Colloque International du ROCARE, Bamako 2015

1. Globalisation and Quality Equity
Inclusive Education
Therese Tchombe
Cameroon

2. OutLine
 Introduction
 Globalisation and its implication for education
 Understanding quality equity inclusive education
 Skills and competences for inclusive classroom practices
 Influence of teacher’s beliefs and attitudes on the Learners
 Reform and Teacher education
 Conclusion and recommendation

3. Introduction
Reference to globalisation and quality equity inclusive education in
African context, searches for:
 New knowledge, skills, competences beliefs, attitudes and values for
both learners and teachers.
 What does Africa expects of its children for the 21st century?
 What specific new profiles are required for globalisation?
 What type of education?
 Clear understanding of access
 How can such education shift from a focus not just on access but on
quality equity and equality to address inclusive education?
Skills, knowledge, beliefs and values acquired through education are
the driving force for economic growth and social development. The
intrinsic value of education therefore is inclusion of all whereby
diversity is valued and respected with a sense of belonging for all.

4. Globalisation and its implication for
education
 Globalisation has generated new economic, financial,
cultural and social dynamisms that have had
implications in how education is seen and managed.
 Today, schools need to foster equity, quality and
equality in education by revisiting school
infrastructure, curriculum, pedagogic practices, class
size, assessment, administration, teacher education
and partnership with parents and the community.
 The World Education Forum (2000), reminds us of the
need to adopt effective strategies for the identification
and inclusion of all the socially, culturally and
economically excluded.

5. Cont
 School now has the major responsibility to
develop diverse, flexible, and innovative
approaches to learning and teaching.
 It needs also to create an enabling learning
environment that fosters mutual respect,
trust, sense of belonging, interdependency
and creative abilities for higher order cognitive
achievement and productivity.

6. Cont
 With globalization there is need for context specific needs
analysis to identify skills required for the job market,
 New approaches to education should be based on these
expectations including personal development,
 Focusing education on the needs of the labour market,
questions how school change its traditional format of
operation to respond to the demands of the global era as
economic issues are directing educational trends.

7. Cont.
 Current curriculum content tend to be supply-driven focusing on
discrete subject matter, standard content and pedagogy for which
teachers seem not to be well prepared.
 To address inclusive education, the curriculum design should be
demand- driven. The identification of learning needs would
originate from the analysis of factors that will contribute to the
learners’ future success and fulfillment.
 The new pedagogic approaches will focus on relevant skills,
competences and attitudes required for the labour market and for
living.
 Competency-based teaching approach is the new vogue but how is
this translated in pedagogic action to address all?

8. Cont
 There is a mismatch between societal needs and
education offerings.
 Standardized education common in most schools is
mechanical and not flexible.
 To meet with today’s expectations, what can be
considered the correct way to teach, to learn, to assess
or even to make decisions on policies for a quality and
equitable inclusive education?
 Globalization is considered as a mechanism for
modernization perpetuating Eurocentric educational
philosophy at the detriment of Africentric knowledge
and values.

9. Understanding Quality, Equity,
Equality Inclusive Education
 Education should be participative and therefore inclusive (Dewey,1936).
 Education should be experiential, taking into account cultural diversity.
 Education should recognise values.
This characterisation underlines the idea of equality through education and
the direct relationship between education and participation. Educational
equality, just like liberty and justice, are ideals towards which human beings
work. Africentric education reflects the above.
 Quality reflects functional and meaningful learning for all learners
(Gibson, 2004).
 Equity postulates that even if treatment is the same, the individual
differences of learners must be considered that is responding to special
education needs (Rodriguez, 2009).
 Equality is promoting and offering the same opportunities for all learners
(Rodriguez, 2009).
Rodrigues argues that for teachers to be inclusive they must respond reach
out to all types of children. Access is quantitative not qualitative.

10. Cont
 All children need to be supported equitably through identification and
removal of discriminatory barriers that limit their ability to achieve to their
full potential.
 Understanding these realities pose great challenges in making schools
readiness for inclusive practices and teachers as inclusive teachers.
Teachers are unskilled, class sizes are too large, curricula not flexible and
teaching methods are unsuitable.
 Basically inclusive education is based on the principles of acceptance,
connectedness and respect for all in ways that are visible to those
concerned through all school activities and actions. All of the above orients
how quality and equality in education can be achieved with well trained
teachers with the required skills.

