Inclusive ECCD: - Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and ...

centres to children with special needs. Even excellent
early childhood providers and teachers need additional
training and support to address the diverse
needs of children within a wide developmental range
of abilities.
Trainers need to be developed at many levels: trainers
for the medical profession, trainers for those working
in social services, trainers for those working with
parents. Parents themselves can be very effective trainers.
One-shot pre-service training is never sufficient.
While there is a need for initial training to provide
people with the basics (whether they be within the
medical profession, social workers, teachers or parents),
there will always be a need for support and
additional training as new knowledge and experience
is generated. This is particularly true in terms of the
development of inclusive early childhood services
since this is a relatively new endeavour.
In the development of training systems it is important
to emphasise that rather than creating completely
new training systems, it is more cost-effective to work
with and revise/remodel current training systems.
What Gets in the
Way of <strong>Inclusive</strong>
<strong>ECCD</strong> Programming?
While it is true that people developing inclusive programmes
for young children can, in essence, follow
the principles that provide the basis of any good early
childhood programme, that is easier said than
done. The field of special education brings with it a
history and a set of attitudes and procedures that
make it difficult for both parents and professionals to
accept the premise that the basic requirement for
young children with special needs is a quality early
childhood approach. There are some beliefs and
practices, as well as logistics and practicalities, that
hinder our ability to implement inclusive <strong>ECCD</strong> programmes.
What follows is a description of some of
the specific challenges that have to be overcome.
Beliefs and
Practices
■ The practice of waiting for children to
catch up before they can move forward in
the system
This happens particularly in relation to children
who are slower mentally. They are kept at home or
held in early childhood programmes (if they are
available) until they are deemed ‘ready’ for primary
school work. This means they may spend several
years in the early childhood programme and/or have
delayed entry into primary school. This practice puts
a burden on those offering the <strong>ECCD</strong> programme,
because the place occupied by that child is taken for
longer than for a child who progresses based on age,
and it puts pressure on the child who is increasingly
out-of-synch with age cohorts, both physically and
socially.
■ The false notion that some children
cannot learn
Frequently there is an assumption that children
who are differently-abled physically do not have the
same mental capacity as other children; this is untrue.
In addition, while some children have a limited
mental capacity, there are still things they are able to
learn. There are differences in children’s styles of
learning and in what they can learn. What tends to
happen is that people who work with children with
special needs put artificial limits on what these children
can learn, or insist on a particular style of learning
that is not in keeping with the child’s abilities or
optimum mode of learning. This is frequently based
on a limited understanding of what the learning
process entails.
■ The desire within Majority World
countries to copy what has been developed
in resource-rich countries
There is still considerable reliance on what happens
in resource-rich countries as the standard to
which the Majority World should aspire. It is hard
for many to believe that inclusive education is of the
same (or greater) benefit for the special needs child
when they are aware of the highly specialised approach
taken in the Minority (resource-rich) World
that gives the outward appearance of meeting the
child’s unique needs. O’Toole (1991) notes, “We
have been seduced by the modernisation mirage
which has fostered the illusion that Western skills,
knowledge and attitudes should be diffused to developing
countries. The mirage is so vivid that many
civil servants insist that Western-style institutions
are the solution and anything else is ‘humiliatingly
second-rate’.” (11)
■ A belief that only those with specialised
training can provide appropriate experiences
for children with special needs
Those with specialised training may not be the best
providers for children in inclusive settings. As noted
by Bruder (1997b), “Some disciplines that provide
related services have evolved from a medical orientation
(e.g., therapies), and staff from these disciplines
may be uncomfortable in early education classroom
settings. These professionals may be used to providing
hands-on, direct services to a child in an isolated room
rather than integrating the interventions into the
child’s educational setting. They may have never provided
services to a child within a group situation, and
as a result they may not feel competent or confident
in doing so.” (1) By and large, the evidence seems to
support the view that those who are successful in
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