A postdoctoral fellow of Vadodara’s MS University has come up with two scales that help in measuring the competency of special needs educators in India. His work has earned him two copyrights in teachers’ training that would help make way for a more inclusive educational environment in the country.
Dr Hemendra Mistry, an Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) research fellow, had completed his postdoctoral research on the topic ‘construction and standardization of inclusive education teaching aptitude test’ under the mentorship of professor S C Panigrahi. The work on these scales was being conducted under the guidance of Professor RC Patel from MSU’s Faculty of Education and Psychology.
The means of measuring the competency of special educators currently in use is based on the students’ performance. Children with special education needs and disabilities (SEND) in this scale included kids belonging to scheduled tribes, those from economically backward communities, young people from sexual minorities and those with physical and intellectual disabilities.
The scales developed by him are named Perceived Competencies for Inclusive Education Scale (P-CIES) and Teachers Attitudes Towards Inclusive Education Scale (TATIES). He says he has widened the scope of inclusive education in his work by covering as many disadvantaged groups as he could. They were both used on 317 trainee teachers and was found to be a very dependable way to measure their competency.
The scales would be included in the National Education Policy 2020. Dr Mistry claims that the scales will help identify and address the gaps between skill levels of a teacher and the need for further training.
