level learning/teaching possible)
Example (p. 15):
· Students will develop definitions of key science terms related to plants (lower level task à makes multi-level instruction difficult).
· Students will develop a product that demonstrates how plants grow and reproduce (higher level task à allows high degree of multi-levels of investigation and demonstration of learning).
o Inclusive, heterogeneous grouping
§ Use of groupings by interest, choice, and self-selection of ‘just right’ work, rather than teacher assignment according to perceived ability.
§ Guidelines for the use of ability groups (by Whole Schooling Research Project)
· Groups are not assigned as ongoing, ‘stable’ ability groups that form a routine.
· When used, is based on specific skill needs in common with other students – mini-skill lessons.
· Teachers assure that skill groups have varied compositions from day to day.
· Groups are largely based on choices of children involved – common interests or preferred learning partners, and sometimes are driven by requests from one or more children for specific types of assistance (Shifting power from teachers to children thus reducing potential stigma of ability grouping).
o Integrated skill learning
o Focus on meaning and function – help students realize the connection & meaning of specific lesson to their lives
o Multi-modal – many options by which students might both obtain information and demonstrate their learning
o Building on the strengths of children
o Fostering respect
“Effective teachers do not yell at or belittle students. Even in difficult situations, they talk with students in a respectful way, help students obtain information and make choices, use their own power while sharing power with students in multiple ways” (p. 17)
o Student interests, choices, power, and voice
o Collaborative leadership and learning
“Students are explicitly and systematically taught to help, support, and challenge one another as part of building community in their classroom” (p. 18).
o Reflection & learning
“Students were taught to use a critical, reflective stance in all of their work. In our observations, this approach was effective in helping to deepen understanding and enhance memory. Such approaches deepened the authenticity of the task as students often related their studies to their own lives, feelings, opinions, and perspectives.” (p. 18)
o Growth ad effort-based evaluation
§ Recognize children’s accomplishment not solely based on a standard for grade-level work, but with a focus on the effort and progress of individual students.
· Teaching Strategies and Authentic Multi-level Instruction (p. 19)
o Have clear goals for all students
o Creative reorganization of national/district curriculum around a few authentic themes/topics.
o Planning lesson – Open-ended projects with multiple levels of output.
o Teaching strategies
§ Whole group instruction
§ Individual learning activities
§ Pairs and small groups
§ Mini-lessons for skill development
§ Teacher-student conferencing
o Examples of multi-level instruction observed (p. 24)
§ Understanding geography through hands-on construction (p. 29)
§ Reading group presentation and student-based grading (p. 32)
§ Math journal (p. 34)
§ Personal scrapbook (p. 34)
§ Demonstrating learning (p. 35)
· Appendix: Seeing Multi-Level Instruction in the Classroom by Celia Oyler (pp. 40-41)
o A set of behaviors and strategies often observed in effective multi-level classrooms
Material 6: Whole Schooling: Video ProjectThe following video clips illustrate exemplary practices associated with the Whole Schooling principles. These clips and associated materials are part of the Whole Schooling Online project. We are collaborating with educators throughout the world to create pictures and links to related useful materials of exemplary teaching practice.
NOTE: You will need QuickTime loaded on your computer to view these clips. Click above to download this program for free to your computer. Versions are available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. *Not captioned otherwise noted.
Menu (and a few examples)
· Inclusive schools
· Students in classrooms
· Authentic, multi-level instruction
· Community building in the classroom
o Getting to Know One Another (http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/Video/GetKnow.html)
Students are throwing paper at one another! But there's a plan. The teacher is having them put information about themselves and then they will do a hunt to find the person to whom the paper belongs. A great strategy for community building.
o Problem Solving Classroom Meeting (http://www.wholeschooling.net/WS/Video/ClassmeetProblem.html)
What happens when students don't do what you need and want them to do as a teacher? Does telling them and ordering them work? Yelling and showing disfavor? Using a token system of rewards and demerits?
This teacher believes the key is in (1) relationships, (2) mutual responsibility, (3) presenting children with problems and asking them to solve them, (4) treating them with respect in the process.
In this clip, the teacher presents a problem for the class. Note the restraint in her voice. (She is pretty upset but is working hard to talk with respect, not to raise her voice). She presents the issue, asks the students questions. Note the language. She owns her own feelings, "This has been very frustrating to me". She lays out the issue: "Some people are doing more than their share. Some not doing enough . . . We end up in a conflict at the end of the day". One student makes a suggestion and the teacher asks the students to follow through on this: pick a goal for the day. She then explains what her goal is. to help all get cleaned up without having to yell. Note how once again she owns her own feelings: "I don't feel like I am a good teacher when I yell".
What does this short interchange illustrate? How might it have been better? What was good? Clearly this was an effort on the part of the teacher to engage students in thinking and learning. She is giving them information rather than primarily using her power.
· Support for teachers and students