LEVELS OF TEACHER COMPETENCES IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION ACCORDING TO THE DIALOGUE MODEL – STUDY RESULTS

Danuta Al-Khamisy

ABSTRACT

Observing the trends of changes in the education of pupils with special educational needs in public schools and kindergartens in Poland and throughout the world, the author draws attention to indicators that determine the dynamics and quality of inclusive education. These are mainly competences of teachers, which in addition to the traditional ones, with a range of teaching and education, should be expanded to include new ones on recognizing problems, diagnosis, counseling and therapy. Modern education standards already require a new look at the skills of teachers. The aim of this study was to determine the level of teacher competence base, such as cognitive, interpersonal, organizational and therapeutic competence in inclusive education, considered from the point of view of the author’s proposal: the education model of dialogue, consisting of three areas of dialog, i.e.

Cognizance, Understanding, Being together.

The analysis of the study clearly confirmed the hypothesis of a highly differentiated and low competence of inclusive education teachers. This also represents a significant barrier in the implementation of educational dialogue criteria in three areas which were examined. Primarily, there is need to prepare teachers to work in a diverse group, which is the class, where able-bodied students learn together with students with intellectual disabilities, ADHD, autism, hearing and visual deficits. Unfortunately, it still dominates the perception of dysfunction, and in the further level treating each human being as a social being. This problem is evidenced by the large numbers of teachers who indicate related educational and didactic difficulties. Still, according to the respondents, the most preferred place of education for students with disabilities are kindergartens in special and integrated schools. It can be assumed that a clear resistance to inclusive education among teachers is the effect of insufficient preparation, but also a perceived lack of support. Teachers expect not only indirect but, above all, direct assistance. They want to work with students with disabilities accompanied by an assisting expert from the field of special education. Therefore, the proposed mainstream of teacher education should be a complementary approach, both in the areas of general education and special education.

This trend of teacher education can promote blurred boundary division between special and general education.

INTRODUCTION

Integrative education has been developing in Poland since the1990s. Today, a number of qualified pedagogues specialising in integrative education are being trained, multi-level cooperation is being achieved and a well-organised community developed. However, the

current concept of integrative education in Poland¹ is not sufficient. A new model of edu-cation, known as inclusive eduedu-cation, which can be understood as (...) “the process of joint education of students, with special educational needs with their peers who do not have such needs in publicly available school. Necessary condition for this process to be effective is to provide students with special educational needs with the sense of belonging to the school community as well as psycho-social, didactic, organisational, and technical support what will allow for meeting their special developmental and educational needs stemming from their individual development” (Głodkowska, 2010, 74).

Education of student with disabilities was included in the European Union’s list of priori-ties. Many important documents defining the directions of the development of the special education were published. Legislative changes in Poland, which try to meet world-wide tendencies, were done in order to meet the disabled children needs². The announcement of those changes, as well as their gradual implementation caused great commotion among teachers. Questions, such as the ones below, arose among teachers: Are we ready for this?

Who will prepare us for those changes? How will universities that train teachers react to the changes? All in all, the issue raised great interest among both regular and special pedagogues.

As a result, this paper emphasises teacher’s work in kindergartens and primary schools. Therefore, a question arises: What competences should teacher have for an inclu-sive education to be effective for both disabled and regular students? What kind of person should a teacher in the inclusive education be, in order to meet all the requirements de-fined in the new regulations about place and time of the psychological–pedagogical sup-port for student with special educational needs? I decided to analyse inclusive education from the point of view of a model which was based on the analysis of subject literature of educational dialogue together with its parameters. The model presented below was cre-ated on the provision of selected orientations of studies done over dialogue education, as well as selected concepts of human and factors determining human development.

