Children with special needs are, depending on the level of their deficits and needed assistance, in accordance with the Law on the Placement of Children with Special Needs (ZUOPP-1), directed into various programs. A transition between programs at school and pre-school level is also determined. Experts encourage flexible transitions also with groups of children in special educational programs, which are in separate sections of kindergarten and school. Practitioners should also plan activities to promote social interaction among children, create an inclusive climate and develop new forms and methods of teaching, thus ensuring quality education and providing opportunities for the optimal development of the individual. For diverse forms of inclusive and integrative oriented activities in literature there are different expressions (e.g. transition, socializing), which will be captured for greater transparency in the broader term collaboration among programmes. Given the urging of the profession for the implementation of flexible forms of transition, we were interested in how integration takes place in practice. In this thesis we focus on the integration between the programs in the field of early childhood education. The theoretical part presents the key theoretical content relevant for the understanding of the issue (educational programs, inclusion, integration, child development, the role of peer influence, the effects of integration), the empirical part focuses on researching the realization of integration between the programs of preschool education in practice. With the help of a questionnaire aimed at kindergarten employees, we studied the forms and frequency of collaboration among the special program of preschool education and the early childhood education program in Slovenian kindergartens. We investigated which factors affect this, what are the constraints and needs in the implementation of integration that the practitioners perceive and what is their attitude towards integration.
The study involved a total of 90 teachers and teacher assistants (hereinafter referred to as professional workers) from 17 units of Slovenian kindergartens, that have a department with a special program of preschool education. Questionnaires were filled out by professional workers from departments with special needs pre-school education and professional workers from those departments of preschool education that are the most connected. The survey showed that most departments connect spontaneously on a daily basis but merging departments in planned activities usually takes place once or twice a month. Many of them connect casually every day in activities and projects, other forms of integration are used by fewer departments. The initiative for the implementation of integration and the planning of activities is usually on the side of teachers of both departments, or on the side of teachers of special needs pre-school education. Throughout the survey the most notable factor that stands out is education or expertise, that a quarter of respondents show as one of the most important barriers, more than half said that it is an important need. We found a lot of differences in answers between groups of professional workers according to education, department in which they work and seniority, which shows the importance of both expertise and experience with children with special needs for the realization of integration. Professional workers also cited many examples of good integration practice, for example. integration in different projects (Igraj se z mano), joint birthday celebrations, gaming days (bringing together two departments) and the like.
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