New International Research Project with Bhubaneswar (funded by the DAAD)

Effective Teaching-Learning Practices of Inclusive Education: A Comparison between Indian and German School Models

Prof. Dr. Stefan Horlacher (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany)

Dr. Rajakumar Guduru (Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, India)

In a global context, inclusive education is the instrument of choice for providing equal opportunities to learning and living. The purpose of this research project is to investigate and com­­pare the effectiveness of teaching-learning models of inclusive education practiced in schools in selected districts of Odisha, India, with selected schools in Saxony, Germany. The major goal is to comprehend how in-service teachers (and partly also pre-service teachers) perceive and execute inclusive teaching methods in regular classrooms, which techniques they use, which prob­lems they face and which support they receive from their schools and the Regional School Authorities. Thus, this study analyzes state-specific strategies to implement inclusion in India and Germany as well as the models favoured such as co-teaching, flipped teaching, research-based education, community-based education, personalized education, technology enhanced learning, digitalization, etc. Taking the specific Indian and German contexts into account, the study aims to pro­vide a nuanced and comprehensive analysis of the creation of inclusive learning environments, of the difficulties and problems, but also of the solutions schools come up with in order to look for similarities and differences between the Indian and German models and – most of all – to ask what they can learn from each other. Our analysis is based on carefully chosen schools which are representative of the educational policies of the respective federal state they are situated in and, on a more abstract level, of inclusion (and its implementation) in India and Germany. The schools which take part in this study will get detailed feed­back and the results of our comparison will be published in a report and a scientific journal. The conclusions and suggestions will influence future research projects in the area of inclusive education in Odisha state/ India, as well as in Saxony/Germany. Finally, this study offers implications to curriculum creation and policy decisions.