Inclusive education aims to increase the sensitivity and accountability of schools to students' learning difficulties and thus provide individuals with adequate support and assistance to successfully overcome their deficits. It emphasizes the need to adapt the learning environment to the individual, which also includes the use of textbooks that are tailored to the specific needs of pupils and students with learning disabilities. Since pupils and students with learning disabilities may have a different brain organization, which makes them learn in a different way from peers without difficulty, this should also be taken into account when selecting textbooks and selecting those in which information is presented in a way that is appropriate for them. The textbook, as an important source of information, provides support for the teacher and enables the learner to learn and acquire knowledge independently. Textbooks to help pupils and students with learning disabilities with difficulty receiving information can be provided by following the general text formatting recommendations. Although the recommendations have already been formulated, they need to be further adapted to the specific needs area or learning difficulties. In addition, there are some modern textbook formats that offer a variety of tools to tailor the material individually (audiobooks, interactive materials, etc.) and allow the individual to successfully use the textbook to ensure an independent and quality learning despite its shortcomings and special needs.
The purpose of the research was to analyze twelve different existing textbooks in social sciences in primary and secondary schools and to determine the extent to which they are accessible to pupils and students with learning disabilities in content and form. At the same time, we wanted to formulate criteria guidelines and offer them to teachers as a tool for selecting and defining textbooks suitable for pupils and students with learning disabilities. Next, we further examined how pupils and students with learning disabilities use the optimally designed textbook and how to evaluate it, and as a result, we prepared instructions for learning how to effectively use optimally designed textbooks for individuals with learning disabilities.
The results of the textbook analysis showed that the selected textbooks of individual social sciences subjects are, on average, generally suitable for pupils and students with general and specific learning disabilities, but in some areas there are some shortcomings, which significantly impede the learning of individuals with learning disabilities and would necessarily have to be improved. From the interview with the student, we found out that the optimally designed textbook was considered good and more appropriate than the non-adapted textbook, while in its use we discovered some areas of the textbook use for both pupils and students, which would require systematic learning of the use of reading textbook strategies for improving the quality of learning. Some of these are presented in more detail in the master's thesis.
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