A Study of the Subjective Assessment of the Readiness and Ability of Students and Working Tutors for Tutor Support in the Context of Inclusive Education

Abstract

The article analyzes the subjective assessment of the readiness and ability to implement inclusive practices with tutor support for students with disabilities in conditions of inclusion among students of the defectology, psychological and pedagogical and social fields of training, with experience working as tutors. We developed a subjective assessment model based on competency and activity approaches that includes 4 questionnaires: the attitude towards inclusion, the intention to implement inclusive practices, the reflection of difficulties and self-efficacy in implementing inclusive practices. The study sample is represented by 488 respondents, who, when grouped by field of education, included – 157 students of higher special education (defectologists), 80 pedagogy and psychology students (higher education), 32 psychologists in the social sphere (higher education) and 15 college students majoring in “Social Work” (152 students from other majors were not considered in the analysis by field of education, but were included in the analysis using the grouping variable “Experience as a tutor”). Research methods: empirical - questionnaires containing scales designed for the self-assessment of the readiness and ability to implement inclusive practices in tutor support; statistical - the Kruskal-Wallis test (SPSS Statistics 18.0 program). An analysis of the results of responses on the various questionnaires showed that the largest proportion of positive responses from respondents was observed among defectology students, students of the “Psychologist in the Social Sphere” field and students with tutor experience from 1 to 3 years in the responses to the “Attitudes towards inclusion” (63,6%, 64,1%, 62,5%, respectively), “Intention to implement inclusive practices” (81,1%, 65,3%, 71,2%, respectively) and “Effectiveness in implementing inclusive practices” (68,8%, 63,8%, 69,7%, respectively) questionnaires, while agreement with the presence of difficulties was the lowest among defectology students (28,4%). Among students with tutoring experience, the largest proportion of positive choices was in the group of students with 1 to 3 years of experience, where there were significant differences in relation to inclusion and the effectiveness in implementing inclusive practices. In conclusion, it is stated that tutor training programs seeking to increase the readiness and ability to implement inclusive practices should include the development and implementation of an individual educational route based on the reflection of one’s value attitudes, intentions (motives), analysis of difficulties and assessment of self-efficacy.