Students with special educational needs face challenges in developing second language writing skills. These students lack specialised instruction and support, especially in mainstream classrooms, due ...to a lack of expertise and understanding of inclusive education. This article explores two teachers' conceptualisations of inclusive education and special educational needs, as well as investigating the application of a multiliteracies pedagogy in the context of fostering inclusivity within a second language writing classroom. Through duoethnography, the teachers share their experiences of tailoring lessons for students with special educational needs. The study highlights the complexities of inclusivity in second language writing classrooms with multiliteracies pedagogy and promotes professional learning through duoethnography. The analysis illustrates the challenges and opportunities for teachers catering to students with special educational needs. The article discusses whether using multiliteracies pedagogy for inclusive classrooms is a possible reality or an ideological pipedream.
The article examines the causes of conflicts in inclusive student groups and means of their prevention. It has been found that the success of inclusive education in higher education institutions ...mainly depends on interpersonal relationships in inclusive student groups. This is due to the fact that communicating with each other, students with special educational needs acquire skills of social interaction, widen the range of their social roles, learn more about their own personality. However, the peculiarities of moral attitudes, values, behavior, features of the emotional and volitional sphere development, cognitive processes of students with special educational needs lead to conflict situations in inclusive student groups. To determine the causes of conflicts in inclusive student groups, a diagnostic study was conducted among the full-time and part-time students with special educational needs of Khmelnytsky National University. The results of the diagnosis showed that main causes of conflicts in inclusive student groups are the following socio-psychological characteristics of students with special educational needs: low level of self-esteem due to which they get painful experiences because of critical remarks addressed to them, try to adapt to other people's opinions, have low motivation for achievement, feel lonely and anxious; low ability to establish new contacts for communication, low level of sociability; the desire to avoid conflict or to get out of it with dignity accepting the opinions and interests of others without seeking compromise solutions. Taking this into consideration, we have developed and substantiated conflict prevention tools for inclusive student groups that can help students with special educational needs to interact effectively with other students while studying at higher education institution.
Teachers play a key role in creating effective conditions for students to succeed in school. The quality of student–teacher relationships is consistently associated with social, emotional, ...behavioural and academic adjustment, and this is even more relevant for students with special educational needs (SEN), considering these students’ emotional, social and learning vulnerabilities. This study aimed to examine the associations between students’ externalising and internalising behaviour, social skills and academic performance, and teachers’ perceptions of conflict and closeness in their relationships with students with and without SEN. Data regarding 360 students in Year 3, Year 5 and Year 7 (169 students with SEN) were collected. Teachers (n = 74) reported on the student–teacher relationship and students’ social skills, behaviour problems and academic performance. Special education teachers (n = 38) provided information regarding the diagnosis and profile of functioning of students with SEN. Results showed that teachers’ reports of students’ social skills and externalising problems were the strongest predictors of closeness and conflict. Internalising problems and SEN status also predicted decreased closeness, despite smaller effects. Taken together, findings support the importance of professional development opportunities focusing on facilitating teachers’ relationships with students with perceived challenging behaviour.
The aim of the paper is to reveal the challenges of implementation of inclusive education in typical rural schools of Ukraine. The authors performed empirical research to identify attitudes of rural ...school teachers towards inclusive education as well as their understanding of existing barriers and priorities to improve the quality of educational services for students with special educational needs (SEN). To achieve the aim of the research, the following methods have been used: reviewing of psychological and pedagogical literature, questionnaire surveys, quantitative and qualitative analysis of the obtained data. The outlined problem has been theoretically analyzed and the peculiarities and difficulties of teaching students with special educational needs in rural areas have been substantiated. The paper describes survey responses of teachers involved in the inclusive process in rural schools. 192 representatives of different age categories and regions of Ukraine participated in this empirical study. The paper explores questions of effective management of rural schools, professional cooperation in a team of psychological and pedagogical support of students with special educational needs, promotion of inclusive practices via information and communication technologies (ICT) and STEAM-laboratories, cooperation within local communities, introduction of universal design for learning and others. Prospects for the development of rural inclusive schools in current conditions of digitalization of education also have been identified.
Research suggests that school counsellors can have a positive influence on students' academic, social-emotional and career development. Although school counsellors have had long-standing direct and ...indirect involvement in providing support and services to students with disabilities (SWD), research into how school counsellors directly support SWD remains relatively limited.
In this study, we sought to review studies that examined school counsellors' support and services for SWD by analysing topic coverage, methods and findings to discern the existing research base.
A systematic identification and review of research focused on studies about school counsellors and their support and services for SWD. A thematic analysis with an inductive approach was employed to uncover studies' patterns and content.
