For far too long have the schooling systems ignored children with special needs. Now, with the Right to Education Act in place, it has become imperative for most children with special needs to be mainstreamed, and not kept in ghettoes of 'special schools. This has resulted in the possibility of each teacher being required to facilitate the learning of, say, a mentally challenged child, or a child with hearing impairment, alongside the children they are used to teaching.
However, most teachers in our schools are the least prepared for undertaking this form of inclusion. Many of them have asked their Cluster Resource Centres (CRCs), or State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) faculty, or us at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for support in this aspect.
The NCERT faculty also undertook a research study to find out the range and extent of the challenges teachers face in mainstreaming children with special needs in their classrooms and schools. Based on this study, the faculty's interaction with such children and the experiences of others working towards educating all children together, the Department of Education for Groups with Special Needs, NIE, NCERT has brought out the present document.
Including Children with Special Needs is the first handbook of this kind, aimed at anybody teaching children at the primary level. It gives ideas for supporting, say, a visually impaired child see diagrams. Interestingly such methods help improve the understanding of all children too, a message which should be strongly received from this document.
The NCERT thanks Professor Namita Ranganathan for reviewing so efficiently the handbook, and all the teachers and others who have contributed ideas to be included in it. Any effort in the direction of making our classrooms inclusive can always be improved upon.
In order to understand how to create inclusive classrooms, especially where children with special needs are present, teachers must develop their knowledge and skills, and an understanding of key strategies critical to achieving success. The Department of Education of Groups with Special Needs (DEGSN), NCERT, developed this handbook to provide exemplary guidelines for meeting the special needs of children in an inclusive classroom. Successful inclusion practices highlight the significance of not only the presence of children in the class but also the quality of their experiences and their achievement across the curriculum. This handbook emphasises the need to shift from the idea of children with special needs fitting into the existing classrooms, to classrooms accommodating the needs of all learners, including learners with special needs.
The idea for developing this exemplary material was initiated by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), based on the demands raised by teachers in inclusive schools under the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Scheme.
The first phase of the development process involved individual interactions with teachers and parents in different States and understanding the challenges faced. Consistently, teachers reported the need for more training in accommodating and adapting the curriculum, and teaching and assessment techniques to meet the needs of Children with Special Needs (CWSN). Many teachers felt inclusion of CWSN was an additional burden and these children should be taught in separate schools.
The second phase involved workshops with experts including teachers. These were conducted across different regions of the country. The objective of these workshops was to gain understanding of successful practices of implementation of inclusive pedagogy, and develop exemplars for curriculum adaptation, teaching strategies and assessment. The last phase of the project involved gathering feedback on the draft handbook from the grassroots. The handbook is the result of interactions with experts in the field combined with research.
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