Abstract
The issue with a product curriculum is that it focuses on the ends and lends itself to an outdated and exclusionary mode of teaching: ‘educational banking’ teacher-led instruction, where educators deposit knowledge into educates, who are passives in this process. This report explains the contemporary meaning of inclusion within education and selects inclusive parameters, based on research findings, that are used, as a measure, to determine the inherent inclusiveness of three dominant curriculum models: (1) product, (2) process and (3) praxis and two learning theories: (1) constructivism and (2) connectivism, which are both innately student-led forms of learning theory.
Furthermore, a focus of this report is to determine whether technology, and which eTools, can be employed to develop and promote an increasingly inclusive, participative and collaborative classroom environment, in other words, a student-led inclusive contemporary classroom supported by technology. To inform, and justify, the selection, embedding and importance of eTools, desk research was conducted and a student survey was carried out to assess learners’ expectations and preferences in regards to collaboration and the embedding of technology in classroom activities.
Research findings regarding inclusion in education, curriculum models and learning theories accompanied by an analysis of the student survey results are used to propose a pedagogical approach based on Aristotle’s (modified) three disciplines of knowledge that places technology are the heart of student-led collaborative and engaging classroom: a hybrid process-praxis approach to curriculum based on a constructivist-connectivist approach to learning.