An inclusive school is a school that accepts all children and is able to provide them with the conditions necessary to meet their various individual educational needs. The spectrum of these educational needs is very broad. Educational needs arise not only from a health disability or disadvantage, but also from the cultural environment in which the child grows up, and from talent at, or the degree of mastery of the language of tuition.
There are also differing needs stemming from the preferences of the child in relation to how the educational content or social interaction are mediated to them in the course of tuition. Some children learn better if information is presented to them visually, other children are better at learning what they hear, and yet further children require movement and direct handling. Some children learn better when working alone, while others need intense interaction with other children or an adult to reach their educational maximum. Educational needs may differ significantly even within what seems at first glance to be a homogenous group.
Inclusive pedagogy takes into account the vast variety of the individual educational needs of children, and also uses this variety for the purpose of the children’s mutual enrichment. For these reasons, it is able to get closer to the objective of inclusive teaching, which is supporting every child in attaining their educational maximum, while at the same time respecting the child’s individual educational needs. Subordinate to this objective is the selection of the methods and forms of education. Activities are used which build on the current activity of the children themselves, on their cooperation and the development of self-reflection in achieving educational objectives. All of this of course taking into account a child’s age. Simultaneously, emphasis is put on the individualization and differentiation of the objectives of education, as well as of the means available for achieving them.
A number of the methods of inclusive pedagogy were originally developed for children with some type of a health disability or disadvantage. However, it turns out a much larger group of children can profit from these, for instance structured teaching developed for children suffering from autism spectrum disorders uses visualization of the daily regime, and of the sequence of activities that await the child on any given day.
Pictures, pictograms or representative objects are used to denote the individual activities arranged in accordance with the sequence in which they are to be carried out. Having finished an activity, the child puts away the picture that symbolizes the activity just finished, and moves on to the next activity. This teaching aid is useful not only for children suffering from an autism spectrum disorder, but also for children who are having problems adapting to the regime of school attendance, for children with an attention disorder, or for children who do not speak Czech. A multisensory approach that utilizes a variety of senses in the learning process will be beneficial not only for children with a specific learning disorder, but also for children who have a partial weakness in one of the elements of perception.
Inclusive education to a large extent contributes to the social education of children. Children learn to help and support each other on the journey towards achieving educational objectives. They learn that society is by, definition, very diverse, and that the individual differences of others are to be approached with respect. At the same time, children learn –in a safe environment, and under the leadership of an experienced adult – to constructively overcome difficulties that can be caused by differences. They take this valuable experience into their adult life, where they can put it into practice in their family and work life. In the inclusive school, great emphasis is put on the systematic support of positive relationships among the children, and at preventing bullying. A generally positive climate at the school is supported, a great part of which also has to do with the relationships between the teachers themselves, as well as with their relationship with children’s parents.
In order to explain the philosophy of inclusive education, one can use a description of the difference between inclusion and integration. Integration is understood as integrating a child with a specific difference into an environment that has primarily been designed for the education of children without significant differences in individual educational needs. The environment of the school (architectural, material, staff, educational) must thus be adapted to a sufficient extent, and a child must – more or less – adapt to an environment that originally did not take into consideration the presence of such a child with differences. As opposed to that, the inclusive school is designed with a broad spectrum of individual educational needs in mind – it takes the variety of these needs for a fact, and it has prepared the necessary conditions to cater to all these needs. If a child whose needs are very specific starts attending the school, the conditions for the education of such a child are further adjusted.
The implementation of inclusive education has two fundamental preconditions:
1) acceptance of the philosophy of inclusive education by the employees of the school, and
2) acquisition of methods and ways of working that allow for differentiation and individualization in education.
As regards the individualization of education, it should be pointed out that in a vast majority of cases, it need not concern continuous individual support provided to a single child. This would be very difficult to implement in an ordinary classroom for a large number of reasons. Rather, it involves a well thought-out differentiation of educational objectives for different children, based on the maximum of their possible development. To that end, it utilizes teaching methods that have been proven by research as truly efficient. At the same time, it is vital to possess a good knowledge of the individual educational needs of all the children, and adjust the selection of methods and ways of working to them.
A suitable tool for the continuous verification of the effectiveness of the methods employed is formative assessment, which can be used to map the educational progress of individual children in the classroom. Formative assessment is also one of the tools used in inclusive teaching.
In the inclusive school, every child is considered unique in the context of their individual educational needs, as well as the educational maximum that the child is able to achieve. Teachers try to use all available means to ensure that the child manages to reach their maximum educational potential. At the same time, teachers accept the fact that not all children will, or even can, achieve identical educational objectives.