Cultivating Communities of Inclusive Practice

Abstract

Significant disparities in educational outcome, opportunity, and achievement endure for students with disabilities and those from culturally and linguistically diverse groups. A need for effective, responsive, and inclusive practices in schools is imperative. Educators are at the heart of providing the challenging, responsive education that each child and adolescent deserves. Professional development is the lever of change, but can or help or hinder educators in improving instructional and school practices that result in improved outcomes for all students. This chapter examines the evidence base surrounding professional development and inclusive practice. Four approaches to professional development supporting more transformative professional learning and change are featured: inquiry groups (teacher study groups and lesson study); coaching, Professional Learning Communities; and Professional Development Schools. Snapshots to practice are included with each approach to provide integrated descriptive examples of varied inclusive professional development practices.

Teacher Professional Development in Indonesia’s Remote Areas with Driven Educational Philanthropic Institutions

“…This research fills the gap where the increase in teacher professionalism is only carried out by the government (Rowe & Skourdoumbis, 2019;Wardoyo et al, 2017). This study supports the findings of previous study, where pedagogical mentoring for teacher professional development is carried out voluntarily with a contextual-collaborative approach (Curran & Hawbaker, 2020;Hollweck, 2021;Sutton, 2021). In remote areas, limited access to public facilities and disparities in the social level of urban communities add to the problem of equality in education, especially teacher professionalism (Asari et al, 2018;Rayuwati, 2020).…”