Professor Lani Florian from the School of Education will be describing research and development that has taken place in the University of Aberdeen in briefings being held in the White House and both Houses of Congress in Washington DC on Monday and Tuesday 9 -10 May as part of the reauthorisation of the US Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Professor Florian is co-author (with American colleagues Linda Blanton and Marleen Pugach) of the policy briefing report, Preparing General Education Teachers to Improve Outcomes for Students with Disabilities, sponsored by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD).

The groundbreaking report highlights the importance of reforming teacher education to bring about better outcomes for students with disabilities and learning difficulties. The report addresses these challenges by outlining a vision for teacher education that builds on current developments, including lessons from the Inclusive Practice Project at the University of Aberdeen.

The Inclusive Practice Project at Aberdeen was designed to develop new approaches to training teachers to ensure that they have a greater awareness and understanding of the educational and social problems that can affect children’s learning and as well as developing strategies they can use to support and deal with such difficulties.  Staff in the School of Education have made major changes to the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) for primary and secondary teachers to ensure that social and educational inclusion is addressed within the core programme. The Project which began in 2006 was funded by the Scottish Government has already informed policy debates at the national, European (European Agency for Development of Special Needs Education) and international (UNESCO) level.

Lani Florian is Professor of Social and Educational Inclusion at the University of Aberdeen. She has published extensively on teacher education and inclusion and is co-author of Achievement and Inclusion in Schools, published by Routledge, (winner of the 2008 NASEN/Times Education Supplement academic book award). She edited The SAGE Handbook of Special Education (2007) and co-edited Disability Classification in Education: Issues and Perspectives, published by Corwin Press in 2008.