Disability and Inclusion

Today we got the opportunity to look further into inclusion and disability. An interesting part of the lecture was when we learned about the universal design, this started off as an architecture term, where the design of buildings would be structured around everyones ability to use them. These designs could include ramps instead of stairs because everyone is able to use a ramp whereas not everyone is able to use the stairs. This design allows everyone to use the structure without feeling left out, therefore promoting the feeling of inclusion.

Last week I mentioned that I was looking at Allport’s Scale, and this week I got to apply this scale to real life situations of discrimination of disability. I found this really interesting and valuable as I could apply the scale to real life situations to allow me to understand the steps of the scale in more detail and form that information into a table.

This lecture was really interesting today, and I found the seminar particularly useful because we had to read situations and identify whether discrimination was taking place – all of the situations were to do with children in a school environment and how the teacher felt with it. With the situations we worked together, in groups, to find out whether the teacher was discriminating against them because of their disability and then we found ways to accommodate the children to make them feel included in the situation. This was very useful as as a future teacher all children need to feel included in every situation, following the Scottish curriculum’s GIRFEC policy (getting it right for every child). As a teacher, every child, no matter whether they have a disability or not, should have the same opportunity as every other child in the class.