Enabling a shift for inclusive education through capacity building

My career shift from the corporate sector to education brought in many answers on how I can contribute toward providing quality education to all children by being a part of the system. However, eventually it also made me realize that to be able to make a dent through my work, the efforts must be sustainable and made at the systemic level, wherever possible. As a ‘Teach for India’ teacher, way back in 2014, I taught in a government school for two years. That experience made me understand the ground realities and the shifts I can bring as an educator, keeping children at the core.

It also made me curious about two other key areas. First, as a teacher, how can I support children with diverse needs in a mainstream classroom? And second, it’s imperative to work toward building capacities of the key stakeholders around a child. In other words, to have a bigger impact and a systemic level shift, it is important to think about amplifying the effect which will happen only if the work is toward empowering and enabling those who are the most crucial part of the education system and work directly with children. Joining ‘Ummeed Child Development Center’ gave me the answers to both.

Around 15% of school going children have a disability. India has the highest number of children with disabilities (CWDs) in the world. Their number is estimated at over 50 million. Through our experience of working in the space, we have noticed that there is a need to acknowledge and accept the above fact. In the recent years, inclusive education has gained momentum with new policies like National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in place. However, significant gaps exist between these policies and their implementation at the school level. This happens due to lack of training for mainstream teachers to support children with diverse needs, including CWDs.

About hope

Ummeed, meaning ‘hope’, was founded in 2001 by Dr Vibha Krishnamurthy. She is one of India’s first developmental paediatricians. Ummeed is a not-for-profit organization. Its vision is to help children with, and at the risk of, developmental disabilities reach their full potential and be included in society.

Ummeed’s key areas of work include providing trans-disciplinary clinical services to children and their families across the spectrum of developmental disabilities. In addition, it also trains medical professionals, educators, community workers and parents themselves to implement high-quality interventions to support children in their development. Ummeed’s teams are also actively engaged in research pertinent to the field of child development and disabilities, and work on awareness and advocacy initiatives to shift culture and attitudes toward inclusion.

This has strengthened our purpose of work at Ummeed toward capacity building of educators and civil society organizations (CSOs) working in the education and disability space. The larger goal is to ensure that all children learn with their peers. Everyone performs better when exposed to inclusive education.

We are constantly working toward developing curriculum which CSOs and educators can take back to mainstream classrooms and schools to cater to diverse learning needs. Our purpose is not to turn mainstream educators into special educators or experts in developmental disabilities. However, we aim to equip them with simple ways based on their classroom experiences. In the process, we want to capacitate them to be able to engage and make sure each child gets the opportunity to learn and feels included and belonged.

We believe that people are the experts of their lives. We also know that educators have the best understanding of their classroom and their own pedagogic contexts. They often have a clear sense of what might work better for them and their students. For us, it’s vital that we understand the needs of the CSOs and educators first. This helps us design interventions in the most meaningful ways. For instance, one of the early stages of our conversation involves doing a needs assessment to understand their needs and context. In the process, we are also able to gauge our roles through the entire journey. We acknowledge that there is a need to continue to work toward spreading awareness and sensitizing different stakeholders like educators, professionals, caregivers, and the children themselves.

The quantum of work that’s needed and all that we are trying to do toward disability inclusive education in our country cannot be done alone. This makes it inevitable to empower and equip more CSOs, schools and educators to join hands with us on this journey. Most of our capacity building efforts at Ummeed in the initial days was focused on CSOs. We worked mostly with individual CSOs and schools. It made it easier to find synergies, align objectives, needs and outcomes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we explored the online space. We had to design programs which were situation and time sensitive, yet in alignment with our vision.

Alongside, we explored the online platform for running capacity building programs to expand our reach. School Inclusion Training Program (SITP) is one such capacity building program. It was launched at the peak of the pandemic. Its goal was to cater to educators’ needs using the online medium. It made us realize the power of connecting remotely with a diverse group of educators from across the country for a period of three months. However, the challenge was that we missed the in-person warmth and participation.

Since then, we have continued to conduct most of our capacity building programs online. We have also explored working with CSOs from different geographies for deeper engagement. Our programs are a two way learning and sharing process. These are based on ample real-life, case-based discussions from the Indian context. These also involved experiential learning and implementation support. SITP is an example of the same. It has thrived from the insightful experiences and the co-learning spaces created within. The program has evolved over the years. It is running its fourth iteration this year. It continues to equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to create inclusive classrooms for all children, including those with disabilities.

By providing specialized training, the SITP empowers educators to foster an inclusive environment where every student can thrive academically and socially. We have had over 120 participants over the years. We aim to engage with around 70 more in the present cohort. The program focuses on topics ranging from understanding of inclusion and diverse learning, mental health, social emotional well-being, child development, developmental disabilities, and social and academic inclusion. Co-learning spaces have been embedded in-between the content based training sessions. The emphasis has been on creating safe spaces for participants to share their reflections, learning, takeaways and challenges from the sessions with each other in smaller groups.

Across these spaces, it has been observed that participants openly share what works for them and the challenges they face in implementing some of their learnings. They bring in cases from their own context to be discussed in smaller groups and all participants meaningfully contribute to the conversations. Overall, this space encourages participants to reflect and discuss previous sessions leading to meaningful and insightful conversations which becomes difficult in the larger group. To be able to gauge the outcome of our efforts, we persistently work toward strengthening our processes and indicators defined for them. One of the simple yet efficient tools that Ummeed uses to monitor the effectiveness of any program is The Kirkpatrick Model. It is a globally recognized method of evaluating the results of training and learning programs. It assesses both formal and informal training methods. It rates them against four levels of criteria: reaction, learning, behavior and results. This model helps us understand the impact of our work at different levels. We rely equally on qualitative ways to measure and evaluate our own work. For example, we use anecdotes, impact stories, testimonials, etc., as well. Thereby we create opportunities to let participants express their learning in a way most suited to them.

A key learning from our engagements with CSOs has been to not just come up with a strong training plan. We have come to realize that we must also support them in an equally robust implementation support, monitoring processes and sustainability plan in place. In the process, we have developed a robust understanding of our role in the broader ecosystem as knowledge experts and influencers. It has become even more crucial for us to continue to work toward building a cadre of individuals to take the work forward.

All of the above helps us reflect and determine our direction, and plan through our learning journey. We have tried to produce and sustain capacity building programs in disability inclusive education of a certain quality. At the same time, we are constantly striving to become better at what we do by incorporating learnings from the previous iterations. A simple example would be that we design the structure of our programs keeping the participants and recipients at the centre, so that they engage meaningfully. Learning looks different for different interventions. For example, we run an in-service, professional development program in partnership with Azim Premji University (APU). It is a diploma in inclusive education. This program involves a much deeper engagement, mentorship, field/ school visits, assignments, etc.

Our long journey has led to the realization and continued efforts for capacity building of schools and CSOs to enhance effectiveness and to ensure sustainable movement toward the vision of inclusion of all children. In addition to empowering and enabling them by providing training and resources, we envision them to be advocates for a bigger social and systemic changes.