Education of children with special needs requires extensive knowledge and a diverse set of skills, therefore its practitioners must be open to cooperation with experts from various professions to offer as comprehensive and inclusive educational process as possible. In the last two decades, the need to create inclusive education for all children has been recognized internationally. The importance of interprofessional cooperation of experts from different professions is being researched and recognised. Special education teachers are experts who play a primary role in education for children with special needs in schools in Slovenia. They collaborate with parents, teachers, educators as well as other experts. International research and theoretical argumentation points towards the occupational therapist being one of the key members in the interprofessional cooperation for ensuring quality treatment of children with special needs in the school environment. Abroad, occupational therapists are often already included in the school environment and cooperate with special educators. At present, our nation lacks adequate legislative measures and other incentives for true interprofessional cooperation of experts in the aforementioned fields.
In Slovenia special education teachers and occupational therapists working in the school environment meet in institutions with special education programs, which is why in this master's thesis we investigated the areas of work they cooperate in. We were interested in which field they want more cooperation and in what way, and what incentives they need to improve the cooperation. We investigated which advantages and obstacles they recognize in such a collaborative relationship. We designed two questionnaires for the research, one for special education teachers and the other for occupational therapists. We qualitatively processed the obtained data with the help of content analysis. We concluded that the research participants often cooperate with each other and rate their cooperation as good. They most often participate in the areas of choosing appropriate spatial adaptations, encouraging the development of everyday skills and individualized program planning. They want more cooperation in the field of introducing assistive technology and the use of sensory methods. They recognize the advantages of such cooperation both in terms of benefits for the development of a student with special needs, as well as for their own professional development. We observe the lack of time for cooperation and excessive workload as the biggest obstacles. At the conclusion of our work, we identified key elements of successful cooperation of special education teachers and occupational therapists, which can serve as guidelines for successful cooperation in ensuring a more comprehensive and inclusive education system for all children.
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