Inclusive Education In Canada

What is inclusion?

In B.C., inclusion means that students with special needs are full members of the classroom and the community of learners within it. Inclusion is the idea that"all students are entitled to equitable access to learning, achievement, and the pursuit of excellence in all aspects of their educational programs. The practice of inclusion...goes beyond placement to include meaningful participation and the promotion of interaction with others." (BC Ministry of Education, 2016, pg 2).

In her video Evolution of Inclusion, Shelley Moore introduced me to the idea that in B.C., we used to follow the Institutionalization method which was a form of exclusion as children with disabilities were sent away from their families without having any choice. Slowly, a shift was made and people with disabilities were brought back to living within their communities at home with their families. Even though they were now living within their communities, they were still segregated because they were expected to attend different schools or different classroom than the general population were in. Eventually, students started being more integrated into their classrooms and schools so they were in the same places as their siblings and neighbours. Now, we are looking at how we can meaningfully include students in classroom so they are not just in the room with everyone else, but being fully purposeful with why students are doing things and how we can make everyone build connections and have roles and responsibilities in their classrooms.

Inclusion across Canada

Every province and territory in Canada has a different idea of what inclusion is and how it is to be implemented in schools. Across the board however, full inclusion seems to be encouraged. Interestingly, in Quebec there is no mention of inclusion, and instead integration is used. In places like Nunavut, inclusion becomes a process that uses the entire family and community to help support individual children. In the maritime provinces, there seems to be a shift in what is happening as several of them have newly designed special education policies. In Nova Scotia, there is a focus on providing support for special education, but also for marginalized groups to ensure they are given the opportunities for full inclusion as well. Many provinces are focusing on having supports not only for the individual's academic needs, but to support their social-emotional needs as well.

Many provinces are focusing on early intervention practices to help target needs and provide supports early. This will help inclusion practices by giving the students what they need to be meaningful participants in their community of learners.

The Process of Inclusion

While full inclusion is the goal, there are still many barriers that exist which make the process of inclusion difficult. For example, many pull-out programs still happen which remove the students with special needs from their classroom environment, many teachers don't have appropriate training to adequately provide meaningful inclusion in the classroom, there is still a need to identify a student's deficits to get funding for support, and not enough  preventative work has been done in the classrooms to provide education in the realm of social-emotional learning to allow for more understanding and compassion from everyone to help meet every individual's needs (Sokal & Katz, 2015).

One way to address some of these problems is through Universal Design for Learning (UDL). In her video Transforming Inclusive Education, Shelley Moore describes how teaching is a lot like bowling. We have been taught to aim for the middle pin to reach as many students as we can, but often the two outside pins are left standing. These pins can represent our students which are the hardest to hit with a direct approach and that we need to change our aim to try to reach those kids first. Doing this creates a trickle down effect which means that ALL students are benefiting from the supports that are offered. This aligns with what we learned about Universal Deisgn for Learning.

Through CAST's video UDL at a Glance, I learned that UDL involves creating a curriculum that can be understood and accessed by everyone through minimizing the barriers that students may face, providing multiple means for representation of learning, and increasing student engagement through allowing choice.