Preparing teachers to teach children with special educational needs and disabilities: the significance of a national PGCE development and evaluation project for inclusive teacher education

Abstract

This paper discusses issues arising from a national development and evaluation project, which (1) surveyed national primary and secondary postgraduate certificate programmes (PGCE) about how they prepare trainees to teach pupils with special educational needs; and (2) conducted a trial of a practical teaching task for preparing primary and secondary teacher trainees to teach pupils with special educational needs. The survey involved 42% of all top‐rated PGCE providers, whereas the trial involved six primary and five secondary PGCE programmes involving 550 trainees overall. Selected findings are reported from the survey, which are relevant to the need for a supervised school‐based teaching task. The evaluation highlighted problems about task preparation, communications, timing, task design, trainee support, use of resources and reporting. Despite these issues, the trial was judged to be successful as almost most participants were positive about the task and its impact. Recommendations for adapting and implementing the task made to the funding agency are outlined; recommendations have been adopted in the national dissemination of the task to all initial 1‐year training providers. The evaluation of the trial is discussed in terms of three key aspects: (1) the challenge for initial teacher training to prepare all teachers to teach pupils with special educational needs; (2) the critical role of partnership between universities and practice schools in initial training; and (3) the potential of ideas and practices about personalisation for including concepts about special educational needs pedagogy into wider pedagogic models.