In total, 32 studies were eligible for inclusion in the review. Analysis revealed that these studies were clustered into four themes: (a) interventions involving school counsellors; (b) school counsellors' perceptions and roles; (c) school counsellors' support of SWD through career development, transition or graduation; and (d) students' or parents' perceptions about school counsellors. Of the 32 studies, over half included surveys, primarily eliciting perceptions and attitudinal information from school counsellors, whilst fewer than one-quarter featured data about school counsellors delivering interventions to SWD.
Our review suggests that a substantial evidence base in this area has not yet been established, meaning that minimal research has taken place to guide school counsellors regarding support and services for SWD. Implications include a call to researchers to expand the supply of high-quality and rigorous studies focused on school counsellors and SWD, especially intervention studies, subsequently leading towards research-informed practices.
In recent years, in the context of the educational reform, dominant position is held by the social demand for the inclusion of all students in the regular classroom and the request to redesign the ...educational process to align with the individualized needs of students. Τhe concept of inclusion, which view the heterogeneity in the light of social justice and equality, refers not simply to the placement of the SEN students in the mainstream school, but basically, to their dynamic engagement in every aspect of the educational process and in the social interactions that flow from it. “E-inclusive” pedagogy refers to teachers’ decisions to providing their students innovative ways of learning and alternative means of completing their tasks, by incorporating the technology in the educational activities. The aim of this paper is to propose tech tools and e-services for the accessibility and active participation of students with special educational needs in teaching and learning procedures of the ordinary classroom and examine the role of teachers in realizing their inclusion / e-inclusion, as the main facilitators and modulators of the classroom settings to an open learning and development ecosystem. The results showed that teachers who provide authentic opportunities for interaction and learning for all their students and incorporate, flexibly, new technologies into their teaching strategies to meet their unique needs, contribute significantly to their acquisition of academic but mainly functional life skills, preparing them for substantial employment and integration opportunities in community life.
Information and communication technology (ICT) has made higher education available to many students in a new way. The role of online learning in higher education institutions (HEIs) has grown to an ...unprecedented scale due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The diversity of higher education students has increased, and accessible solutions are needed. New European and national regulations support these trends. The research reported in this paper was conducted in Finland, which is one of the leading European countries in terms of high technology and digitalisation. The aim of this research is to explore the accessibility of all Finnish HEIs’ (
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= 38) landing pages based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). The situations before and after recent legislation are compared. Previous studies have shown that HEIs’ landing pages typically have many accessibility errors. Unlike previous studies, this study considered the types of accessibility errors at a detailed level to support HEIs’ development and implementation of accessibility standards. A combination of two automated accessibility testing tools was used, and the performance of individual tools was analysed. The results show that HEIs’ landing pages are not accessible and there are enormous differences between institutions. Two clusters of HEIs were found: one with good accessibility in terms of WCAG 2.1’s four principles (perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust), and one with poor accessibility. On half of the HEIs’ landing pages with poor accessibility, the number of errors increased even given the binding nature of the law. Obviously, there is still work to be done. Implications for practice are also discussed.
From an embodied learning perspective, the active human body can alter the function of the brain and therefore, the cognitive process. In this work, children’s activity using motion-based technology ...is framed as an example of embodied learning. The present investigation focuses on the use of a series of Kinect-based educational games by 31 elementary students with special educational needs in mainstream schools, during a five-month intervention study. Results based on psychometric pre-post testing in conjunction with games-usage analytics, a student attitudinal scale, teachers’ reflection notes and teacher interviews, demonstrated the positive impact of the games on children’s short-term memory skills and emotional stage. Overall, the study improves our understanding of embodied learning via motion-based technology in teaching and learning with children with special educational needs.
Although the number of resource provision (RP) classrooms for the education of students with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) in English mainstream schools has increased, very ...little is known about their functioning and impact. Through collaborative research, based on critical communicative methodology, this study aims to (i) evaluate with the participants the effective practices and challenges in educating students with SEND in RP and mainstream classrooms, and (ii) discuss the position of RP within the inclusion and exclusion debate. Reflective conversations, communicative focus groups and communicative observations were conducted with teachers, teaching assistants, mothers and students in three schools. Two different models were identified in the conceptualisation and practice of RP; either as a service to promote the education and inclusion of students with SEND in mainstream classroom/school, or as a space for specialised provision with opportunities for inclusion. These models reflect two different approaches in the education of these students, the rights‐ and the needs‐based approach respectively. We argue that RP as inclusive service should be prioritised. However, flexibility in its conceptualisation and functioning, either as inclusive service or safe space, can positively contribute towards a realistic approach to inclusion combining human rights and individual diversity perspectives.
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