ALBANIA Regional Preparatory Workshop on Inclusive Education Eastern and South Eastern Europe Sinaia, Romania, 14 16 June 2007 UNESCO International Bureau of Education
Prof. Assoc. Dr. Virxhil Nano Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tirana Albanian Schools towards Inclusive Education I. The first attempts towards inclusive education in Albania go back to the 90s. From 1994 up to 2000-02, through the assistance of various foreign organizations (CAD, MENCAP, UNICEF, Save the Children and so on) different projects were applied both at school and pre-school level. Although the first results were promising, because they lacked government financial support, these projects decreased their impact until they stopped altogether. It has to be said at this juncture that the government s main efforts were concentrated primarily in the setting up of special needs institutions, such as those for students with hearing or vision impairment, multiple physical problems, mental retardation and so on. In 1996, for the first time ever, the Normative Provisions of Public Education outlined the idea that the integration of children with special needs in mainstream schools was considered an indispensable and a contemporary process for the best of the children and our schools alike. All would depend on the nature of the curriculum, school organization, teachers readiness and the ability to respond to the diversity of students (2). By and large, the Albanian experience has shown that in more severe cases parents prefer to educate their children in special institutions near communities they live in. In their attempts to find a better solution, a number of families, a small percentage that is, have moved to big cities or tried to emigrate abroad. Nevertheless, a considerable part has stayed at home and is forced to carry out an isolated life far from the community (1). As regards to the less severe cases, which make up the main percentage of children with special needs, parents are continuously pressing mainstream schools to accept and educate their children. Although the law for the education of these students in ordinary schools has been in place for some years now, in a lot of cases the teachers do not enforce it. It is, therefore, essential that secondary school legislation is overhauled and bolstered by tougher laws and sanctions. At present, the inclusion of students with special needs in Albanian public schools does not represent a growing trend, nor does it make up the majority of cases. Nevertheless, given parent pressure it has been possible for these children to attend regular schools. As time goes by, however, their school attendance, particularly in secondary education, becomes increasingly difficult with a large number dropping out before completing forth grade (1).
In the past few years, the attitude of teachers and other students towards students with special needs has been positive, caring, loving and humane. These children benefit from school experience and their presence, on the whole, does not represent a problem for the class. Quite often in their professional work experience, teachers of mainstream schools have had students with learning difficulties but these were more individual cases from some isolated projects or part of many years work experience. These experiences have not had a sound impact on changing their work approach in the class or in the school. Still today most of our schools are characterized by routine, one program, one text for all and only some sporadic adaptation according to the needs of the students (3). Even now some teachers perceive the work with children with special needs as an act of charity, or an additional workload for them and not as their responsibility. They justify it saying: There are special schools for these students, we are not trained for this kind of job; our classes do not have the necessary conditions (1, 3). If we have a look at the situation in our schools we would notice that the work of teachers is characterized by isolation of teachers in their classes. They do not collaborate or work together to solve different problems they encounter in their classes. Quite often facing lonely the problems the teachers are felt unmotivated, unappreciated and overloaded. The observations made in our schools and the discussions with teachers show that the process of inclusion should be prepared carefully and realized gradually in order to avoid mistrust and refusal which lead to negative attitude from teachers and students (1). Referring to school legislation, schools do not have a clear policy for implementation of inclusive education nowadays (2). Normative Provisions for Public Education do not offer clear direction for action. All this create somehow confusion to the teachers. The law acknowledges the right of every child to education considering their capabilities, but it does not show the roads through which this process can be implemented in the school. Actually the current main sources of exclusion are: 1. Overcrowded classrooms (on average 35-40 pupils per classroom in the cities). 2. Inappropriate infrastructure in the school. 3. The gravity of situation to some children and inappropriate support from the school. 4. Lack of a qualitative inclusive curriculum 5. Uninformed and untrained teachers. 6. Lack of resource teacher and resource room in the school. 7. Unclear and unknown normative provisions. 8. Lack of appropriate knowledge about the school legislation. 9. Lack of motivation and support for teachers.
