E-Inclusion and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Inclusive Digital Classrooms and Collaboration Between General and Special Education Teachers

Introduction

Millions of schools around the world have been forced to close as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, teachers and educational leaders must devise novel approaches to delivering education to over one billion students worldwide. Even though the world is in a crisis, there is an opportunity to reconsider education. As a result, all should make the most of the new circumstances. While online education will not be able to replace all of the functions that schools perform in society, it will be able to do much more than simply serve as a less-effective version of traditional face-to-face education (Zhao, 2020).

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, schools around the world suspended personal teaching in the spring of 2020. Teachers all over the world were forced to convert their classrooms into distance classrooms for learning, often for a short period, a discouraging task for teachers who had planned their lessons for personal teaching (Petzold, 2020). Furthermore, important issues are raised, such as the need for the anthropocentric dimension of distance learning (Abidah et al., 2020), which focuses on issues of equal access (Reich et al., 2020). According to Camacho et al. (2020), a new role for teachers emerges, in which they must implement all necessary changes, media adaptations, techniques, and methods in terms of flexibility and accessibility for students to gain positive learning experiences in the context of distance learning. Teachers require time, resources, training, and material support to continue adapting their practices to the needs of distance learning (Zhao et al., 2020).

Furthermore, school closures affect all students, but the most vulnerable students suffer the most. People with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, ethnic minorities with differing gender identities and sexual orientations (OECD, 2020a), and those with special educational needs are denied opportunities for life, learning, social, and emotional development that schools provide (OECD, 2020b). When schools are closed, they are more likely to become isolated. If countries fail to promote educational justice and inclusion, this group of students will be more likely to suffer negative educational outcomes and receive inadequate school support (OECD, 2020c). The “digital divide” continues to impede a future inclusive education model, and it has been identified as a major inhibitory factor in several studies (Scully et al., 2021).

Nevertheless, the importance of collaboration in inclusive education cannot be overstated. Education is expected to face any situation with collaborative practices among school professionals in inclusive education because it provides significant benefits to peers and all school professionals. Collaboration must be modified because the government decided that students should learn at home during COVID-19. Furthermore, collaboration in inclusive education entails the regular and special education teachers working together on activities with equal contribution status to discuss shared goals and problem-solving to improve student performance. Collaboration practices boost the success potential of inclusive education both before and during the pandemic by broadening opportunities for all school professionals based on their field backgrounds and expertise (Hardiani, 2021).

As a result, the main purpose of this chapter is to analyze key issues, such as inclusive education, ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) and special education, distance education, the collaboration between general and special educators, as well as e-inclusion, and then to raise concerns about the achievement of the goals of the inclusive e-classroom, as well as the cooperation of special and general education teachers to enhance e- inclusion during COVID-19.