Psychological factors of adaptation to remote work of inclusive education specialists

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine, almost every area of life has undergone global challenges and changes during the first lockdown, in March–May 2020. In particular, healthcare professionals faced the need to change their traditional activities of providing psychological assistance to children with special educational needs. Inclusive education has not been adapted to distance education in Ukraine. The aim of the study is to identify the impact of personality traits and the activity features on the use of remote educational tools by inclusive education specialists during quarantine. The study involved 50 professionals working with children with special educational needs. The surveyed professional included 26 psychologists, 13 speech therapists and 11 correctional educators. The survey was conducted online, covered six Ukrainian cities and was based on psychological questionnaires. The paper concludes that work effectiveness of healthcare specialists in remote form depends on the following personality traits: the level of tolerance for uncertainty and novelty, generosity, orientation toward the specialist’s achievements; it also depends on the method of assistance and the children’s nosologies. The paper provides three “psychological portraits” of specialists who find themselves in quarantine. Most of the specialists who participated in the study (more than 75%) expressed the opinion that remote learning was less effective than traditional education. Only applied behavior analysts believed that online corrective classes were good enough to use this form of activity in the future.