Rob Crawford, CEO of the Life Development Institute in Phoenix, Arizona has been invited to participate in the second installment of the Qatar Foundation’s hosting of the 2010 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE). WISE is a three day global conversation with 1000 thought leaders about building concrete, innovative, and sustainable education practices for the world’s diverse learning communities in Doha, Qatar on December 7-9, 2010.

WISE 2009 snapshot review

Last year’s event was an ambitious beginning aimed at convening a representative cross section of professionals & practitioners to take an open-minded look at the overall status of the world’s efforts to provide educational access, quality, and meaning. The Qatar Foundation and Summit attendees worked towards creating a balanced perspective between celebrating technological breakthroughs, the resilience of the human spirit, & noteworthy achievements with facing the realities of unconscionable/unacceptable deficits of teaching/educational infrastructure, poverty, and inequalities that block access to the majority of the world’s educational minorities daily.

It was an opportunity to connect, listen, and share with other program leaders about the critical need to include people of all ages with disabilities into any educational reform calculations. Those voices were few, but clearly heard and important for those from other sectors of the K-20 system to appreciate that nearly 750 million people have conditions that require unique planning/implementation considerations for meaningful global reform.

These would include- at minimum- effective assessment/diagnostics, teacher training, curriculum design, accessible technology, differentiated instruction, and combinations of academic outcome assessment methodologies to truly tap their potential abilities for success in the educational continuum or home communities. These are all critical areas one would always hope to see included in serious discussions about systemic and inclusive education change initiatives, but past conference experiences have shown a lack of institutional, governmental, or societal will to achieve.

WISE 2010 has higher expectations to establish itself as the world’s premier educational Summit

Will this year’s WISE be the triumph of hope over experience? The 10 Global Educational Priorities identified at the close of the 2009 Summit generated considerable expectations, skepticism, and questions about how the 2009 conference participants and the Qatar Foundation would be able to sustain a consistent follow up effort to deliver on these mutual roles and responsibilities. Part of the answer for those concerned with learners (particularly adults) who have disabilities comes from looking at the 30 WISE Award finalists to see how they are being represented through these exemplary practices.

The Shine Centre Literacy Programme in Cape Town, South Africa, works with K-5 students and specifically identifies at risk students with learning disabilities, dyslexia, and other interferences as their target populations. Shine has a well-researched, proven program using standardized and diagnostic assessments. They embrace educational technology evidenced by developing 56 literacy games as a user-friendly way for volunteers to teach literacy skills without needing a formal educational background. There is ongoing collaboration between parents and teachers ensuring that children reach their potential. The objective is to develop independent readers by raising the literacy level of the entire school thereby creating learners that ‘learn to read’ so that they can ‘read to learn.’

A second clear example is the Save the Children’s Rewrite the Future submission, which is also front and center about helping students who have physical and sensory impairments obtain critical education services as part of their efforts to bring quality education to 8 million children in countries affected by conflict. 16 countries are working together to ensure access to education for 3 million children and improve the quality of education for 5 million more ultimately seeking to influence national governments and international institutions to make quality education a priority for children affected by conflict.

The inclusion of students with barriers to technology and higher education is being addressed through the MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) . This work is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put educational materials from over 1900 of its undergraduate and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone. It is worth noting that the courses are compliant with W3C standards and accessibility requirements. The templates designed for content management system (CMS) meet Sec. 508 & WCAG AA Web Accessibility recommendations. Upon continous evaluative reviews from their users and MIT”S self-imposed standards require all images to contain ALT attributes, data tables contain heavy use of the scope and headers attributes making it easier to navigate using screen-readers such as JAWS. They work closely with the MIT Adaptive Technology for Information and Computing Lab to ensure that the MIT OpenCourseWare course sites are as accessible as possible. As they expand their offerings and as resources permit, are creating transcripts and subtitles for course lecture videos.

Computer & Elearning accessibility levels the educational playing field for people with disabilities

Finally, while not specifically identifying their students as having disability-related learning issues, NIIT Yuva Staris a replicable model Career Development Centre (CDC) designed as a vocational training center in Jahangirpuri, India providing employability skills to young adults between the ages of 17-25 years. The CDC has a history of providing relevant skills to unemployed urban and rural Indian youth living in high poverty for making them employable for jobs in various industry sectors such as retail, automobile sales, telecommunications, hospitality, health care, etc. The program has identified a large number of employable youth in urban slums and other semi-rural areas whose lack of appropriate communication, grooming, etiquette, affective attitude and other functional education deficits makes them unemployable even at the entry level. These are common themes and issues for same age young adults with disabilties.

WISE 2010: Get points for positive steps and pointers for broader representation of learners with disabilities

It is widely assumed and documented that the issues of poverty and disabilities share a common place of suffering and exclusion throughout the world. WISE 2009 served as a fairly representative world platform to discuss and argue about the immediate, given, and unassailable facts that nearly one billion members of humanity have educational needs that cannot be ignored in any gathering of “the brilliant” who contemplate meaningful global, national, or local reforms. WISE 2010 has recognized and showcased some programs that are addressing needs amongst some early-age, higher education capable, and workforce development segments of education for people with disability.

No one Summit or conference can be all things to all people, including the Qatar Foundation’s WISE gathering., but that is exactly the point to make. The planners of WISE are making an effort that must be joined by other collective bodies of intellectuals, policy makers, and program planners. This Summit to me, is an expression of social morality demonstrating our collective and individual willingness to be accountable to the suffering, loss, and exclusion of any/all learners- especially those who are non-traditional learners with disabilities.

Looking and working for inclusion of learners with disabilities

This year, I expect more voices to be heard about ways to move forward to eradicate educational exclusion for people with disabilities and broader inclusion of students beyond the ages of 25 in our educational reform efforts. It is a personal concern of mine that we must still argue about what constitutes life long learning and its validity in the educational systems. Our lack of attention to improve it contributes to unnecessary poverty, loss of personal meaning, and workforce vitality. This expression is not to servce notice of my declaration for an impending confrontation. It is a hoped-for and sought-after expression of empathy and mutual respect.

I yearn to be part of experiencing the transformative dignity that will be at the heart of reconciliation between those “in charge” generally recognized to possess the power of educational change at the moment they choose the path of purpose, inclusion, and integrity which openly embraces learners with disabilities representing the largest and most powerless educational minority in the world. I look forward to an in-depth exploration of our shared responsibilities and experiences in building a better world and will provide update on this topic as they occur.

Author Bio: Since 1982, Life Development Institute staff and its administrators are devoted to actively work with and support parents who are eager for a place where their adult-child can thrive and succeed. For more information about adult special education topics visit Life Development Institute.

Category: Education
Keywords: adult special education, life development institute, special education phoenix, special needs adults