European Union Commission puts emphasis on education and training policy that enables all citizens, irrespective of their personal, social or economic circumstances, to acquire, update and develop over a lifetime both job‐specific skills and the key competences needed for their employability and to foster further learning, active citizenship and intercultural dialogue. It is also believed that early childhood education and care can lay the foundations for these goals in life in terms of education, well-being, employability, and social integration, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Educational disadvantage should be addressed by providing high quality early childhood education and targeted support, and by promoting inclusive education. Inclusive education can be defined as the education of children with and without disabilities in the same setting, mostly in classrooms. Its primary goal is to fight marginalization and exclusion. Inclusive education can be regarded as an important way to achieve “Education for All”. The responsibilities and roles of teachers change with inclusive practices and teachers are expected to understand the characteristics of children with disadvantages, adapt the curriculum according to their developmental level and interact with all children, including the ones with disadvantages. However, previous literature states that preschool and primary school teachers are not adequately prepared to teach children with disadvantages and they do not have sufficient knowledge and skills to teaching in inclusive classrooms. In addition, since pre-service training offers little to teachers to prepare them for this kind of work, there is concern about inadequacy of teacher preparation in terms of meeting the educational needs of disadvantaged children. The main goal of the project is to produce a manual with the models of inclusive education of the different participating countries and create a transnational model with all the best components together in the languages of participating countries to be used in teacher preparation for the development of competencies and talents of children in inclusive classrooms, as intellectual output of the project. Next to it, this model will be illustrated with ‘good practices’ from different countries as case studies. The model will also be supported by examples of activities developed by experts of the different countries in different disciplines. This model and the activities for good practices will be introduced to the pre-service teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of the manual. It will also be provided in the languages of participating countries. During the project two intensive study programmes, which will award 4 ECTS to participating students, will be organized . The goal of the intensive programmes is to provide participants with opportunities to learn and compare different good practices of inclusive education, and to gain intercultural understanding about how to develop competencies and talents of disadvantaged children in inclusive classrooms. 112 social education students and pre-service teachers will participate in the two ISPs. The training will be provided by 25 teachers, who will get active part during the implementation of the project and developing of intellectual output.
European Union Commission puts emphasis on education and training policy that enables all citizens, irrespective of their personal, social or economic circumstances, to acquire, update and develop over a lifetime both job‐specific skills and the key competences needed for their employability and to foster further learning, active citizenship and intercultural dialogue. It is also believed that early childhood education and care can lay the foundations for these goals in life in terms of education, well-being, employability, and social integration, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Educational disadvantage should be addressed by providing high quality early childhood education and targeted support, and by promoting inclusive education. Inclusive education can be defined as the education of children with and without disabilities in the same setting, mostly in classrooms. Its primary goal is to fight marginalization and exclusion. Inclusive education can be regarded as an important way to achieve “Education for All”. The GOPRINCE (Inclusive Education in Early Childhood: Developing Good Practices) Erasmus+ Project is a response to this call for a best practice approach and aims to make a contribution to the sharing of knowledge, understanding and best practices in inclusive education in early childhood education. The project was carried out by seven partner institutions from Turkey (Coordinator), Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal and UK. The goal of the project was to analyse the inclusive education and its practices in each country and develop a new model with best practices in each country to use in teacher education to improve their teaching skills in inclusive classrooms in early childhood education. In the project we developed REACCH model which has 6 key elements, namely; Reflection, Ethos, Adaptations, Communication, Collaboration, Holistic view and supported the use of each element of with case studies prepared in different forms, such as video recording, stories, power-point presentations. The reports about inclusive education in each partner country, the model and case studies were provided as a manual to be used in teacher training to improve teaching skills in inclusive classrooms. This manual was also translated into partner country languages. During the project, the manual was used in intensive study programs. Pre-service teachers from partner institutions were trained and they were provided opportunities to gain knowledge and intercultural understanding about developing competencies and talents of disadvantaged children in inclusive classrooms through lectures, workshops and school visits and case studies in international group works; and they were encouraged to reflect about their experiences and to think how they can implement the good practices they experienced in their future teaching profession in international group works. In multiplier events, the model and case studies were introduced to in-service teachers and professionals from local educational authorities. In most of the participating universities and university colleges the project results of 6 keys of REACCH inclusive education model and case studies have been integrated in the curriculum.