Assessment of Inclusive Process as a Tool for Designing Inclusion in Educational Institution

Abstract

The paper presents results of a study aimed at exploring how comprehensive assessment of inclusive process may be used as a tool for designing inclusion The paper presents results of a study aimed at exploring how comprehensive assessment of inclusive process may be used as a tool for designing inclusion within an educational institution. The assessment technique is based on three methodological foundations: activity, participatory and human rights based approaches which imply active involvement of the key subject groups in joint activities aimed at developing inclusion. The assessment model is built into the development cycle of an inclusive process and includes, along with self-examination and external expertise, the analysis of the assessment results by the school community with the participation of an external expert, the design of changes, their implementation and re-assessment. The participatory approach enabled us to involve the parent community as one of the subjects of assessing the state of the inclusive process at school. We focused on the following research tasks: to describe the stages in the assessment of inclusive educational process by its participants; to show, using the case of one of the schools involved in testing as an example, how the assessment and its discussion by the participants of the educational process and by the external expert affect the choices in the design of changes, making the educational institution more inclusion-oriented. To analyze the results of applying the assessment technique, one of the Moscow schools was selected which has extensive experience in the implementation of inclusive education and has reached the stage of change design in the cycle of inclusion development. The participatory approach made it possible, on the one hand, to involve the parent community as one of the subjects of assessing the state of the inclusive process at school. On the other hand, the assessment by an external expert was used as a tool for developing the institution’s inclusiveness. All groups of respondents gave a fairly high level of assessment of the inclusive process, although there were statistically significant differences (p <0.01) between the assessments of the teaching staff and parents (lower) in all indicators, except for Redeployment of Resources, Community Building, and Information Accessibility. These differences in the assessments, including the expert ones, were used by the institution to design changes and increase the involvement of the parent community in this process. Thus, the offered methodology can be used as a mechanism for self-analysis and a tool for designing inclusive process in an educational institution within the cycle of inclusive development.