Educational inclusion for highly able pupils

1. Educational inclusion for highly able pupils Dr Margaret Sutherland Margaret.Sutherland@glasgow.ac.uk www.ablepupils.com

2. Getting bogged down in debate and discussion • Identification; • Whether to educate together or separately; • Which model will we use; • Nature/nurture……….

3. Important things to think about • Parental involvement; • Environment; • Holistic development • Appropriate curriculum opportunities • Teacher beliefs and attitudes……………...……………………

4. Education What is less clear is how we effectively and collectively address these issues.

5. What is clear? No educational policy or practice can be properly understood except by reference to the web of inherited ideas and values, habits and customs, institutions and world views, that make one country distinct from another. (Alexander, 2001:5)

6. What do teachers say? All too often, however, teachers lack appropriate preparation and support in teaching highly able children. Teachers held unhelpful preconceptions about people who are highly able, and some discriminated between different types of ability.

7. The State of the World’s Children 2013 What do teachers say? All too often, however, teachers lack appropriate preparation and support in teaching children with disabilities in regular schools. This is a factor in the stated unwillingness of educators in many countries to support the inclusion of children with disabilities in their classes. For example, one study of prospective teachers of special education in Israel found they held unhelpful preconceptions about people with disabilities, and that some discriminated between different types of disability.

8. Twenty-first Century Learning Environments • Changes to the way teachers support learners and learning means that teachers need to be supported in learning to ‘teach’ in different ways. • For many teachers this involves reconceptualising what it means to be a teacher and redefining what teaching in twenty-first century learning environments means. (Livingston, 2011: 162)

9. Interconnections Teaching Scotland’s Future “It requires a more integrated relationship between theory and practice, between the academic and the practitioner, between the provider of teacher education and the school”.

11. Post 2015 agenda Education 2030: Towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all.