H. Flavian
Since the beginning of humanity, educating the younger generation for adult life has been the core goal for all. Nevertheless, different cultures promote this goal based on different types of disciplines and methods. Despite the different perspectives different educators have regarding the role of schools, educators around the world agree upon the need to provide all learners with the knowledge and tools they will need as adults. This is not a simple process and is also based on educators’ will to promote everyone’s cognitive skills, along with teaching core and updated knowledge (whereas knowledge nowadays accumulates rapidly). Additionally, in an era where people change the location of their lives for a variety of reasons, teachers should also refer to their learners’ cultural background as one of the elements the influences learning processes. Another factor that should be also considered while planning educational activities is the inclusion of learners with special needs in schools and in society. The need to include learners with special needs in mainstream schools, leads educators around the world look for variety of ways for efficient implementation methods that will allow the inclusion of learners with special needs through all educational programs.
Aiming to overcome the above educational challenges, this paper presents an innovative perspective that evolves from the integration of a variety of educational theories and pedagogical approaches. It aims to provide educators with relevant knowledge that will motivate them to promote inclusion processes based on the integration of transdisciplinary approach for teaching and learning, and the mediation methods for thinking development.
The educational approach presented in this paper was developed by integrating three main educational perspectives, and thus to offer educators a refreshing opportunity to re-plan their teaching:
1) the transdisciplinary approach that provides an answer to the dilemma of teaching knowledge when information is accumulates daily, by focusing first on the common between different fields of knowledge and only later on the unique of each domain;
2) the mediation approach that aiming to focus on promoting thinking skills; and
3) teaching strategies that promote inclusion of learners with special needs.
Keywords: Transdisciplinary educational, inclusion, educational environments, teaching methods, mediation.