Description
Educational workers that teach people with special needs are sometimes having trouble in accurate communication with them, especially those with trouble in communication and socialization. The objective of the project is to give those teachers qualitative and oriented professional education about communication and educational tools in order to improve their educational skills, to empower them with interactive, inductive and other educational methods for their work with pupils with special needs. Project outcome is strategic knowledge for educational workers to adapt their work to changing conditions in the dynamic and inclusive school process. The outputs will be educational workshop and conference in Norway and a brochure as a learning document not only for participants, but also for other educational facilities. The target groups are educational workers and their institutions, who will upgrade existing educational knowledge, and also pupils with special needs, who will receive improved teaching. The donor partner is Kragerø Kommune and will organize the workshops and conference in Norway. Together we will reach the project's objectives.
Summary of project results
Due to not knowing the people with special needs our society is still full of prejudices and belief that people with special needs are incompetent and different. Teachers/pedagogues are the first to have the opportunity to change this in their classrooms. With the project we wanted to expand our good practice of social integration and inclusion of young people with special needs and raise awareness about this issue. We have enriched teaching staff with experience in working with youth with special needs through different methods. We investigated the relationship between youth with special needs and teachers and their role in this relationship. We have learned about Norwegian educational system, history and process of development of inclusive education. The project empowered professional workers and enabled them to develop professionally and personally. They also spread the net of colleagues, which enables mutual learning. The results of the project were expanded among the majority of employees of both partner organizations and others who have read our brochure. Results were also published on our homepage and Facebook.
Summary of bilateral results
We cooperated with Kragerø Kommune (municipality) and their department for education. They invited a group of professionals to cooperate with us – pedagogues, special pedagogues, teachers, headmasters and representatives of education department. We organised a conference at their town hall where we shared information about our school systems, special education and inclusion, experiences and examples of good practice. We were able to compare our systems and history of inclusive education and see our similarities and differences. Pedagogues were able to talk about their work, methods, didactics and problems that they are facing while working with children with special needs. We were looking for good practice examples for social integration and of inclusive culture in our schools, local community and society. They were all reflecting their own practice and thinking what they could improve in the future. We developed very strong and quality partnership with Kragerø Kommune and we intend to continue our cooperation in the future. They would like to visit us as well and get to know our school system, education of special needs children, our Special Education Centre Janez Levec Ljubljana and cooperate in projects that we do for social integration and inclusion in Slovenia. With our brochure we can spread the results of our cooperation more widely and promote the main aim of our project in our communities.