The contribution of a special educational institution to a more inclusive society

Abstract

Despite the fact that the integration model of education was introduced in Slovenia 17 years ago, the inclusion of persons with special needs into education and community remains a major challenge. In order to improve their opportunities, the largest special school in Ljubljana has for ten years organised an international festival Play with me, with the main aim of supporting inclusion of people with special needs with the rest of the population. The organisers aim to create opportunities for all to take part together in various play, sport and artistic activities. The paper presents the findings of a study in which the inclusive practices of the festival were researched and evaluated. The study was aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the role a special school can play in the creation of a more inclusive society. Data were gathered using an online questionnaire targeting the mentors and volunteers who accompanied participants at the festival. 132 mentors and 64 volunteers responded. The quantitative non-experimental empirical analysis of the data has indicated that the respondents recognised the inclusive nature of the festival. The festival proves that inclusion is a multifaceted phenomenon which can be supported by various activities and endeavours.

A Festival as a Pedagogical Tool to Promote Inclusion in the Community and in Schools

“…They showed the highest degree of agreement with the statement Special educational institutions (e.g. elementary schools with lower performance criteria, special education departments, sheltered work centres) also make an important contribution to an inclusive community, as already shown by a previous piece of research (Jeznik, Mažgon & Ermenc, 2017). They also supported the statement I believe that people from mainstream preschools/schools/society would accept a person with special needs (over 88%).…”

“…The Act may be said to reflect the narrow understanding of inclusion because it prescribes procedures that derive from diagnosis of a child's deficits, which are the basis for the inclusion of a student in the appropriate programme and includes a determination of the interventions to be carried out by the appropriate special pedagogical personnel. Moreover, as it was already shown (Jeznik, Mažgon & Ermenc, 2017;Šelih, 2015), while the Act does allow the enrolment of children with mild intellectual disability in mainstream schools, and thus also the integration of standard and adapted programmes, this practice has not taken off because the basic conditions for the coordination of two or more programmes within a single class have not been met.…”

“…The central assumption was that the self-assessment and descriptions obtained from the participants largely reflect a broad understanding of inclusion. This assumption is based on the findings of a study already conducted among a similar population in the context of the festival (Jeznik, Mažgon & Ermenc, 2017). Because of the specific circumstances surrounding the (non-)realisation of the broad idea of inclusion in Slovenia's educational institutions, the festival draws particular research attention.…”

Evaluating Future School Counselors’ Competences for Inclusive Education

“…One explanation might be that inclusion is more an issue of attitude than an issue of knowledge. We came to a similar conclusion in another piece of research (Jeznik, Mažgon, & Ermenc, 2017), in which we compared attitudes toward inclusion between pedagogical professionals and volunteers. The study indicated that, to some extent, volunteers expressed more positive attitudes about inclusion compared with the trained professionals, who does not need to focus on supporting students in achieving prescribed learning outcomes instead of considering also other dimension of their inclusion.…”