Event Name- CONNECTED LEARNING AND RESEARCH ON INCLUSIVE EDUCATION (CLeaR on IE) Report Release

Venue: - Stella Matutina College of Education 86th Street, Kamarajar Salai, Ashok Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600083

Time- 4-5 pm

The Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education (CETE) at TISS Mumbai has been working towards the goal of quality education for all. Recognising the gap between policy directives and  on-ground reality of the practice of Inclusive Education in the Indian education system, Cognizant Foundation partnered with TISS to launch the “Connected Learning and Research on Inclusive Education” (CLeaR on IE) project. The purpose of the project is to ensure a more sustainable means of contributing to the human resource development of knowledge and practice of inclusive education, with a special focus on the education of children with disabilities. 

To create the framework for CLeaR on IE, the team from TISS conducted a rigorous review of global literature around inclusive education to develop a teacher competency framework. To study the alignment with this framework, an analysis of the curriculum of teacher education programmes of seven universities in India was taken. To substantiate the desk analysis, a survey of student-teachers of five of these seven universities was conducted to ascertain their level of understanding of inclusive education and confidence to practice inclusion. To support practitioners, two courses on inclusive education, one for teacher educators and the other for practising teachers were designed and piloted. Two Inclusive Education Resource Centres (IERC) have been set up in Avinashilingam University and National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities (NIEPMD) along with a virtual IERC with the support of The Gateway School of Mumbai. Prof. Maya Kalyanpur, University of San Diego was the TISS-Cognizant Foundation visiting Chair on Inclusive Education. She helped design a course on inclusive education for prospective teacher educators. This course helps fulfil the need for preparing teacher educators for inclusion. The course curriculum helps participants to question and recognize the fallacy of the ‘normal’ along with developing competences to practice inclusion.

These activities were completed during the period December 2020 to July 2022, as part of Phase 1 of CLeaR on IE. During this time, the project has made various inroads and we are excited to share these results. We request the pleasure of your company on the occasion of the release of the project report on August 5, 2022.

Registration Link for joining virtually: https://bit.ly/CLeaRonIE_RR