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‘The US is not the model to follow’
Professor David Chard charts 25
years of inclusive education.
By Wade Zaglas
I
n her opening address to this year’s
Successful Learning Conference – now in
its 25th year – the head of the University
of Sydney’s School of Education and Social
Work, Professor Debra Hayes, used a
poignant anecdote of her sister’s schooling
in 1940s Australia. Even though education
should always be about the “success of
all students”, during that era, little, if any,
attention was given to the different learning
needs of students. Indeed, as Hayes’s sister
experienced, many “challenging” students
(those we would now call students with
learning and attention difficulties) were
treated as footballs that would eventually
land in the right school with more
“equipped” staff.
Obviously, such experiences had
profound effects on not only the students,
but their parents and siblings as well.
Thankfully a lot has changed since those
days. In Australia, as in other Western
countries, teachers are now expected to
meet the learning needs of diverse student
cohorts. The keynote address of this year’s
conference, delivered by Professor David
Chard, focused on this very theme, taking
a bird’s eye look at inclusive education over
the last 25 years.
Chard, who is the dean ad interim at
Boston University’s Wheelock College of
Education & Human Development, and
one of America’s preeminent experts in the
field, believes the last quarter of a century
has seen significant progress in the area,
but “there is a still a lot to be done”.
Firstly, and most importantly,
improvements in public perception and
research have coincided with many
achievements in the field. For instance, over
time Americans have begun to expect more
from students with learning difficulties as
well as more for them.
At the same time, research has shown
that such students are completing
their education to a much greater
degree, finding more success in the
workplace and living what are largely
“normal” lives.
Positive changes in these areas have also
coincided with huge advances in research,
particularly in the areas of learning difficulty
identification and effective, evidence-
based teaching practices to meet these
difficulties.
Yet, despite this glut of research, Chard
contends that a group of educators still
cling to old notions and practices. He
likens them to climate deniers, obstinately
clinging to their beliefs in spite of the
facts staring them in the face. This, he
warns, is just one of the challenges facing
the field.
Other challenges are more bureaucratic
in nature and threaten to wind back the
progress made. For instance, in America,
funding for research and development in
the field is relatively minuscule and dwarfed
by the amount of money spent retraining
individuals later in their lives, which seems
counter-intuitive.
A similar situation is developing in
Australia, with research and development
funding constantly under threat. Also, while
a teacher shortage is expected in Australia
in the not-so-distant future, the problem
is already at a critical level in the US,
particularly in the field of special education.
Chard highlighted the worrying fact that
49 US states report special education
teacher shortages. Indeed, 51 per cent
of school districts in the US struggle to
recruit special education specialists, and
this increases to an inconceivable 90 per
cent in high-poverty school districts,
compounding the negative effects.
Clearly, these troubling figures threaten
to erode the significant gains made in
inclusive education over the last 25 years,
and Australia would be wise to ignore
America’s current trajectory. As Chard said
in his keynote, “The US is not the model
to follow.” ■
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