The project ‘ProuD to Teach All Learners’ is a response to the high demands that the increasing diversity of 21st century classrooms puts on practitioners, policy makers as well as researchers across Europe. The unique selling point of the project is that it • enhances teachers’ competencies to teach all learners, • strengthens their professional vision to value all aspects of diversity and • stimulates to collaborate effectively with learners, families and other partners in the community. By bringing educationalists and educators from 5 European countries together, the project will devise effective, feasible and replicable professional development, that supports the UN-Sustainable Development Goal of an inclusive quality education for all. The design of the ‘ProuD Project’ is informed by the underlying principles of an inclusive pedagogy. Rather than emphasising specialist skills for teaching specific learners, or distinct strategies for particular categories of disadvantages or special educational needs, an inclusive pedagogy uses a much broader definition of diversity, valuing everyone’s potential to learn. Central to the ‘ProuD Project’ is a strong belief in teachers’ professional learning capacity, as well as a commitment to the interprofessional collaboration with learners, families and other partners in the community to strengthen teachers’ craft knowledge, skills and attitudes. This commitment has shaped the 4 objectives of the project: 1. to investigate professional development strategies that are effective, feasible and replicable to make teachers eager to learn to teach all learners; 2. to devise an accessible online inspiration centre that engages teachers to use evidence-based resources so that they feel able to teach all learners; 3. to strengthen teachers’ interprofessional collaboration skills in inclusive networks within, between and beyond schools so that they feel stronger to teach all learners; 4. to enhance the coaching skills of experienced teachers, school leaders and other senior educational professionals to enable them to lead professional learning communities that are ProuD to Teach All Learners. These objectives, called ‘ProuD4’, make clear that ‘ProuD’ is about Professional Development ‘for’ all learners, families, teachers and partners in the local community, including migrant families and families of disadvantaged learners. Underpinned with an ambitious dissemination strategy, the ‘ProuD project’ will develop a professional development program (PDP) that makes teachers feel more confident to teach all learners. This PDP will be implemented in 10 professional learning communities (PLCs), in which groups of teachers will gather locally in the 5 participating countries, to answer their learning needs through a process of collaborative action research. All PLCs will be led by 2 local coaches, for whom the project will provide a train-the-trainer program (TTT). Within an appreciative, co-creative approach, the TTT will train the coaches in supporting teachers to take agency for their professional learning and collaborate with learners, families as well as other partners in the community. 4 accessible intellectual outputs will be designed to support teachers’ and coaches’ learning processes: 1. a suite of baselining and audit tools, leading to a report with research and policy recommendations for communities across the EU, 2. an online inspiration centre (OIC), providing access to scientific as well as experiential knowledge and resources that strengthen teachers to make confident decisions around meeting complex needs within their classroom, 3. a guide for coaches, helping them to support professional learning processes, challenge professional visions and foster inclusion within their local community and 4. a professional development package with learning activities and materials for teachers and other educational professionals, generating partner support and challenging their assumptions that they lack the expertise to teach certain learners. The ‘ProuD project’ will organise 5 multiplier events, one in each participating country. These will • stimulate dialogue around the ProuD4, • maximise professional interaction with the outputs and • strengthen the project’s overall legacy. As a result teachers, their support staff and policymakers from a range of contexts across Europe, will see themselves as active change-agents, rather than passive consumers of pre-prepared professional development. In this sense, they will feel ‘proud’ to invest in their ongoing learning to teach all learners. The projects’ key message to all European communities is ‘Everybody can learn, no matter what your family background or initial capacities are. By strengthening your interprofessional collaboration, you can raise each other’s learning potential and make an inclusive pedagogy work’. A schematic overview of the project is provided in Annex 1.
We focused on 2 broad aims: 1. to support educational professionals in developing a professional vision conducive to inclusion, including a commitment to see diversity as an asset for enhancing learning 2. to promote whole-school approaches that strengthen the interprofessional collaboration between learners, families, teachers, and other actors in the community. Accordingly, 4 objectives, called the ‘ProuD4’, were guiding our ‘Professional Development Activities For All Learners, Families, Teachers, and Partners in the Community’: 1. to investigate professional development strategies that are effective, feasible and replicable to make teachers eager to learn to teach all learners 2. to devise an accessible online inspiration centre that engages teachers to use evidence-based resources so that they feel able to teach all learners 3. to enhance the coaching skills of experienced teachers, school leaders and other senior educational professionals to enable them to lead professional learning communities (PLCs) that are ProuD to teach all learners 4. to strengthen teachers’ interprofessional collaboration skills in inclusive networks within, between and beyond schools so that they feel stronger to teach all learners.
Within an ever more diverse society, schools are meeting enormous challenges. These do not only relate with disability or special educational needs, but with all learners, particularly those from migrant and lower socio-economic backgrounds who often reach poorer educational outcomes than their peers. To promote a quality inclusive education for all, a shift in thinking is needed, recognising the intersectionality of ability, ethnicity, socio-economic status, religion, and gender. In this, teachers do not only need to learn to use differentiated instruction, technical aids, or other strategies, but to value differences instead of minimising them. Particularly, teacher beliefs need to be influenced, as some teachers still see certain learners as ‘non-educable’, ‘’unmanageable’, ‘not belonging in regular schools’ or ‘less able’. To tackle any disadvantages, schools need a wide level of transformation, rethinking their cultures, policies, and practices. This urges for a whole-school approach, where they establish a dynamic relationship with learners, families, and other educational professionals in the community to develop a shared ‘knowing’, ‘believing’ and ‘doing’ (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011).