General News of Sunday, 24 May 2020

Source: GNA

Let’s begin to look into virtual teaching – Educationist

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Ms Eunice Araba Turkson, an education consultant in the United States, has called on Ghanaian authorities to begin looking into virtual teaching for effective education of children.

She said innovation and creativity were crucial as far as education, especially inclusive education, was concerned.

“Students are more likely to synthesize the information taught, bring more joy, and make their educational experience more meaningful,” she said.

Ms Turkson, who recently participated in a webinar, dubbed: “Inclusive Education: Before, during and after COVID-19,” told the Ghana News Agency on Saturday that children were missing out on a lot of things during this COVID-19 period.

“Children all over the world are missing out on a lot of things including social and emotional interactions. This is because children are not going to school," she said.

She suggested that for inclusive education to be effective, classrooms could adopt a co-teaching approach where every classroom would have one general education teacher and a special educator, working collaboratively to achieve a common goal.

Co-teaching would enable the teachers to complement each other and serve as positive role models for their students, she said.

“Children pick on the behaviours of adults around them and in co-teaching, teachers need to be intentional about modelling positive behaviours for children to emulate,” she said.

This teaching model, as well as others, could be explored in an effort to achieve effective inclusive education in Ghanaian schools, Ms Turkson said.