The effect of the interpreting attempt of the dialogue from the philosophical–peda-gogical point of view is the assumption that educational dialogue during the interaction with Other is understood as a way of behaving, co-behaving, or as Buber says embrac-ing and not as an educational method. This way of understandembrac-ing dialogue provokes to KNOWING self and partners, to UNDERSTANDING self and Others in order to extent educational interactions that take place and to BEING TOGETHER, understood as creat-ing new quality of interactions in practical implementation undertaken actions, which will encourage every student with special educational needs to participate. Results of the studies presented below are limited only to specific competences that define whether teachers are ready for inclusive education or not.

1 Since 1990, in Poland, there have been both integrative and special schools organised on all levels of education.

Integrative pre-school or school group should include 16 to 20 students, 3 to 5 of which should have an opinion on their special educational needs (most often different forms of disabilities). There are two teachers in the class, first, so-called “leading subject teacher” and second - supporting teacher (special pedagogue). School should provide complex psychological–pedagogical and rehabilitative support.

2 Six regulations concerning e.g., the rules of providing psychological-pedagogical support in public kindergar-tens, schools and education facilities; regulations about conditions and methods of assessment, classification, promotion and examining; rules onthe opinions and giving opinions about students by specialised teams in public PSYCHOLOGICAL–PEDAGOGICAL counselling centres; rules on special conditions of working of public psychological–pedagogical counselling centres, including specialist centres, were changed on 17 Novem-ber 2010.

Due to the position assumed, studies aimed at measuring kindergarten and primary school teachers competences are aiming not only at defining the real level of competences, but also at setting the direction of their development and organisation in order to fulfil the goals of the inclusive education.

Teachers’ level of competences depends, most of all, on the requirements posed on him or her by the school, and on his or her personal experiences. Those experiences de-pend largely on the legal, systemic, organisational, and cultural constraints. Therefore, teachers’ activity is especially important. Especially for those teachers who achieved the stage of adaptation in their profession and start to fall into the ‹routine stagnation› stage.

Currently, during the process of implementing of new regulations concerning the psycho-logical–pedagogical support for students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), teachers often ask themselves the following questions: What are the expectations about their work, what professional role they should fulfil in modern society, how they can achieve success in their pedagogical efforts, and what should be most important for a teacher – students or national interests? The answers to the questions above provide solutions which require explicit system changes defining the scope of teacher›s responsibilities in a given social, and educational context, as well as competences required for meeting new challenges in universal education. A special role is ascribed to the educational authorities, including governing authorities, and pedagogic supervision authorities, pedagogic universities, teacher training facilities, head teachers of the educational facilities who should define the specific requirements for teachers working in specific conditions and create good model of internal education of the teachers. The teachers themselves should organise self-help, or educate themselves by autodidactic methods and at the same time auto-evaluate them-selves, their attitudes, and effects of their work.

Therefore, the question is: what image of a teacher ready for work in the dialogue inclusive education with students with special educational needs should be created by the institutional education system? Most likely, the answer is that it should be the one in which educational programmes and offers should develop the competences of future teachers in the area of so called «sensitivity to the disabilities» (Laicaster, in: Kwieciński, 2000). The system of teacher training, for the dialogue education, should prepare the teacher for ful-filling the roles of the: counsellor, diagnostician, educator, guardian, manager, mentor, therapist, and tutor. All the roles of a teacher are especially suitable fora teacher in the inclusive education.

Regulation on the conditions, assessment methods, classification and promoting students and listeners, and conducting tests and exams in public schools, concerns all schools and educational facilities where students pursue their compulsory education. This regulation also introduces the new definition of specific learning difficulties and defines the time pe-riod when student can be given opinion on a specific learning difficulties from the psycho-logical–pedagogical counselling centre; it obliges the teacher to individualise the teaching of such student during obligatory and non-obligatory classes; it obliges the teacher to match the educational requirements with the individual developmental and educational needs and capabilities of the student who is in need of psychological–pedagogical support;

it also defines the rules of matching the conditions for conducting the tests and exams to the needs and abilities of the student who is in need of the psychological-pedagogical sup-port; as well as introduces transitional regulation (tasks, rules, and terms).

