Designing Curriculum for Pre-school Teachers Who Work in Inclusive Classroom Settings Erasmus Project

Project Title

Designing Curriculum for Pre-school Teachers Who Work in Inclusive Classroom Settings

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

Pre-school education is known as a critical period in which the foundation of personality is built. Not only for personality development, pre-school education plays a key role in developing a series of skills and knowledge such as problem solving skills, social skills, developed language and communication skills, increased readiness for early years of elementary school, lower problem behaviours in future. Inclusive education is defined by UNESCO as a process of addressing and responding to the diverse needs of all learners by increasing participation in learning and reducing exclusion within and from education. Inclusive education starts with pre-school education to prepare children with their typically developing peers for further education in their life. Teachers are accepted as one of the most important component of inclusion, and in order to increase the success of pre-school inclusive practices, they should be prepared to teach in heterogeneous classrooms that include children with and without special needs including children with (IDs). In pre-school teacher education programs in Turkey consists of only one introductory and selective course on special education. Many teachers are graduated without having attended knowledge and skills that would compliment to their competencies to work with children with diverse needs. Studies in Turkey indicated that the school and classroom environments where pre-school inclusive education will take place are not available to meet the needs of children with SNs, especially for the children with IDs. In Turkey, common concerns stated by teachers are lack of availability of reliable knowledge based resources, lack of good practices reflecting the real field experience, lack of warm learning environment for the professionals, lack of communication among all professionals who serve in different roles, lack of understanding how to prepare and present the materials to the professionals in a more meaningful way to them.

This project has been designed so as to answer to those needs through designing a training program for pre-school teachers who are working in inclusive class-rooms through providing their participation into the design process, in line with their needs and fucusing on children with IDs. An open e-learning environment for pre-school teachers has also been developed to learn and interact with each other. It can be accessed from the link http://www.ogretmenplatform.org OR http://www.teacherplatform.org. The e-learning environment consists of a training program and a platform including those; necessary knowledge to develop a welcoming environment for the pre-school teachers, good examples coming from real teachers and self-evaluative materials for the teachers to evaluate their own development and their own educational environment. To succeed this, the teachers were supported by the university professionals in collaboration with the field experts. Moreover, training program and open e-learning design processes has been supported through joint staff trainings to understand and utilize from existent practices at the European level.This project was implemented transnationally so as to create an environment for pre-school teachers in Turkey to have same vision with the European partners & to share this new initiative, ‘’ teachers to teachers perspective” at the European level. Our partnership holds the whole range of the competences required to implement this project & to produce high quality outputs.We are 7 partners from 4 countries. Profile of partners can be accessed from the link http://www.ogretmenplatform.org/en/partners

I. OUTPUTS (http://www.ogretmenplatform.org/en/outputs)
1. Needs Analysis for Pre-School Teachers in Inclusive Education Settings(O1): To determine the specific needs of pre-school teachers in inclusive settings and to determine existent preshool practices in European Union
2. Development of a new tool to evaluate inclusive preschool settings in the perspective of global quality (O2)
3. Design of a training program/curriculum for pre-school teachers(O3) A new training program will be designed to improve professional and pedagogical skills of pre-school teachers in terms of inclusion
4. Designing an open e-learning portal for preshool teachers(O4)

II. MULTIPLIER EVENTS AND DISSEMİNATION ACTIVITIES was conducted to raise awareness and to disseminate project findings and results.
E1: Dissemination and awareness raising meeting on needs analysis
E2: Awareness raising meeting on the new training program and E-learning Portal

III. LEARNİNG/TEACHİNG /TRAİNİNG ACTİVİTİES
(C1) . Joint staff training in the Netherlands
(C2). Joint staff training in Spain

IV. PROJECT MANAGEMENT-FOLLOW-UP AND COMMUNİCATİON ACTİVİTİES

V. TRANSNATİONAL MEETİNGS TO OVERVİEW THE PROJECT ACTİVİTİES
M1. Kick-off meeting (Turkey)
M2. Transnational meeting in Germany
M3. Transnational meeting in the Netherlands
M4. Transnational meeting in Spain

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 242515,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

ZIHINSEL YETERSIZ COCUKLARI YETISTIRME VE KORUMA VAKFI (ZICEV) & Country: TR

Project Partners

• ANKARA MILLI EGITIM MUDURLUGU
• Stichting Heliomare Onderwijs
• HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI
• CHRISTLICHES JUGENDDORFWERK DEUTSCHLANDS GEMEINNUTZIGER EV (CJD)
• Asociación cultural y medioambiental Permacultura Cantabria
• GAZI UNIVERSITESI