Session Information
Session 10A, Attitudes to inclusion
Papers
Time:
2005-09-10
09:00-10:30
Room:
Agric. G07
Chair:
Bengt Persson
Contribution
One of the basic conceptual principles of the new Slovenian legislation relating to education is the principle of equal opportunity and non-discrimination. It is often emphasised that the government has created an appropriate framework for optimal children development regardless of gender, social and cultural background, religion, ethnicity, physical and mental constitution, etc. This article looks at how this principle is viewed upon by teachers as the people who ensure that inclusion is real rather than superficial, i.e., that it does not stop simply at the child's physical presence in school. Our analysis of this question is based on the empirical study carried out on a representative sample of primary school teachers in Slovenia. Primary school in Slovenia is uniform and takes nine years to complete; it is split organisationally into two levels: lower primary school and upper primary school. Teachers teaching the two levels are trained separately, the different programs having a different ratio of subject- oriented and education-oriented courses. In the study we included a comparison of views held by teachers from both levels of primary school.In our paper, we plan to examine who, in teachers' views, is responsible for integration of the children who find themselves marginalised in schools in Slovenia. Among them are children of migrants from the former Yugoslav republics, Romany children, children with special needs, and poor and rich children. Using a Likert scale questionnaire, we tried to extract teachers' attitudes on the question of integrating such children in the class - namely, what affects their inclusion, what are the roles of child's parents, the child himself, other children and the teacher, in this process. We also asked teachers under what conditions they were willing to have such a child in their class and whether they felt appropriately trained to teach such groups of children. The results of the study show that children from marginalised groups in Slovenia are very much left to their own devices when it comes to social inclusion; strangely enough, this applies to the children from well-to-do background even more than to the children from the poorest background. As to the children from culturally diverse groups, it seems that teachers favour assimilation and have little respect for their cultural differences; in regards to children with special needs, teachers are in principle willing to include them but would rather have them taught individually outside the class. Such results lead us to ask ourselves whether school in Slovenia is indeed inclusive, or may it be that such practices encourage segregation and subsequently intolerance towards everything different.
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