'My eyes went wide open' - an evaluation of the special needs education awareness course at Molepolole College of Education, Botswana

This article is an evaluation of the special needs education awareness course run at Molepolole College of Education, Botswana. The course directly reflects the Government of Botswana's policy on special education and seeks to provide students with a wide range of skills and knowledge to help them identify and support pupils with a variety of special needs. It also seeks to examine teachers' attitudes towards the inclusion of children with a wide range of learning support needs in the ordinary school. The evaluation was carried out by Gareth Dart, senior lecturer in the Department of Special Needs Education at Molepolole College of Education, who, in this article, reports the views of the first cohort of student graduates to complete the full course. This account also includes feedback from staff at schools who were involved with supervising the students as they did their special education assignments while on teaching practice. Feedback from the students and teachers is very positive in terms of the content and effect of the course although Gareth Dart suggests that a more thorough evaluation will have to wait until the graduates have been in the field some time. In the future, there will be a need to assess the long-term impact of the course upon the practice of teachers; to review the sustainability of this form of teacher education; and to make judgements about the influence that new generations of teachers have upon schools and policies promoting inclusion.