engleski

Importance of educational and social inclusion of children with disabilities in primary educational system – benefits and challenges

Integration process of children with disabilities in primary educational system in Croatia is supported by: “Convention on the Rights of the Child”, “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” and Regulations on Primary Education of Students with Developmental Handicaps which is applied since 1991. The main goal of this qualitative study was to gain insight school teachers’ experiences in teaching classes that besides regular students’ population include at least one student with disabilities and to define what benefits and challenges they recognize in their work. The participants were eight female teachers who have many years of teaching classes with a student with disabilities. Data were collected by semi-structured interviews, based on two main research questions: 1. what are the experiences of classroom teachers in working with children with disabilities included in regular program? 2. how do class teachers evaluate the effectiveness of educational and social inclusion of children with disabilities? Grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. Ethical principles were applied. Results showed that classroom teachers recognized many advantages of the inclusion children with disabilities in regular primary educational system: benefits for children with disabilities - important social and educational achievements (learned social skills, experience of peer acceptance, emotional and practical support) ; benefits for students in regular population in learning social skills (experience of understanding and accepting differences of their peers, given empathy and practical assistance) ; professional benefits for teachers (learned about effective teaching methods in work with these students). Classroom teachers also emphasized challenges of inclusion: lack of professional support, trainings, expert teams. This paper will highlight and discuss recommendations for improvement of children with disabilities inclusion based on teachers’ statements.

children with disabilities, classroom teachers, social and educational inclusion

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