On behalf of Artevelde University of Applied Sciences Ghent (AUAS) in Belgium, I’m very happy to open this blog and website of the Erasmus+-project ‘ProuD To Teach All’. The project aims to strengthen teachers’ and other educational professionals’ inclusive competencies. It also reflects Artevelde’s mission statement to create tomorrow's world in a habitat where we push boundaries, with society in mind, so that words become deeds, now and in the future. This project therefore wants to support you, teachers, and partners in the educational field, to make your school a place where you can feel proud to teach all learners.

Since the Unesco Salamanca Statement (1994), and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability (2006), our view on inclusive education got a much wider scope. Across Europe, inclusion now aims to empower all children and families to participate equally in education, whatever their backgrounds or characteristics are. Artevelde’s Expertise Network in Education want to share experiences in trying to overcome the barriers that still rise to make inclusion possible. We have experiences to share from both initial teacher education, advanced bachelor programs and continuous professional development with teachers and supporting professionals in learning communities. We look forward to exchanging our insights from research too, as developed in projects on universal design for learning, reasonable accommodations, needs-based assessment, powerful pupil guidance, differentiated instruction, team-teaching, involving learner’s voices, ... The international context of this EU-project provides an extra stimulus to appreciate every learner’s and partner’s strengths when trying to develop innovative options to improve classroom practices together. To adapt lessons and learning materials to all learners’ needs, we strongly believe in the opportunities of an interprofessional collaboration with a variety of colleagues and partners. We thus invite you all to collaborate with us, no matter what your background or characteristics are as a teacher, learner, family member, school leader, special educational needs coordinator, therapist, social worker, school psychologist, pedagogical counsellor, support worker, policy maker, ... As feedback and other coaching skills have proved to be important to motivate each other in collaborative professional development, we will focus on these skills too. The project wants to coach and guide you to pursue your professional learning goals in this area, to improve your practices together with learners, families, and colleagues. We hope that this website will be useful for you when gathering with colleagues and partners in your community. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, or you want to share any proud experiences with us!

Marijke Wilssens, project lead partner Erasmus+-project ProuD To Teach All - promotor 'diversity and inclusion' Artevelde University of Applied Sciences