The project "Inclusive Playgrounds: Teacher Training Programme" (PINC), aimed at students in Education and Sports Sciences, has as its main objective to design and develop training that provides them with skills to facilitate inclusion in recreational environments during childhood. With the PINC training we want to encourage all teachers to leave their initial training with the necessary skills to feel and perform as teachers of all students.
This training will be materialized in the following intellectual products:
- "General Guide for Students: Inclusive Processes in Education": this will provide students with a deep understanding of the fundamentals of an inclusive education sensitive to children with disabilities. The guide will focus on promoting inclusive attitudes and values and not just knowledge and skills.
- "Game theory guide: Playing as an inclusion facilitator": this guide will focus on introducing students to the benefits of inclusive play and the fundamentals of play design, methodology and evaluation for all.
- "Practical guide on play: active games and necessary adjustments to favour accessibility": based on good practices and previous experiences of the countries of the consortium. It will present accessible games preparing future teachers to eliminate barriers and facilitate the enjoyment of leisure for all children, both in the school yards and in other recreational spaces.
- "Guide for leading an educational community: strategies for raising awareness towards inclusion": this will constitute a document based on good practices with strategies to empower the entire educational community (students, faculty, parents, town halls, associations and other entities in the area) by creating opportunities for all members to collaborate with the common goal of promoting inclusion in school playgrounds.
- "Guide for teachers: resources and didactics of PINC training": this guide will offer teachers of the PINC training a didactic to follow that favours the efficient acquisition of competences by students of Education and Sports Sciences and that improves their perception of competence in the face of the inclusive challenge.
At present, education, training and youth systems are required that are more in line with the needs and opportunities offered by the labour market (Erasmus+ Programme Guide, 2019). Career opportunities for students in Education and Sport Sciences are related to profiles of leisure and recreation educators in sports clubs or associations, or profiles of teachers in primary or secondary schools. In all these areas they will develop actions with children with disabilities and, at that time, it will be their responsibility to make the necessary adjustments to favour the inclusion and healthy enjoyment of leisure of these children.
However, the university curricula of the Degrees of Education and Sports Sciences in different European countries do not provide sufficient compulsory training to enable future educators to develop skills to address the problems they will encounter in the labour market in relation to caring for diversity and social inclusion in periods of childhood recreation. The competences of the teachers trained in PINC (Inclusive Playgrounds) will allow them to facilitate accessibility to active play for children who have barriers to participation and to apply strategies to facilitate their inclusion and prevent the emergence of aggressive or exclusionary behaviour in recreational environments. To this end, the project will gather good practices and experiences from each of the participating organisations, developing a joint intervention model that will strengthen the European dimension and allow for the permanent implementation of successful educational models that will last over time.