Voices and practice of SEND in science initial teacher education

Dr Maria Turkenburg, University of York, and Dr Lyn Haynes, Canterbury Christ Church University, in England are working on the development of a framework for better supporting disabled teachers. Lyn is a science teacher trainer and has trained disabled teachers in addition to training the beginning teachers about working with pupils who have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Maria has worked to support a science teacher with impairments in the classroom.
We believe that our work, while currently outside the remit of your proposed book, would add enormous value and significantly widen the gamut of the book. We see teachers as being learners too so a chapter on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in terms of supporting pupils as well as colleagues with special educational needs would be a valuable extension to your planned project.
We would thus propose a chapter on how to cater for special educational needs in pupils and teachers. We would include how to support teachers with special needs and include student voice. We have current science teachers whom we trained who would provide the experience from the perspective of a trainee and an experienced classroom teacher. These individuals include physical impairments and being on the autistic spectrum. We believe that these voices of experience need to be heard as they can share their education from the perspectives of having been school pupils with SEND, then university students, trainee teachers and finally as practicing teachers. We are also increasingly aware that the number of trainee science teachers with impairments is increasing.
Furthermore, the inclusion of such material will be invaluable for teacher trainers, and while our work was designed for England, it is essentially universal.