Let´s talk about inclusion - Personal Reflection on Special Needs Students

Picture from http://www.jssa.org/services/specneeds

"For me, inclusion is about a community where everyone is recognized for their differences and everyone is recognized as belonging – not only in our schools, but in our communities."
Dr. Joseph Petner, Educator

Special needs students are those people that "may need support in the physical, cognitive, emotional or social areas of development or in the development of skills for varying periods of time. It is important to identify and define the child’s individual opportunities to act in different environments and in different educational situations and to also define related need for support and guidance. The aim is to prevent the child’s need for support from accumulating and becoming prolonged."

Finnish system works cause the cooperation between municipalities, schools and health care is in harmony. The children are followed since early stage: earlier the problem is identify bigger is the possibility to act on time.
At education level, special needs students have same rights that not special needs ones. This includes the possibility for them to get an education and a degree exactly as same as others. The students must provide an IEP (Individiual Education Plan) a pedagogical written document based on national curriculum where is written the provision of education and other support in accordance with the decision on special support issued for the pupil.

At Vocational level this plan must set out details of the qualification to be completed, the national core curriculum or the requirements of the competence-based qualification observed in education and training, the scope of the qualification, the individual curriculum drawn up for the student, grounds for providing special education and training, special educational and student welfare services required for studying as well atr

One issue that came out after reading some of the reflection paper from my fellows teachers students collegues it was: what is the support that special needs students got after the ended schools?
I truly believe that people in general should work on the word of "inclusion".
Inclusion is the key word of Finnish system: with this strategy they give possibility to special needs students to partecipate and learn in same classes with others. Therefore special needs students develop skills they canuse in and out of classroom.
Inclusion education system has inside 2 different kind of approaches:
1) Full time inclusion: is not world wide accepted: The students with special needs are always educated alongside students without special needs, as the first and desired option while maintaining appropriate supports and services. In wider point of view the "inclusion"is a concept that the whole class learn.
2) Part time or regular inclusion: the special needs students participate for several hours to the activity of the class: nearly all of the day, or at least for more than half of the day. For this kind of approach maybe more suitable is the word "integration" than "inclusion".
Both approaches requires some basics and practical elements in a classroom. It´s also extremely important to have a strong community behind that support the work of teachers that need to create an enviroment  "diversity" is not a minus but a "plus". In this issue Finland wins again. The cooperation between the municipalities, schools and health care centres helps to build a community around everybody not only around special needs people.
According to Wikipedia, teachers use a number of techniques to help build classroom communities:

• Using games designed to build community
• Involving students in solving problems
• Sharing songs and books that teach community
• Openly dealing with individual differences by discussion
• Assigning classroom jobs that build community
• Teaching students to look for ways to help each other
• Utilizing physical therapy equipment such as standing frames, so students who typically use wheelchairs can stand when the other students are standing and more actively participate in activities
• Encouraging students to take the role of teacher and deliver instruction (e.g. read a portion of a book to a student with severe disabilities)
• Focusing on the strength of a student with special needs

The inclusion positive aspects are quite many and easy to find: benefits for everybody, easier riching IEP goals,post schools adjustmens.
Challenging for the inclusions of special needs students in normal classes are quite many and include educators, administrators and parents. As a parent, if my son would be special needs students I might be worried that he will be ridiculed by other students, or be unable to develop regular life skills in an academic classroom.

According to UNESCO, inclusion “is increasingly understood more broadly as a reform that supports and welcomes diversity amongst all learners.” Under this broader definition of inclusion, steps should also be taken to eliminate discrimination and provide accommodations for all students who are at a disadvantage because of some reason other than disability.


References:

UNESCO (2009) Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education. UNESCO: Paris. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001778/177849e.pdf

All publications about special needs students and their inclusion in Finland are retreived on:
http://www.european-agency.org/country-information/finland/publications-fi