The Understanding of Inclusive Education in Kosovo: Legal and Empirical Argumentation

Abstract

The article looks at conceptualisations of inclusive education in the international and Kosovo context, including the factual argumentation and legal representation of the term. The study explores the attitudes of teachers and their understanding of inclusive education, including arguments for and against it, implementation challenges, and perspectives. Interviews were used as a tool to generate information from key informants. The study is qualitative and based on an analysis of the experiences of six in-service teachers. The findings suggest that teachers have a wide knowledge of inclusive education and believe it has only positive effects for children with special needs. They believe that children can achieve more in terms of socialisation and modelling of good behaviours from their peers, but that success in academic achievements is lower because of the limited knowledge of teachers about individualised planning and differentiated teaching, and a lack of institutional support and proper evaluation of each teacher’s work.

Keywords

• children with special needs
• inclusive education
• international contexts
• kosovo context
• teacher perspectives