11. Skills development required for
classroom practices
 Educators’ performances can be valued based on specific acts, functions, and
competences defined by their expected roles. Therefore, their academic and
professional training needs to be built on skills, attitudes and competences required
for practices in the teaching learning and school management. Dewey (1936) had
indicated that the best indicator for teacher quality is teacher’s ability to watch and
respond to the movement of pupils’/students’ minds with keen awareness of the
signs and quality of the responses they exhibit with regard to the subject-matter
presented.
 Teachers must be in tune the operations and process of the minds of pupils and
students they are in contact with. As the minds of teachers move in harmony with
those of the pupils/students, they appreciate their difficulties and in this way direct
the skills for problem solving and transfer of knowledge.
 The teacher is a significant agent in causing learning and intellectual development
in the learners ( Hartley, 1992). Thus the teachers’ role can be described in terms of
specific acts, functions or competences which are observable and which can be
learned as student-teachers or in-service teachers. Skills required, see figure 1

12. Teacher
Characteristics
Technology &
Media Skills
Cognitive
Competencies
Values &
Attitudes Life Skills
Figure 1: Emerging Challenges for Achieving Quality Equity Equality Inclusive Education with
Implications for Teacher Education

13. Cont.
 The dominant pedagogic practices in classrooms most
often adopt the banking model of education where the
role of the learner is receptive.
 Freire (1970)states that, the approach “-- transforms
students into receiving objects. It attempts to control
thinking and action-- and inhibits their creative power"
(Freire, 1970, p. 77).
 Even Rousseau’s philosophy saw the child as an active
learner.
• Dewey (1936) was very critical of the transmission of
mere facts as the goal of education.

14. Cont
 Pedagogy needs to be based on multiple
intelligences to be inclusive.
 It is also holistic from an interdisciplinary context.
 It must be remembered that identification of
specific learning needs requires also the
identification of specific learning skills.
What an inclusive education seeks to achieve, is to
enable all learners to learn how to learn and
develop the skills to link class knowledge and jobs.

15. Influence of teacher’s beliefs and
attitudes on the Learners
 It is now well established that teachers’ beliefs and attitudes
concerning students with disabilities and special needs have
a very powerful influence on their expectations for the
progress of such children in mainstream schools (Deisinger,
2000; Scruggs and Mastropieri, 1996, Tchombe a&b).
 It is even argued that successful integration or inclusion is
only possible where teachers display reasonably positive
and accepting attitudes towards children with disabilities
and special needs and to the basic principles of inclusion
(Giangreco, 1996).
 Teachers attitudes and beliefs are known to influence their
teaching practices and management strategies in the
classroom, and therefore directly influence students’
learning (Smith, 2000, Tchombe b).

16. Teacher Education
 Teacher education programmes in addressing
multiple intelligences will provide student
teachers with skills and strategies to teach and
evaluate wider range of abilities.
 Successful inclusion requires the development
of teachers who are adequately prepared and
are supported to work in inclusive ways.
Figure 2 proposes transformative dimensions
for teacher education and training

17. Characterisation of the New School
For the 21st Century
Transformative Dimensions
Inclusive
Teachers &
Inclusive
Pedagogic
Inspectors
Reformed
Curriculum:
Content,
pedagogy &
assessment
Learner
centered
teaching &
learning
Resources:
ICTS, Media
etc & actor’s
literacy
Parents &
community
partnership in
education
Inclusive Education Quality-Equity-
Equality: Respect for Diversity “The
Whole School Paradigm”
Figure 2: Reviewing the school system for inclusive education

18. Conclusion and Recommendation
 Create opportunities for capacity building for
teacher educators through exchange and staff
mobility
 Provide institutions with information
communication technological (ICT)tools to
enhance the development of new competences
and pedagogical skills for sustainable teaching
and learning

19. Cont.
 Focus more on teacher education programmes
aiming at empowering all children including
early childhood
 Improve teacher’s status
 Increase the financial support for teacher
professional development
 Strengthened teacher pedagogical accountability
 Bridge the gaps between policies and practices by
involving teachers in decision making
 Build teacher educators’ capacity

20. Cont.
 Schools of the 21st century should address deep learning,
address connectivity and mutual influence that are motivating
with actors equipped with clear generic and specific
competences.
 If learning needs become the premise for designing
curriculum, then the concept of multiple intelligences will be
addressed. In this approach quality, equity, equality inclusive
practices will direct pedagogic practices that will reach out to
each child.
 Inclusive schooling must be rooted in communities and service
systems that value the social inclusion of learner

21. END
THANK YOU FOR INVITING ME
&
FOR LISTENING