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Description
Our organization strives to build a community of professionals and parents united by a common understanding about inclusive education (IE). Following the adoption of the Preschool and School Education Act, IE has become part of the right to education over the last three years. However, resistance to IE among teachers has shown that it will not be easy for change to take place. One of the main reasons, apart from the need to restructure the system, is the need for teachers to apply new practices in a diverse classroom. To meet this need, we created the virtual portal Приобщи.се in 2014 with resources for teachers, specialists and parents. We have worked so far for a community of individual followers. We decided to change the approach to enable the website to reach those teachers who are more reserved to IE and continue to offer educational practices that are adequate for the Bulgarian context and that support Bulgarian students. The specific project goal is to use the virtual portal for inclusive education Приобщи.се and establish 10 partnerships with schools through which new original ideas, methods, tools for inclusive practices in the classroom and in school can be created, shared and disseminated and promote the portal as a source disseminating good practices, increase the number of portal users by 20% and thus also reach the teachers who are reserved to IE.
Summary of project results
The project was completed with 40 published articles with good practices, 10 participating partner schools, a conference for inclusive practices with over 180 participants in real time online and 8600 views of the subsequently published presentations of each of the speakers.
The conference "Inclusive Educational Practices" was held entirely online on November 7, 2020, and twenty specialists from 14 towns shared which practices make their classrooms and schools inclusive. A recording of the event can be watched on the Association for shared learning Facebook profile. https://www.facebook.com/125999234129698/videos/5260755373950249.
The articles are published on our website Priobishi.se with free access for any specialist or parent who is interested in this field: https://www.facebook.com/125999234129698/videos/5260755373950249.
Though the project was implemented in a truly challenging year (from March to December 2020), it was successful because of the willingness of the pedagogical specialists to share and support each other in finding working inclusive practices.