On August 31st, the first day of the new semester of comprehensively returning to school, with the ringing of the bell at 8: 00 a.m., “Integrating Education Theory and Practice” has started in junior students majoring in normal school. As a compulsory course, “Integrating Education Theory and Practice” is listed into the 2018 edition of teacher training plan and education curriculum, which is a characteristic course of the UJN. Our university has become the only one in Shandong Province that offers compulsory courses of inclusive education for normal students.
The curriculum aims to cultivate the quality of inclusive education for normal students. The quality of inclusive education of general primary and secondary school teachers refers to that teachers can help special students and ordinary students of the same field to study together under the circumstances of integrated education and teaching so as to realize the integrated characteristics and qualities of common progress and effective development of all students. Inclusive education requires that teachers in general schools should not only have the quality to teach ordinary students well, but the ability to meet the educational needs of special students. Therefore, the quality of inclusive education poses high-level quality requirements that are more professional, scientific and specialized than the original quality of ordinary primary and secondary school teachers.
In the curriculum reform of the teacher’s education of China, the policy of adding special education courses has a long history. As early as 1989, Several Opinions on the Development of Special Education has been put forward that special education can be appropriately added to relevant professional courses in ordinary secondary normal schools and primary normal schools in all places according to local needs, and special education selective courses should be added in higher normal colleges in a planned way. Since then, the policies and regulations about special education as well as teacher’s education have been calling on normal colleges to add the course or related contents. The Regulations on Education for the Disabled in 2017, the National Standard for Teaching Quality of Undergraduate Specialty in Ordinary Colleges and Universities, and the Second Special Education Promotion Plan (2017-2020) in 2018 and other documents clearly require that such courses should be offered generally in normal colleges and normal majors in comprehensive colleges, and a certain proportion of special education should be included in the teacher qualification examination.
In recent years, the School of Education and Psychological Science has been focusing on the curriculum reform of integrated education during the process of promoting the curriculum reform of teacher’s education. The compulsory courses of integrated education for normal undergraduates this semester is a part of the construction of integrated education curriculum system in the School of Education and Psychological Science. After ten years of continuous exploration and practice, the School of Education and Psychological Science, relying on the advantages of special education and the support of psychology and pedagogy, has initially formed a training system of the quality of integrated education of “all levels, whole process and all categories”. “All levels” focus on the training level of teachers and education talents, extending from undergraduate normal students to master students in education, as well as on-the-job training of teachers through provincial, municipal, and school-based training. The output-oriented “whole process” focuses on the process of student training, and aims to enrich the course resources, optimize the teaching team, and improve learning guidance services. “All categories” focus on disciplines and majors, starting from pedagogy and psychology, extending to all normal majors, covering all normal majors in the University of Jinan, and spreading the concept of integrated education to teachers and students in the whole campus by means of selective courses, seminars for freshmen, lectures, science and technology creation for students, and special education popularization week.
Therefore, it is imperative to continue to optimize the curriculum system of integrated education, explore a more effective teaching guidance mode of integrated education practice, and strengthen the cultivation of integrated education literacy of teachers in general schools, whether it is based on solving the problem of integrated education in ordinary primary and secondary school education practice or focusing on the future professional development trend of ordinary primary and secondary school teachers.