Activity 2.4 Attitudes to Inclusive Teaching by Daniel – Oluwafunmilayo Olalusi

By ‘learner capacity, Daniel meant that all children do not develop at the same rate because they do not grow up in the same environment. They have different family background.

There is the general belief that children from rich homes would perform better than children from poor family background. This notion was proved wrong again and again in my primary and secondary schools days. Those of us from poor family background were not enrolled in secondary schools when due to financial constraints. But once enrolled, we in most cases performed better than our counterparts from rich homes.

Daniel challenged the beliefs that any child with any form of disability is as a result of demonic operations in their lives rather than being a medical challenge. Hence, rather than seek medical intervention, parents go about doing fettish things. I think this is still an issue of lack of understanding.

To challenge the notion of ‘fixed intelligence’, teachers should take children as individuals and not as groups in the education system. So teachers will have to do both ability grouping and individualise teaching according to the needs of each child with evidence of adequate preparation for each topic for each child. Learning materials should be made or adapted for individual students according to their ability levels and according to their needs. Also, evaluation of children should be done according to objectives that were set for individual children criterion based. Teachers should make classroom climate for children to be comfortable.