Educational work with children and students with developmental disabilities in special educational institutions

Abstract

Contemporary inclusive efforts are aimed at the positive use of the development capacities of each member of society, on an individual and social level, precisely on the basis of their unique specificity and contribution. In the spirit of achieving an adequate and maximally individualized approach to upbringing and education and the socialization of each individual, special educational institutions for children and students with more complex developmental difficulties are inevitable, in addition to regular ones. An inclusive approach to upbringing and education is emphasized in such special institutions, and the quality of its operationalization can be brought into relation with the existing programmatic, organizational and personnel assumptions of work, as well as models and methods of cooperation of special educational institutions with external stakeholders on the local and broader social levels. With the aforementioned as the goal, qualitative empirical research was conducted through the method of semi-structured interviews with employees of two special educational institutions for children and students with developmental disabilities. In doing so, a non-probabilistic purposive sample was used, selecting participants with the required characteristics (N=16). In conducting the interviews, educators and teachers, as well as educational rehabilitators, who directly and daily work with children and students with developmental disabilities, and members of professional teams of special educational institutions (speech therapists, pedagogues and psychologists) where the research was conducted were involved. Therefore, the research sample included all relevant employees of special educational institutions at the level of Zadar County, with the aim of collecting data on the programmatic, organizational and personnel assumptions for the implementation of inclusion within the institutions and ways of achieving cooperation with relevant external stakeholders in an effort to adequately include children and students with developmental disabilities into their social environment. Ultimately, we can conclude that all the parameters of the implementation of quality educational inclusion of children and students with developmental disabilities monitored by the research are present at a satisfactory level with a clear tendency for their permanent development.