II. If the process of inclusion goes somehow acceptable in the primary education, but certainly not without problems, in the secondary education children are facing more and more problems (different teachers for different subjects, no one responsible in coordinating the work with the child). Furthermore, teachers in secondary education are yet more subjected oriented that child oriented. Books and verbal instructions have yet precedence over learning by doing. All of the above along with the increasing presence of students with special needs in classes, have realistically pressured schools into finding new solutions to change and continually improve daily practices. Experience has shown that the presence of various students in our schools, along with their different cultures or backgrounds, and differing styles of learning force teachers into being permanently alert and focused. Educational staff as well as different experts in the filed believe that one of the important factors that impede the implementation of an inclusive education has to do with the way how the present school curriculum is designed. While in the elementary school, the teachers find it easy to adapt these curricula with the respective categories of the students in need; this is not the case in the higher levels of education. There is a lack of the auxiliary means, alternative texts and materials, and the teachers are not well-trained in order to carry out the changes and adaptations according to specific needs of the students. Taking into consideration the importance that all-inclusive process has, the Albanian Government, Ministry of Education and Science (MES), has developed 2005-2015 National Strategy for Students with Special Needs and is now implementing this progressive policy for inclusive education. Accessibility, capacity building elements as well as the establishment of 90 inclusive kindergarten and 100 inclusive schools are included in the Strategy. This action plan has the necessary governmental financial support and is considered to be one of the most important undertakings in the filed of education in Albania done so far. The focus is evidently put on the implementation of an all inclusive education (4). In actual fact, under the Normative Provisions schools are encouraged to move toward inclusive education, and the number of schools becoming involved in these pilot programmes is increasing. If we were to have a look at School P., in a remote area of Albania, which got involved in this process about a year ago, we can conclude the following: Teachers felt a sense of genuine success after they struggled to enable some children with special needs to succeed and to feel part of the class. A more positive ethos was generated in the school because of the collective efforts being made. Knowing students deeply as individuals helped teachers to plan more meaningful educational programs, both for individuals and for larger groups; and for very able students as well as for very slow students.
The use of Individual Educational Plan (IEP) and the planning necessary to start them showed teachers that they had not known children s real starting levels in all areas before. Obviously, in this starting point not everything has gone smoothly: Resistant teacher colleagues were seen as the most challenging problem of all, particularly colleagues who were more subject-centered specialists from grade five. In this road all staff involved expressed a need for more staff development. So as to support these schools, the Ministry of Education s 2005-2015 National Strategy for People with Special Needs foresees that supporting psycho-pedagogical and psychosocial structures are set up in schools, without excluding other auxiliary services for students with special needs. III. During the last years the Institute of Curriculum and Standards has made several improvements in the National Curriculum. Actually, the new curriculum is more flexible; it provides teachers with several ideas and suggestions on how to work with children in accordance to their needs and difficulties; it provides teachers of compulsory education with the alternative of using 15-20% of the total annual working hours in accordance to the needs and problems that might be faced during the education process; it offers suggestions and recommends new and effective methods and techniques. Furthermore, it can be said that substantial improvements have been made in the new curriculum in relation to the transition from primary to secondary education. Although curriculum changes have been considered positive ones, it is believed that we are still a long way from what is needed. It is important that teachers of all levels are trained in how to adapt contents and teaching methods as per the specificities of students with special needs. It is also essential that the Institute of Curriculum and Standards prepares supporting learning materials of various levels of difficulty which could be used as modules to assist teachers. A particular problem at this juncture is the training of teachers in what and how should be included in the student s curriculum the Individual Educational Plan (PEI). In support of the above, the Institute of Curriculum and Standards has put together various practical documents (120 pages) to assist teachers with the selection or adjustment of the curriculum as per the specifics of students with special needs.
