Return to Portfolio Index Core Principles (map) Back to Core Principles of Professional Relationships
Previous standard = Professional Collegial learning (page 2)
Teachers foster trusting
and respectful relationships
with all learners
Below is from a look at legal and ethical relationships, a snippet from an essay for unit 414.
Inclusive societies are societies where diversity is valued and where all citizens have the means and opportunity to participate and prosper in the civic, cultural, social and economic life of the community. ( Social Inclusion Statement 2009-10 ). The current literature on legal and ethical guidelines for inclusive practices, despite the complex arrangement of laws and policies for education in Australia , does not show that there is a legal mandate to ensure that inclusive education occurs (Constitutional and legislative framework for inclusive education in Australia) . I will discuss what is currently being debated and enacted in South Australia.
The rights of a child to education are framed by the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). These rights have been enhanced further in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959 (Osmanczyk, 1985). Social Inclusion is about participation; it is a method for social justice. It is about increasing opportunities for people, especially the most disadvantaged people, to engage in all aspects of community life. ( Flexible Learning Options, 2010).
Inclusive education incorporates the notion of social justice and considers the education of students with a disability to be an issue of equity, rather than simply one of placement (Ashman & Elkins, 1994). Inclusive education also implies a need to reconsider and reform school curriculum in order to cater for all children. Australia, and for this essay, South Australia have been refining these rights of the individual to the current SACE which offers a range of modified subjects to provide opportunities for students with severe disabilities to demonstrate their learning. Modified subjects are available for Stage 1 from 2010 and for Stage 2 from 2011 (SACE).
There are more than 1,200 students with disabilities and over 6,800 students with learning difficulties enrolled at Independent schools in South Australia ( School Board Governance Journal) . South Australia claims it leads Australia in inclusive practice legislation ( Social Inclusion Initiative) . The long term development objectives of the Government are articulated in South Australia’s Strategic Plan. At its core, the plan, initiated by Government and embraced by the wider community over the past five years, is about ‘Creating Opportunity’ for all South Australians. The new compulsory education age legislation requires all students aged 16–17 years to be either learning, training or earning, as from 1st January 2009. An opportunity for all begins with inclusiveness in education this is the ethical and legal guidelines of SACE.
Under the leadership of the Social Inclusion Board, the South Australian Social Inclusion Initiative aims to assist in the creation of a society where all people feel valued, their differences are respected and their basic needs - both physical and emotional - are met. In 2005 the Disability Standards for Education were formulated under the DDA. The primary purpose of the Standards is to clarify and make more explicit, the obligations of education and training service providers under the DDA and rights of people with disabilities in relation to education and training.
A piece of evidence of my working with diverse learners is below. In this case I worked at a school with a large range of social economical students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, living in situations from homeless shelters to single parent and duel caregiver homes. For this project I created the curriculum and collaborated on every aspect (including making the website for this project) interfacing students with JWT advertising company. I accompanied the students from mid-town Manhattan, on peak-hour subways maneuvering students through throngs of people at Grand Central Station at the end of the school day and to have them calm enough to be a part of this experience was rewarding and clarified the critical relationship between the advertising agency we worked with, the students, other staff and many people we encountered over our nine weeks of this. The blog for this is at http://sites.google.com/a/rossglobalacademy.org/jwt/Home I collected permission from the learner's caregivers/parents to have them be a part of this and I also had release forms to show images of the students. I removed the videos on the website though as JWT requested them not to be shown due to their legal and corporate laws.
| And for a different cultural take from the public school above before I did one of my practicums at a private school; | |
|
|
|
|
 - Mentor St. Luke's School |
|
| I have taught communication courses at two universities (State University of NY at Albany, Speech Presentation, “Globalisation and Culture” and “Communication and the Internet”, 2002-2006, and Russell Sage College, Troy, New York. Department of Communication. Oral Communication, Interpersonal Communications. 2003-2004. My practicum for the first semester for Charles Darwin was at St. Luke's School in the Village where I coordinated a fourth grade class with doing a news show. (evidence below) | |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
| One of several projects I recently initiated was the use of synchronous communication between our school and two other schools (St. Luke’s School in New York City and Ross School in the Hamptons, Long Island, New York) with students working together in real-time using iChat. In the first of these events, collaborating with the respective music teachers, the third grade music students at St Luke’s performed and taught an Australian folk song to my second graders, who in turn performed a percussion piece they had learned. |  |
I strive to create a learning space that is accessible by all students. Keeping journals and portfolios is key to this.
I use portfolios in assessing overall achievement of students in the following way. As I have taught computer classes in K – 12 and at university it has made sense to have students create folders for their work and save it to both the school's server and to whatever device they had, such as a thumb drive, DVD, an online domain, or to email it to their own email. This has been dependent on the age and grades I am instructing.
I have an individual folder for each student. The goal is that within the folder there would be a folder for each grade and the student would be able to go return to their folder each year and recover what had been done earlier. For example, in grade two, children were using the applications, Comic Life, iVideo, Power Point and several others. I am not at that school this year and therefore I am unaware whether they are adding to their folders for grade two. In grade 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 at a previous school students were creating webpages, 3D animations and etc. and they were saving their work into their school folder as well as to online sites such as Google Documents providing a method of growth analysis in the future.
With older students, year 11 and 12, electronic portfolios are important as part of their resume to enter university. They can show what they have accomplished in design and their sophistication with various applications. We have had video projects that they saved to youtube and other online sites that are viewable and commentable by others. Within their folders there are subfolders labelled as drafts and finals. And it was not just work from my technology classes that we were saying but also work from other areas such as creative writing. Claimed benefits of portfolio assessment, Brady and Kennedy (2009, P. 68) include the tangible illustrations of student learning, facilitation of metacognition, and the enhancing of the student ownership of their learning.
