engleski

Tolerance program for parents and educational inclusion

Educational legislative in Croatia supports rights to inclusion. In order to realize that, further development of intervention programs is needed with the goal to restrain prejudice (Middleton, 1998) and develop tolerance. When we define “tolerance”, the starting point is acceptance of characteristics and attributes of people (Krizmanić, Kolesarić, 2003), with distinction between active and passive tolerance. The tolerance program for parents, conducted for the requirements of this paper, is a part of a wider experimental program “Through Tolerance towards School for All” whose participants are peers, teachers and parents. Quantitative analysis of the program points to the relevance of certain features related to parents, such as the ability to assess parental role competence, for tolerance development in children (Igrić et all, 2010). The goal of this qualitative research is gaining further insight into results of the quantitative research of influence of the environment on tolerance development through the experimental program by understanding complexities, details and context (Novak, Koller-Trbović, 2005) related to parents of children with disabilities and typical children. Three focus groups were formed to collect relevant data consisting of parents of children with learning disabilities and parents of typical children in regular schools. Audio recording transcripts, observer notes, relevant documents on participants and on experimental program were used for qualitative analysis using the NVivo program. Results pointed to changes in parent’s comprehension of tolerance. By developing active tolerance they show better acceptance of own child. The parents became more aware of the school system shortcomings that are in great part responsible for learning disabilities and underachievement of their children. The assumption is that this program contributed to improved competence for parental role, with parents taking a more proactive relationship towards the school system. Results of this research could influence positive changes in educational inclusion of children with learning disabilities.

tolerance; parents; parents of children with disabilities; parents of peers of children with disabilities; educational inclusion

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