Module 6: Evaluation of Inclusiveness

It is common to think of evaluation as something that will be done at the end of the activity, so we only think about evaluation when we are finishing the activity, and then we realise that we have lost the opportunity to collect information throughout all the tasks were being carried out and also realise that we were focussing on  actvities that do not provide us with the information we need to assess the objectives set.

For this reason, our proposal raises the planning of the intervention based on the indicators that will help us to evaluate the teaching unit.

When we define what we want to achieve (objectives) regarding our educational intervention, we will also have to think about what we are going to watch to assess whether we have achieved it (variables and indicators), how we can promote situations in which performance is generated (activities) and how we are going to collect that information (techniques and instruments).

Regarding inclusion, this goes beyond the adaptation of our lessons to issues such as disability, cultural diversity, language or the social background of our students, since that would only be accessibility. Accessibility is fundamental, it is the first step towards inclusion, but to talk about inclusion we need to go further, we need to make the lessons attractive and motivating for ALL students, in order to engage them in the learning process. Only then we can say that our lessons are inclusive. From this perspective we address inclusion and intend to provide a new resource and good practices to the European Toolkit for Schools [1].

This is the complete table of variables and progression levels:

Reflection

Can you think of any other variables, which are important for inclusiveness, that migth be missing?

Before choosing the progression level, the teachers have to verify where the students are with respect to that variable. Because if you choose level 3 when your students have not even reached level 1 this level will be difficult to achieve, but if the opposite happens, which means that the objective of the lesson plan is to reach level 2 when the real level of the students is set to level 3, there will be no new learning. Let's explain it with an example: a teacher wants to make their lesson inclusive through the variable promoting the emotional involvement of students:

An example of previous activity related to this could be some role play related to close and not so close situations (a teenager who has just had his heart broken, a Syrian teenager who has just arrived in your country with his family, a woman who has just lost her job…) to see how the students react.

It may also happen that, although our objective is to reach level 2, the actual level reached by the students is 3. For this reason, when evaluating the inclusion of the lesson plan, it is important to indicate what the final level of progression achieved has been. 

To make sure our evaluation is solid, it is necessary to collect evidence. Therefore, it is necessary to explain what activities have been carried out in relation to the variable, which evidence and how it has been collected. In other words, it is at this precise moment when the activities must be designed and not before. Thus, you can design activities that allow you to collect the information you want to obtain.

It is not easy to collect evidence related to, for example, the recognition of one's own emotions. This is not something that can be done with an exam, rather we need other types of instruments. In the following table we collect some of them classified according to the technique used:

The choice of one instrument or another will depend on several factors such as the nature of the activity, the time available or the type of information to be obtained.

With the information obtained, we will be able to assess whether we have reached the level we intended to reach in the rubric and whether, therefore, our lesson plan is inclusive or not.

Going back to the example of the previous activity (role play of emotions), to find out if the students recognize their own emotions and/or those of others, the most important thing is the analysis of their speeches, that's why we can use interrogation techniques (asking students after each role play how they think their characters feel) and observation techniques (writing down in an anecdotal record the body language and attitude of students when asked about emotions). We can even record the scenes so you can keep an eye on the reactions of all the students.

Finally, designing lessons from this perspective will make you reflect on your own practice and therefore help you to be a better teacher

Congratulations!

You have now finished the "Strengthening Digital Readiness" course and hopefully gathered inspiration and ideas for your own teaching practice.

Task 6:

Hopefully, you already have many ideas about how to make your lessons inclusive. Your final task now is to create a lesson in which you incorporate what you have learned. For example, on topics of digital and media literacy or global citizenship. The most important thing is that the lesson is inclusive. You can check this with the variables from Module 6.

You should use the Lesson Plan Creator to publish your lesson plan on the DigiEdu4All platform.
For that you must register for a free account, then go to Lesson Plan Creator.

We hope you have fun creating it.