Resources

‘Promoting Inclusive Teacher Education’ is a series of five advocacy guides. The guides discuss challenges and barriers to inclusive education in different areas of teacher education and offer related strategies and solutions for effective advocacy towards more inclusive practices. The series begins with this introductory guide. It provides an overview of inclusive teacher education and of what advocacy means in this context. It also provides an introduction to the topics covered in the four other guides in the series. These are ‘Policy’, ‘Curriculum’, ‘Materials’, and ‘Methodology’.

Advocacy Guide 5: Methodology – changing teaching methodology within teacher education institutions. Methodology refers to the theory and practice of teaching and learning. This addresses how teaching and learning is understood, organized, and conducted. Methodology, then, is the overall framework or approach to teaching which encompasses specific teaching methods. For example, an overall inclusive teaching methodology involves specific approaches to individualized/personalized instruction, and learner-centred teaching. These four advocacy guides are structured so that they: • break the issue down into several key challenges; • analyse the broad situation in the region, and suggest questions that advocates could ask to help them investigate the situation in their specific context; and • suggest pertinent advocacy goals, and the messages that advocates may want to convey, as well as indicators for deciding whether advocacy on the issue is having any impact. Tables at the end of each advocacy guide summarize the advocacy messages and suggest potential targets for each message, and then offer space for readers to make notes about how they might convey these messages to each target (drawing on advice provided in the brief guide to advocacy in this introductory guide). Illustrative case studies are provided wherever possible, and readers are encouraged to use their own investigations within their context to identify local case studies that they can use to back up their advocacy messages.