RESEARCH ASSUMPTIONS

In order to define the preparedness of teachers for inclusive education, including the dia-logue requirements, the following research question was formulated: What is the com-petence level among kindergarten and primary school teachers, required to working in the inclusive education, and defining the scope of the dialogue in form of KNOWING, UNDERSTANDING and BEING TOGETHER?

RESEARCH METHODS AND TOOLS

Due to the diagnostic-exploration-prognostic nature of the study diagnostic survey method was used. For the needs of this study following research techniques were used:

Analysis of the legal documents in the form of Ministry of National Education regulations on introducing into the educational practice selected indexes of the inclusive education, and the analysis of the regulations concerning teacher trainings. Interviews with teach-ers and head teachteach-ers from schools and kindergartens, direct and indirect observation of teacher’s work during the educational actions with student with special educational needs especially in form of opinion stating the need for special education. The study was done on a sample of 772 persons, who were kindergarten teachers, public school teachers, and persons who were not teachers themselves but who supported teachers, i.e. employees of psychological–pedagogical counselling centres or teacher training facilities. Presented results concern mostly teachers.

Teachers groups studied are: kindergarten teachers, teachers of grades 1 to 3, teachers of grades 4 to 6 (Referred to in the analysis as “teachers of older classes”),

TEACHER COMPETENCE LEVEL IN THE KNOWING AREA OF DIALOGUE, EXPERIENCES AND CONTACTS WITH DISABLED PERSONS

Most of respondents (75%) declared contact with the disabled persons. Educators de-clared most frequent (43,10%) contact and employees of the counselling centres dede-clared the least frequent contact (10,49%). The results of the study do not provide any statistically important correlation between declared contact with the disabled persons and belonging to any particular professional group . Respondents declared that they have most frequent contact with persons suffering from with intellectual disabilities such as ADHD, cerebral palsy, or autistic disorder. Less frequently, they declared contact with persons suffering from chronic or genetic conditions, or suffering form severe sight of hearing impairments.

This may be because children with severe sight or hearing impairment study mostly in schools in large cities. It turns out, that there is a weak but statistically significant correla-tion between the number of contacts with children with SEN and represented professional group. Most frequent group of children with special educational needs, that the surveyed persons had contact with, were children suffering from ADHD. Kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers, as well as employees of teacher training facilities -all of them had contact with about 20%of such children. Second group of students with SEN, often encountered by kindergarten, and primary school teachers, are children with intellectual

disability. However, employees of the counselling centres not teachers are the ones who had the most contact with those children. This means that both kindergarten and primary school teachers should be well prepared to work with students with special educational needs. The surveyed persons, in both urban and rural environments, had most often con-tact with students suffering from ADHD or intellectual disabilities. Concon-tact with students with intellectual disabilities is more frequent in the countryside and less frequent in large cities (This result is not surprising, as the access to special or integrative schools in the countryside is very limited). In the city, disabled students have a much wider choice of alternative education. The cases of children suffering from ADHD, it is much different in this respect. Most of those children are present in schools located in small and large cities.

Moreover, autistic children (in the countryside 15.91%) and those suffering from Asper-ger syndrome (in large cities 15.42%) are also important groups of disabled students. The number of students suffering from cerebral palsy is also highest in the countryside and smallest in large cities. The studies clearly show that there is a great need for providing support for teachers in the countryside and in small cities. The presence of disabled stu-dents in all social environments as well as in publicly available schools is undeniable fact.

The number of the disabled children in publicly available schools varies from 0.8% in large urban agglomeration (Warsaw, Breslau), where there are plenty of integrative and special schools, to 1.5% of total students population in schools located in small towns, where ac-cess to integrative and special schools is next to none (Al-Khamisy and Bogucka, 2009).

From among the disabled children studying in publicly available schools, the largest per-centage has mild intellectual disability (35%) and conduct disorders (10%).

KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SELECTED DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS

Knowledge about following developmental disorders was verified among the surveyed persons: intellectual disability, ADHD, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autistic disorder, hearing impairment, deafness, weak hearing, sight impairment, blindness, weak sight. It turns out that teachers who teach in grades1 to 3 are knowledgeable about the above men-tioned special educational needs, but what is raises concerns is the fact that 23,2% of the teachers in this group declare no knowledge whatsoever about the disorders. Most teach-ers who teach in grades1 to 3 have the most knowledge about intellectual disability. They ascribe this to the fact that more and more students with this disability appear in publicly available schools. At the same time they declare, the same as other groups, that they have the least knowledge about students with sight impairment. Moreover, the same group of teachers declare large extent of knowledge about ADHD and cerebral palsy. Therefore, this professional group can be treated as well-prepared in terms of the knowledge required for working in the inclusive education. The declared level of knowledge of teachers is favour-able for KNOWING area of the dialogue. Surveyed teachers of older classes, i.e. grade 4 to 6 of primary school, similarly to kindergarten teachers, declare, to a large extent (31,6%), lack of any knowledge whatsoever about above mentioned special educational needs . They declare the most knowledge about cerebral palsy, ADHD, and Down syndrome, and the least, same as all other groups, about sight impairment. The results clearly show that there is a need for extending their knowledge in the area of special educational needs.

The area of KNOWING in the educational dialogue is very low in this group. Following

conclusions can be drawn from the analysis so-far: All of the surveyed groups are poorly prepared in terms of knowledge about disabilites to the KNOWING area of dialogue.

Most likely, this stems from educational practice, which until now did not burdened the teachers with the task of diagnosing and supporting the student with special educational needs. Decisive actions need to be undertaken in order to improve the knowledge about different special educational needs. The actions should be targeted especially at kindergar-ten and teachers of grades 4 to 6, as well as to all groups in the countryside and in small cities. Studies clearly show that there are significant deficits in the area of didactics of students with hearing and sight impairments.

Young teachers with work experience below one year (60.0%), and those with job experience below 5 years (60.6%), are most often suffering from lack of any knowledge about disabilities. They have the highest level of knowledge about ADHD, which is still relatively low, and lowest about intellectual disability and methods of working with stu-dent suffering from it. Surveyed teachers with work experience of above 6 years have the most competences in the area of special educational needs. Experience gathered through teaching allows those professional groups to extend their knowledge about every type of disability; however, they still declare that they have the most knowledge about intel-lectual disability and ADHD (51.9%) and least about hearing (7.4%) and sight (11.6%) impairment. This knowledge significantly raises among teachers with over 20 years of teaching experience. It can be assumed that there are more and more disabled stu-dents in publicly available schools. On the other hand, what raises concerns is the fact that among teachers with over 30 years of experience the number of those who have no knowledge about disabilities raises. At the same time, knowledge about hearing and sight impairments raises in this group at the cost of knowledge about autistic disorders.

The most common form of teacher professional development are courses, workshop, conferences and meetings, with post-graduate studies at the end of the list. Among other forms of development, reading specialist books and articles and contact with specialist facilities are mentioned. Respondents in each age group undertake different forms of pro-fessional development, but those with work experience between 10 and 30 years are most active in this respect.

TEACHER COMPETENCES IN THE UNDERSTANDING AREA OF DIALOGUE, DIFFICULT SITUATIONS DURING WORK WITH DISABLED STUDENTS AND REASONS BEHIND THEM

Difficult situations observed by kindergarten and primary school teachers in their work with disabled students were divided into two groups–didactic and pedagogic situations.

Situation types studied are: deprivation, overload, conflicts, impediments, threats, and lack of guidelines. From all the respondents 21,8% declare that they have no didactic or pedagogic problems with disabled students. From among the respondents who signal having problems with disabled students 52.13% declare pedagogic problems and 47.87%

didactic ones. It means that teaching students with special educational needs is not in

didactic ones. It means that teaching students with special educational needs is not in