A competence model for training programs in inclusive education

Abstract

The implementation of inclusion poses fundamentally new requirements for the professional competencies of teachers, which in turn determines the need for an empirically based competence model of a teacher of an inclusive educational organization. A complex of university programs for teacher training specifying the inclusive competencies could be used as an appropriate empirical base of the study. However, this research logic has not yet been implemented and the study was devised to fill this gap. Its purpose was to build a structural and meaningful model of an inclusive teacher based on an analysis of inclusive competencies presented in the teachers’ educational programs of universities. Content analysis was used to study the texts of 59 basic educational programs. Frequency and factor analysis of the matrix of representation of competency indicators in educational programs was also carried out. It was found that the semantic core of the inclusive competencies of the teacher reflects the need to take into account the special psychological and pedagogical status of children in terms of their personal position in learning, the originality of their development, health status and their specific educational needs. The integral inclusive competences of the teacher are the readiness to: organize an inclusive educational process as a whole; organize an individually oriented educational route; individual / collaborative support; and organize psychological and pedagogical support; substantive / instrumental knowledge related to working with students with disabilities. The competence profiles of teachers, set by university educational programs, are not fully consistent with both the existing theoretical models of the inclusive teacher competencies and the conditions for the implementation of inclusive practice. The research results include ideas about five-component structure of teacher’s inclusive competence. The practical significance is in the identification of the essence of the contradictions in the content of the university training of teachers for work in inclusive education, the elimination of which will contribute to improving the quality staffing of the inclusive education system.