Inclusive Education in Fully Organized Primary Schools

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study is to map the inclusive approaches of the fully organized schools in which pre-service teachers undergo their internships. It focused on what are called cooperating schools that accept undergraduate students of a primary school teacher training programme for their pedagogical internships.

Methods: On the basis of an analysis of available tools, the Czech translation of the internationally recognized index for inclusion by Booth and Ainscow (2007) was selected. Specifically, their questionnaire no. 1 was used for this survey since it can also be administered by external independent observers. The independent observers were students in the second to fifth years of studying to be primary school teachers. After the students had received training in the questionnaire items, they were asked to conduct the observation during their long-term internships in cooperating schools. The research group consisted of 139 fully organized schools.

Findings: On the basis of the results obtained, it can be stated that most of the schools where the students undergo their internships have started, to a greater or lesser extent, to implement an inclusive process and continue to strive for its development. Only two schools received a rating below 20% of the total number of points in all three areas under examination, i.e. building an inclusive culture, an inclusive school policy, and the development of inclusive practice. On the contrary, eight schools achieved above-average results in all three areas.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest, among others, that there are cooperating schools with which the Faculty of Education should consider future collaboration.