iTIDE

Inclusion Training in Intellectual Disability for Educators in Europe

Overview and Objectives

Throughout the EU, learners with special educational needs/intellectual disabilities are still not achieving or being included in education at all levels according to their potential. ITIDE set out to address this deficit by making available outstanding open access, practice-leading training materials on Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) to spread accessible, accredited, vocational learning to these groups within EU states and beyond. In doing so, the project supported progress towards the Europe 2020 target of reducing early school leaving.

The project objectives were:

To develop a suite of SEND training materials by adapting and disseminating an existing set of materials (www.complexneeds.org.uk) according to ECVET principles and EU/Partner country inclusion and SEND professional competences.
To produce six parallel versions of the training materials in the different languages of the involved partners: German, Bulgarian, English, Irish (English), Spanish and Turkish.
To provide accreditation for each version of the training materials through school/higher education institution training partnerships.
To provide guidance for educators and end users on the use of the training materials as learning resources.
To disseminate the adapted training materials in the countries of the involved partners and in the wider EU.

Activities/Outputs

The multinational consortium worked together to create innovative training materials based on original materials commissioned by England’s Teaching Agency in 2011-2012 (www.complexneeds.org.uk). In this project, experts in special education and other disciplines (including psychologists, health and social care professionals) in theUK and Ireland collaborated to provide Open Educational Resources promoting foundational and cutting-edge best practice in special education/ learning disability.The training Materials developed within the ITIDE project from these original materials were innovative as, at the time, there were no online, validated/accredited Open Access SEN/ID training resources available with the calibre and scope of these training Materials. Six parallel versions of the materials were developed, each updated to reflect current best practice in Europe and adapted to the particular needs of end users in each partner country. The training Materials were mapped to EU and national inclusion/special education professional competencies , validated at EQF levels 4, 5, 6 and 7 and linked to ECVET to allow for accreditation through non-traditional learning routes.The ITIDE project used the latest technology to extend access to learning. The training Materials were hosted online and on mobile platforms through the ITIDE App.

Impact

The desired impact of the project was the greater availability in EU countries (specifically project partnership countries) of high quality, self-directed and/ or workplace-directed training for educators at all professional levels and phases of education in how to include students with severe,profound and complex learning disabilities in mainstream education. These adapted “Training Materials” increase the knowledge, understanding, skills and motivation of the education workforce enabling them to inclusively educate this disadvantaged group of children alongside their peers.

Partners

Project partners come from six countries across Europe, they include Leeds Beckett University (UK), National Association for Special Educational Needs (NASEN) (UK), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Anadolu University (Turkey), The Marie Curie Association (Bulgaria), SINN evaluation (Austria), University of Limerick (Ireland), and ICEP Europe (Ireland).