Friday (6/11), fifth episode of International Guest Lecture Series (IGLS) was held and inviting Xie Huichao, Ph.D, lecturer at the National Institute of Education Singapore as the speaker. There are total of 51 who join this event online.
Supporting Diverse Learners in Early Childhood Education Setting: A Global Perspective raised as the topic for this lecture. He started by giving a brief history about the first inclusion education of early childhood, which was founded in 1970 in United States. According to him, inclusive education those era was a challenging, because the community did not understand about inclusive education. What they understand is, the children with no special needs will be infected and suffer from Down syndrome or autism if they learning in the same class with children with special needs.
Over time, knowledge about inclusive education continues to develop, including the curriculum and intervention models used in inclusive schools. Huichao who is working in inclusive education in Singapore said that in 2016 Singapore had an inclusive school for in early children age for the first time. Kindle Garden, was the pioneer of inclusive schools in Singapore. “People are quite surprised to that Singapore, which is known for its excellent education system, just had an inclusive school for early childhood in 2016” said Huichao.
Huichao revealed that there are at least five benefits of early childhood inclusion, these benefits include getting a good job in adulthood, individual curriculum with higher equality, less class absence and behavior problems, better academic results, and also improved student involvement during the class.
However, to achieve this goal there are three conditions that need to be considered. “Three things need to be considered are access, participation and support. Without these, inclusive schools will not be successful”
According to Huichao, support plays an important out of the three conditions. The support including parents, teachers, psychologists, and therapists. The support system is a multilevel system. “Multilevel support systems are differentiated according to their objectives. The first level is used for general support to everyone, the second level more focused on support, and the third level is intensive support” explained Huichao.
“The next step is our responsibility, we are the new generation and it is our responsibility to think and answer questions in order to bridge for research and practice. Make sure the research is applied in daily classroom practice, to help children grow ” said Huichao at the end of his lecture.