Practice and Innovations of Inclusive Education at School

Abstract

The article has carried out a meta-analysis of the research concerning practice and innovations of inclusive education at school. Investigation of the practice of inclusive education at schools has been intensified since the 1990s, after identifying the need to implement inclusion strategies and concepts at the international level. The first studies of inclusive education (until the 2000s) concerned beliefs and values as a factor, influencing the effectiveness of inclusion, strategies of inclusive education. Investigations after the 2000s have been aimed at more focused subject matter of the research at the local level in different countries: principals’ beliefs, teachers’ self-efficacy, the role of parental support, school ideology, models of inclusion at private schools, the severity of disability as a factor determining teachers’ beliefs concerning inclusion. Various inclusive models have been formed as a practice result of implementing inclusion. Two key effective approaches to integration of inclusion have been highlighted: integrated and differentiated. An integrated approach involves the introduction of innovations in inclusive education in the following elements of the educational system, namely: the concept (strategy) that defines the model, external preconditions and stages of inclusion; a school that defines the internal prerequisites for inclusion; a community. A differentiated approach is used in combination with theintegrated one in order to identify the internal prerequisites for inclusion: values, beliefs and attitudes of teachers, the competence of educators.