SECTION ON NUS.ORG.UA ABOUT INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
This section has been on the site since 2018. It aims to popularize inclusive education and support teachers methodically in teaching children with special educational needs. The section contains explanatory articles, interviews with practitioners, and – our pride – reports with bright school photos.
During the pandemic, the latter have become rare, but past reports from schools showing the daily work of teachers in inclusive classrooms are still gaining views.
In 2019-2020, we created and published 326 materials (news, articles, explanatory materials, infographics, and columns) in the section with the support of the “Renaissance” MF, which received a total of 3.4 million views.
Also, in these years, we conducted 12 online broadcasts about inclusive education. In total, they received more than 380 thousand views.
At them, experts talked about the organization of inclusive education (in particular, remotely), the work of a teacher and his assistant, the interaction of children in an inclusive class, the cooperation of schools with the IRC, methods of working with children with special needs, and more.
FORUM ON INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
We planned the event for 200 people. However, faced with a high demand for our chosen topics and experts, in the end, we held a forum for 265 participants from all regions of the country – representatives of educational institutions, departments of education, IRC / ORC, public organizations, charitable foundations, and parents.
More than 40 media outlets wrote about the forum, its experts were invited to air in the studio of Hromadske Tebachennia, and the panel broadcasts on the organization’s Facebook pages and nus.org.ua received more than 85,000 views.
The content program is the most important achievement of the project. The event became a resource platform where there was an opportunity to freely discuss problems in eliminating obstacles to the implementation of inclusive education, in particular:
- early intervention as a key to successful inclusion;
- the influence of public organizations on the success of inclusion;
- establishment of cooperation of IRC with parents and schools;
- training of teachers to work in inclusive classes;
- formation of tolerance and prevention of bullying of children with OOP, etc.
We provide sign language interpretation and simultaneous translation from/to English. Thus, the forum was attended by two international experts, experts from the Directorate of Inclusive and Out-of-school Education of the Ministry of Education and Culture (now it is merged with the Directorate of School Education), the President’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, heads of partner public organizations and others. Volunteers from the Ukrainian Leadership Academy also helped us during the event.
ADVOCACY TRAINING FOR PARENTS AND PUBLIC ACTIVISTS
This training aimed to teach parents and/or public activists involved in inclusive education and early intervention methods of promoting their ideas and projects.
Training participants worked out their ideas and found strengths and weaknesses to improve them.
Weaknesses of potential projects and made changes to improve them. Some participants noted that they received a clear action plan for implementation.
The event became a platform for exchanging experiences with representatives of public organizations from different regions. Twenty-six people from 13 cities in Ukraine took part in the training.
The training was conducted by an experienced independent English trainer, Jonathan Ellis.
ONLINE TRAINING “SUPPORT OF STUDENTS WITH SEN IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION: ADAPTATIONS AND MODIFICATIONS”
1,409 educators (primarily teachers and teacher assistants) registered for this training, so we decided to hold an additional session and invite more participants. We selected 100 participants (2 groups of 50 people each) and conducted online training for each group. The participants performed homework and received feedback from the trainer.
The trainer was Olga Malikova, a speech therapist, master of correctional pedagogy, behavior analyst, teacher’s assistant at school No. 58 in Kyiv, and executive director of the Ukrainian Association of Behavior Analysts.
There were the following training sessions:
- Psychological and pedagogical adaptations of learning (homework: work with the provided cases: planning, justification, description of the application of transformations by a brief description of the student’s capabilities and needs)
- Adaptation and modification of teaching materials (homework: developing an adapted or modified lesson plan and accompanying teaching materials for a student with SEN in his class)
- Session of answers to participants’ questions
Certificates of successful completion were received by 56 teachers, i.e., 56%. It is a very high indicator because 10–15% of participants in global practice usually complete online courses.
CONCEPT OF TEACHER EXCHANGE PROGRAM IN INCLUSIVE CLASSES
Together with expert Marianna Onufryk, we developed the concept of exchanges to study the best practices of inclusive education in Ukraine. During September-October 2020, we conducted research based on an online survey in social networks (189 respondents from all regions of Ukraine, except Crimea and Sevastopol ARC) and individual online interviews.
Almost a quarter of the interviewees (46 people) worked as assistants of teachers or tutors, 31 people – school principals and head teachers, 30 teachers, and 48 members of teams of psychological and pedagogical support and employees of the IRC. The survey can be represented both in terms of geographic and professional distribution.
6 people participated in the individual interviews: a methodologist, an IRC specialist, a deputy school director, the founder of a private inclusive school and a mother of a child with special needs, a teacher of an inclusive class, and a teacher of an inclusive group.
Based on this data, we have determined the mandatory and additional lists of study topics and the recommended activity format.
The developed concept can be used as an aid and a ready-made plan.
Partner:
Media about the project
- Department of Education and Science, Youth and Sports of the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration: What parents need to know about inclusive education: a new online course has been launched
- NUSH: ‘Smart Osvita’ conducted two studies on inclusive education
- Ed-Era: The work of an elementary school teacher with children with special educational needs
- All-Ukrainian forum: ‘Education without barriers: how to make Ukrainian schools inclusive?’ was held in Kyiv.
- International Foundation: ‘Vidrodzhennya’: Forum ‘Education without barriers: how to make Ukrainian schools inclusive’. Media are invited
- Ed-Era: Parental Involvement in Inclusive Education
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Poltava V.G. Korolenko National Pedagogical University: Professor Maryna Hrynyova took part in the international forum ‘Education without barriers: how to make Ukrainian schools inclusive’
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Hromadsʹkyy prostir: Participation of parents in the organization of inclusive education
- OsvitaNova: Does inclusion not apply to you? We argue why this is not so