IV. The definition of students with special needs should be revised in the light of inclusive education. In this context students with special needs should be defined as pupils who learn differently. Emphasising this concept is very important if we want to make changes in the techniques, organization and teaching methods for students with special needs. In most cases, teachers act on their personal experience and on those methods they themselves have used more frequently in the past, and which, to a certain extent, have been successful. This way of reasoning is empirical because there is no room in it for people of various and differing particulars, although they might have the same problem (i.e. hearing impairment etc). Given the nature of each student s difficulties, it is necessary for the teacher to become familiar with or learn about the most important elements of the difficulty encountered (is it progressive, sustainable, at what level, and so on). If one was to call this the grossomodo getting to know process, one must always remember that even two mainstream school students who do not seem to present problems, are never alike let alone special needs students, each and everyone bringing their own particularity to the classroom. At a second getting-to-know phase, one must take into consideration the psycho-physical and emotional particulars of the student, how he acts and functions whilst socialising, and what are his/her priorities and needs. All of the above-mentioned are to be found out and kept in mind when working with these students during the process of inclusion. The definition of these students as students who learn differently means that the techniques and educative methods to be used with these students should be modified according to both the problem at hand and his/her individuality. Some of the instructional strategies which have been used successfully with these students in the process of inclusion are: multi-level instruction, cooperative learning and activity based learning. What is important is for teachers to use innovative strategies for variety of learning styles of students with special needs such as: discussions with the student about learning style preferences; use of multi-sensory presentation; include the child in conversation with their peers; provide the choice of materials; use mixed working groups and peer tutoring. The experience has shown that in order to learn and support the student it is necessary that first of all teachers have to know very well his learning style, which in a way is unique to each individual. Obviously, it is not a fixed model. It changes somehow according to the situation but the basic remain. What many teachers may not have considered is that they need to differentiate not because of different abilities but because students themselves learn in different ways. In this context it may be more appropriate to provide to the students choice about how the task is done in order that students learn on
their preferred way. Putting students with special needs to collaborate and work in small mixed groups, supporting each other, is also considered to be very helpful. Furthermore, it is important that students with special needs be included and work in a relaxed atmosphere where they feel happy and are encouraged to talk and act concretely. Once children believe they are not good they can not perform very well on their tasks (5). As far as the above are concerned, teachers need to be trained systematically for the problems/difficulties they encounter in class. In this framework, the MES in collaboration with National Training Centre needs to plan and organize a step by step action plan in a national level for gradual training of all teachers engaged in the public schools. Without any doubt in the recent years the issues of people with special needs have been more present in the political agendas and administrative reforms in Albania. The progress until now consists mainly in formulating polices, legislation and documents which aim to reflect the international documents and standards. But what does the actual situation represent? Based on data from the Observation Report made by Albanian Disability Rights Foundation (2006), results that: The Ministry of Education and Science does not have yet any administrative units responsible for the implementation of inclusive education for students with special needs. In our schools are not included resource teachers to support the process of inclusion. The MES has no statistics on either the number of students with special needs that have been included or the number of teachers who are working with students with special needs in mainstream schools. The Normative Provisions as they have been expressed in the document do not help in stimulating the inclusive education. The legal framework relating to the procedures of admission in the mainstream schools, initial assessment and enrollment of students with special needs in the first grade of the mainstream school need to be regulated by law. The MES has not yet formulated and approved the necessary bylaws to regulate the work with Individual Education Plans (IEP). The mainstream schools do not have any multi-disciplinary team to assess the students with special needs. The teachers who work with students with special needs in mainstream education have not been rewarded for their work as the Normative Provisions foresee. There are not created yet the necessary units in the city and regional level for the coordination and monitoring of the process of inclusion (6).
In this situation: The legislation should prescribe the way it is going to be preceded with inclusion education in the secondary schools. There is need to raise the awareness of teachers and principals of mainstream schools of the importance of inclusive education. Mainstream school principals and teachers should undergo theoretical and practical training on the Normative Provisions which guarantee the right of special needs children to study in mainstream schools under the all-inclusive education. Together with the teachers, school principals should program extra-curricular and cross-curricular activities in order to deepen the knowledge of students with special needs. Specialists of the psychological service near the mainstream schools should be helped through trainings in the field of all-inclusive education. MES should intervene in order to ensure an efficient work of the entire mechanism and structures responsible for the implementation of the legislation in all-inclusive education (6). All of the above mentioned issues show there is lot to be done. It needs engagement from many parts, mostly from the Ministry of Education and Science, NGOs in the field, parents associations, and other partners.
References (1) Nano, V. (2002) Albanian Schools in the Integration Process: A study on the integration of children with disability in regular schools. Tirane: Albanian Disability Rights Foundation. (2) Ministry of Education and Science (1996) Normative Provisions of Public Schools. Tirane: MES. (3) Closs, A., Nano, V., Ikonomi, E. (2003) I am like you: An investigation into the position of children with disabilities in Albania. Tirane: Save the Children. (4) MES (2005) National Strategy on People with Disabilities. Tirane: MES. (5) McNamara, S., Moreton, G. (1998) Understanding Differentiation: A teacher s Guide. London; David Fulton Publisher. (6) Albanian Disability Rights Foundation (2006) Respenct of the rights of people with intellectual disabilities in the areas of social services, health care, edication, employment and vocational training. Tirane: ADRF.