MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL COOPERATION IN INCLUSIVE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE: WORLD PRACTICES

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the current state of educational inclusion in Ukraine and the challenges that are to be met in the process of scientific researches. These challenges primarily refer to the lack of teachers' skills and confidence in teaching children with special educational needs and their lack of awareness of the existing native and foreign experience of effective pedagogical collaboration in the process of inclusive instruction.

Exemplified by secondary education systems of Italy, Austria, Belgium and the USA, the possibilities of collaboration of mainstream and special education teachers are considered in the context of teaching all 4 categories of children with special educational needs. The latter, according to Salamanca statement and framework for action on special needs education, can be observed as referred to persons with: disability, gift, language difficulties and disadvantaged social environment. The research done resulted in singling out a number of collaboration correspondent models.

In Italian mainstream classes all pupils can be taught Braille alphabet or sign language (traditional for special education) on condition that a learner with disability in this class needs some of them. In Austrian inclusive classes a special education teacher can collaborate with a mainstream one on a regular or temporary basis to help children with disability. In Belgium the latter have to attend a part of lessons in a mainstream school and to work additionally with special education teachers or a remedial one. Teaching learners with other 3 remaining groups of special educational needs is thoroughly studied in the USA. The traditional “Push-In Pull-Out” (PIPO) model of teaching learners, whose native language is not English, is gradually replaced by co-teaching models, and namely by: leader – support, team teaching, parallel teaching, station teaching, enrichment teaching, circuit teaching, teaching – observation, alternative teaching, etc. These models are used in teaching learners with disability and gifted children. As for the learners from disadvantaged social environments, they additionally work with remedial teachers.