Inclusive education and curriculum development

WEBINAR SUMMARY

Inclusive education is paramount for the academic development of students in secondary and higher education. At the core, curricula and institutional policy should be developed from an inclusive perspective. The question that is central to this discussion is: why is that important? But also, how do we make education more inclusive and to what extent does curriculum development correspond to inclusive education? This webinar will discuss theoretical frameworks of inclusivity in Higher Education from key experts in this field of work. Dr. Frank Tuitt, Dr. Saran Stewart and Dr. Nickeisha Stephenson have  developed and implemented theoretical frameworks of inclusivity in practice at their respective institutions and will elaborate on good practices and examples to illustrate how professionals can develop inclusive education strategies – from theory to practice.

The MultInclude project aims to analyze pathways to success in inclusive education and build a community of committed professionals for school provisions that support students at risk of being or feeling excluded, in order to become committed lifelong learners and finish their secondary education and continue at tertiary level.

WEBINAR HOSTS AND PRESENTERS

Josefien van Marlen, ECHO

Ergün Çelik, ECHO

Both Josefien and Ergün are currently working at ECHO, Expertise Center for Diversity Policy that is stationed in the Netherlands and will co-host the webinar. Josefien has a background in policy work at the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science and in various policy bodies at Utrecht University. Ergün has worked at at the Diversity Office of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and has participated in many different Erasmus+ projects.

Prof. Dr. Frank Tuitt is the Senior Advisor to the Chancellor, Provost on Inclusive Excellence, and a Professor of Higher Education at the Morgridge College of Education. He is the director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Denver and has been coordinating the Faculty Fellows program at his respective university.

Dr. Saran Stewart is a Senior Lecturer of Comparative Higher Education at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. She was recently selected as a 2018 African Diaspora Emerging Scholar by the International Education Society.

Dr. Nickeisha Stephenson is a Lecturer in the department of chemistry at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in the Faculty of Science and Technology. Prior to her academic position, Dr. Stephenson was a Senior Post Doctoral Associate at Harvard medical school and Massachusetts General Hospital (USA), where she trained in fluorine-18 and carbon-11 radiochemistry and PET imaging. Dr. Stephenson also trained was also a Post Doctoral Associate at Harvard University where she researched new methodologies for synthesizing fluorinated compounds. Dr. Stephenson earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and her B.S. in Chemistry at the Ithaca College (USA). Dr. Stephenson’s work has been recognized in the chemistry periodical, Chemical & Engineering News and by the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation in the form of a Young Investigator Award. Her current research focuses on developing new methodologies for radiolabeling drug candidates for preclinical and clinical studies. She is also a part of a  joint venture with the School of Education at UWI Mona investigating the effects of course-based undergraduate research experiences on the motivation of students in the sciences.

CASES IN FOCUS