ABOUT
Far Beyond the Barriers project is based on the belief that each student should be given the chance to be accepted, valued and have equal opportunities to develop its skills and career future without discrimination despite the level of abilities.
Under the light of UN Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education For All, Our partnership admit that as long as there are children and young people who have fewer opportunities not to benefit from quality education like their peers because of their own personal and learning difficulties, we need to put our thinking cap on and take action for equality and inclusion in our schools and classrooms.
We as four partners from three different countries ( Poland, Romania and Turkey) address the real demand on inclusive education for quality education within this project. Despite the inclusive education has been increasingly recognized at international levels, there is not a common way to apply, the mainstream education systems and inclusive education, even the term of disabilities and difficulties may differ from country to country,
For this project we use “learning difficulties” as an umbrella term for the learning difficulties and disabilities such as dyslexia( a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling),dyscalculia (a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics.), dysgraphia (a specific learning difficulty in writing) , attention deficit and hyperactivity (is a condition characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity ) need to be taken into consideration.
According to statistics in Europe 15% of the population is dealing with some sort of learning difficulties. Meanwhile large numbers of individuals with that 15% are at the same time suffering from any other disorders as well.According to the European Dyslexia association;20-40% of the persons with dyslexia are also having dyscalculia, 20-55 % of persons with developmental language disorder are dyslexic. 10-20% of persons with dyslexia are having an anxiety disorder, 2-14% of persons with dyslexia are having a depression ,8-18% of persons with dyslexia are having an attention deficit and/or hyperactivity disorder.
In order to achieve inclusion in education and move forward according to the Inclusion strategies of Europe, it is crucial to include those students with learning difficulties mentioned above because they will also be the actors of our future world like their peers without any difficulties and take active role in society only if they are accepted with their difficulties earlier and provided individualized education plan according to their needs in regular classrooms. In this regard special attention has to be paid to the methodological support and training of teachers in order to go along with a complete transformation of the teacher’s role in the classroom by changing the teaching strategies as well as adding the peers, parents, families and all relevant stakeholders in the process of inclusive education.