Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities defines ‘accessibility’ as follows:

To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems, and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas (United Nations, 2006, p. 9).

Accessibility is a right to be ensured in all areas. These include education and the right to appropriate education and active citizenship through access to a flexible curriculum through personalised learning approaches.

Kemmis and McTaggart (1988, p. 5) provide the following definition of ‘action research’, which emphasises its participatory, collaborative and self-reflective nature and firmly locates it as a form of social action orientated towards improvement:

Action research is a form of collective self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out.

The ‘action research’ model has been used for school improvement purposes. It is a form of professional self-study, where teachers intentionally consider their work to collect data, which they then use to make informed decisions about their practice and their learners’ learning (Campbell, 2013). 

One of the principal intentions of action/practitioner research is that teachers raise the quality of their practice by engaging in basic classroom or school-set research, addressing curriculum or other broadly pedagogical issues (Institute of Public Administration/European Commission Structural Reform Support Service, 2017).

Learners, often from an immigrant background, who do not speak the national language and who need additional support to access the curriculum in school and develop resources to fully participate in the life of the local and wider community.

‘Process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analysing, interpreting and using information about a student’s achievement and development level in academic, behavioural or social areas’ (UNESCO, 2020a, p. 419).

Assessment adaptation / modification / accommodation refers to an alteration in the way a general assessment is done or test is applied. Assessment accommodation allows learners with special educational needs to show what they know or what they can do by removing the barriers that may be intrinsic in the assessment itself (for example, providing written test questions orally to learners with visual impairments).

(See also ‘Reasonable adjustments’)

Assessment of learner’s progress and achievement, the primary purpose of which is to support and enhance learning by adapting the educational process to meet the learner’s needs. Learners are made aware of their strengths and weaknesses while being provided with adequate support to overcome learning difficulties (UNESCO-IBE, Glossary of Curriculum Terminology).

(See also ‘Formative assessment’)

Equipment, devices, apparatuses, services, systems, processes and environmental modifications used by people with disabilities to overcome social, infrastructural and other barriers to learning independence, safe and easy participation in learning activities, and full participation in society (UNESCO, 2020a, p. 419).

‘Enabling technologies’ is another term for ‘assistive technologies’. However, these focus more on creating opportunity than overcoming a deficit.

Children can be at risk of disadvantage because of their individual circumstances or because they, or their families belong to a group which is disadvantaged in society. These children may include those with disabilities, with mental health problems, in alternative care, at risk of neglect/abuse, undocumented child migrants/asylum seekers, those whose families live in poverty or are socially disadvantaged, those whose families have a migrant and/or second language background, those whose families have limited access to services, Roma and traveller children (European Commission, 2018a).

Awareness raising campaigns can be defined as organised communication activities which aim to create awareness on particular topics (health, environment, education), behavioural change among the general population and to improve the focus on better outcomes (better health, greater environmental protection, reduced early school leaving). They often take the form of mass media campaigns.

Messages can be conveyed through many different channels, such as mass media (television, radio), social media, public relations, events, talks, demonstrations, tours and leaflets.

Awareness raising campaigns are recognised as the most efficient and effective means of communicating information especially to the general public. Still, not all of them are effective in terms of influencing people’s beliefs and changing their behaviour (Masiulienė, Looney, Aertgeerts and de Greef, no date, p. 4).
 

A barrier is ‘a problem, rule or situation that prevents somebody from doing something, or that makes something impossible’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).

Disability is often considered to be due to ‘disabling barriers’. These can be addressed by designing enabling, accessible environments.

In education – and during the learning process – there may be many barriers or circumstances that restrict the full participation of learners. Many learners will have different requirements (short and longer term) that may require consideration to enable them to take part in all activities and gain full benefit from the opportunities on offer.

Full and active participation may be affected by negative attitudes and deficit thinking, physical barriers, poor access to communication aids and appropriate information in accessible formats or a lack of confidence and/or training in the skills necessary to take part (European Agency, no date b).

‘Something that can be measured and used as a standard that other things can be compared with’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).

‘A systematic process of comparing the activities, processes and/or performance of a programme, organization, country, learner, etc. against a theoretical, political or existing reference with the aim of identifying ways to improve performance’ (CEDEFOP (2011) in UNESCO-IBE, Glossary of Curriculum Terminology).

Capacity building refers to the process of developing and strengthening mainstream schools’ capacity to meet all learners’ needs, rather than distributing additional resources for learners with additional support needs. This process involves increasing the knowledge and skills of all education professionals (i.e. leaders, teachers and specialist staff) and enhancing collaborative practices within schools and across local communities. The ultimate aim is to transform teaching and learning and improve learner outcomes.

Co-teaching or team teaching, also known as collaborative teaching, is a teaching practice to address the diversity of learners and needs in the classroom. It takes place when two (or more) educators work together to plan, organise, instruct and make assessments on the same groups of learners, sharing the same classroom.

In a co-teaching setting, the teachers are considered equally responsible and accountable for the classroom. Co-teaching is often implemented with general and special education teachers paired together as part of an initiative to create a more inclusive classroom.

Working together may include: one teach, one observe; one teach, one assist; station teaching, parallel teaching, alternate teaching; team teaching.

(For more information on these, see Understood, no date).

Opposed to individual learning, collaborative learning develops a community-centred approach. It is a recent trend in human learning and cognition that emphasises participation, joint meaning-making, discourse and dialogue. It is characterised by collaboration, creative processes and the use of new technology.

Compensatory approaches or policy initiatives are those that ‘address the inability of legislation and/or provision to support meaningful inclusive education for all learners (for example, separate educational programmes or provision, support for failing schools, second-chance educational programmes)’ (European Agency, 2018, p. 19).