3. The problem to be solved
(a metaphor)
Big store: selling few items in large quantities
Online retail: selling a large number of items in small quantities
Chris Anderson: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
4. The problem to be solved
(how to serve the long tail of learning needs?)
The educational big store: serving great masses of „problem
free” children, disregarding diverse individual learning needs
5. Growing expectations towards
individual teachers
How much are these expectations realistic? Not at all:
• because of the extreme diversity of learning needs
• because of the inflations of too many expectations
• because they require overwriting all the old routines
Is it hopeless then? Not at all:
• Partial enrichment of teaching repertoires may lead to
revolutionary changes in the climate of the classroom
• What an individual teacher can’t do the whole school will
be able to do if teachers cooperate
• The longer recognized „learning long tail” generates bigger
demand for external professional services both for children
and teachers
7. Differentiation
A few key teacher competencies
• Awareness of learning profiles, effective learning
• Multilateral classroom communication
• Cooperative teaching
• Development of teaching materials, constructing content
from learning objects
• Diagnostic and formative pedagogical assessment, test
design
• Recognizing learning and behavioral difficulties, correction
methods
• Project method
• Instruction methods for promoting high order thinking
10. Quality evaluation
Whole school inspection with special inclusion focus
• A quality evaluation system that balances the two
main aims: professional accountability and
supporting organizational learning
• Whole school external evaluation (inspection) based
on a limited number of quality criteria
• Supplementary instruments for external evaluation
of the inclusion capacity of schools (thematic
supplementary inspection) designed to inform self-
evaluation and school improvement
11. Support services
The principle of „high expectations, high support”
Inventory of missing or weak services:
• Diagnostic (e.g. logopedic) screening reaching out to all
children in pre-school age and early development services
• Specialist of habilitation/rehabilitation in different
categories of disabilities („travelling teachers” of special
schools or territorial support service centers) supporting
children and their teachers and parents at the same time
• Mainstream institutionalized educational support services
• A missing profession: „developmental teacher” (bridging
over the competence gap between mainstream and special
education teachers)
12. Vested financial interest
Incentives built into the system of financing
Incentives for full enrollment
• Per capita financing (money following the pupil)
Incentives for integration
• Supplementary financing for integration that are higher than
financing of education in any separated setting
Incentives for improvement
• Funding for the implementation of school improvement
plans (e.g. for generating demand for purchasing
professional support)
Financing of flexible and complex support services
• Financing of complex special and mainstrea professional
services (instead of financing service providers)
13. Successful implementation
Policy conditions
• Inclusion as sustained priority over a long period of time
• Mainstreaming the development of all pedagogical,
institutional and systemic conditions
• Simultaneous investment at all levels of conditions
• A professional implementing agency and the necessary
human resources
• The necessary financial resources incorporated to the
financing of schools and professional services
• Perpetual feedback (monitoring and evaluation) and open
communication
• Internationalization