Innovation in Education: Participatory and Transdisciplinary Approaches As New Social Practices in the Educational System

Schulz, Ann Christin

This contribution addresses practices to change the educational field of pedagogical professionals. The focus will be on their educational requirements in order to support and empower people with disabilities (pwd) due to their occupational orientation and participation in the labour market. The background to this is the criticised “segregating” system in which pwd are more employed in sheltered workshops rather than on the primary labour market (Malo & Rodriguez). The fact that pwd often are “locked” in those separate institutions calls for innovative approaches for overcoming this situation. The project “Working the way I want” (AWIEW) therefore develops approaches for the empowerment and education of pwd for better vocational orientation. By this it raises the question of the role of professional staff fostering and supporting the empowerment of pwd in the field of occupational orientation.

In our approach pwd are working with academics and practitioners to develop solutions and find practices concerning their professional orientation. At this point, the education system of pedagogical professionals comes into play, because professional staff needs participatory and transdisciplinary competences to foster empowerment. One example of educational content would be the teaching of participatory methods, which should not only be theoretical. It should also be practised in the form of internships, excursions or other open formats.

In Rabat, we would like to highlight further requirements for the education of pedagogical professionals. To this end, we will draw on experiences from the AWIEW project and discuss these together with the conference participants. We also hope to gain further requirements for the role of professionals from the discussion, which we can then feed back into the project.

Literature

Malo, M., Rodriguez, V. (2022). Sheltered employment for people with disabilities: An international appraisal with illustrations from the Spanish case. Online available at: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/111861/ (accessed 29.08.2024).