Associate professor, PhD E.M. Golikova                                                                                                            
Associate professor, PhD P.P. Tissen
Associate professor T.M. Pankratovich
Orenburg State Pedagogical University, Orenburg

Keywords: students with impairments, inclusive sports education, individual training trends.

Introduction

Socialization and integration needs of every individual being viewed as an inalienable part and form of social existence require every person being given an unrestricted access to and free choice of any forms and aspects of social processes and every opportunity to take whatever social roles and responsibilities at every stage and level of the education, employment and recreation systems available in the society. Different exogenous and endogenous health-impairment factors, however, may force the young people to solve problems of their social adaptation that almost always implies the efforts to master new vitally important motor skills or adjust the regular ones and to develop and improve special physical and mental qualities and skills.

In the situation of transition to the new inclusive education forms, a national inclusive education system needs to be established for the reason that the existing system is not efficient enough being limited by extrapolation methods – i.e. formal mimicking of the apparently most successful foreign educational socialization and integration models in the invariable education and upbringing formats applied by the national public establishments, with no efforts being taken to comprehend and apply their theoretical and practical fundamentals. As things now stand, the regional inclusive education development and implementation projects are riddled with multiple contradictions, problems and challenges and require an open professional dialogue and constructive discussions for the process formatting with due consideration for the practical national experience and agreed expert opinions.

When the real theoretical models and practical experiences of the national inclusive education (‘inclusion’) are duly correlated and harmonized with the applicable theoretical and methodological basics of the best internationally accepted educational integration processes, it will help correct the ongoing integration processes, straighten out deviations in the process and provide against further drawbacks; and establish an operable inclusive physical education process in the educational system with due contribution from the modern technologies of individualized educational tracks and with account of the actual needs of Russian communities.

“Inclusion as an education organizing principle is a phenomenon of social pedagogics in its nature. Consequently, the purpose of inclusion is to adapt the educational and social environment to the individual abilities of a person rather than change or correct the person” (Prof. Ulf Jonson) [1]. A new unabbreviated version of the Webster dictionary defines inclusion as the “process that implies something being included i.e. involved, embraced by or incorporated in a whole as its part” [5].

Methods and structure of the study. Physical Culture and Sport Institute under Orenburg State Pedagogical University implements an inclusive education project based on individualized education tracking technologies that are developed by the Adaptive Sport and Physical Rehabilitation Research and Practice Centre under Orenburg State Pedagogical University; these technologies are designed to form an interdisciplinary inclusive system that will be accepted by the educational establishments to develop and harmonize the learning, physical education and health-improvement environments in the educational sector.

The initiatives to implement the inclusive educational system were based on the research and methodological works performed for the last few years and geared to help solve a variety of  theoretical and methodological problems in the professional- and personality-development  process aspects faced by the university students – both by the healthy ones, and experiencing different health limitations/ disorders (up to disabilities); with the inclusive education in the physical educaion domain being applied to increase the intellectual contribution to and integrate science and practice in the inter-university cooperation format; with the target efforts to improve the knowledge and skills of the relevant physical education/ sport/ tourism specialists.

The initiatives to optimize involvement of the former pupil in the inter-university cooperation format are designed to apply a vast set of technologies driven by a teaming concept as a key idea that is based on the systemic approach, unity and integration principles. Key objectives of the teaming concept are designed to: shape up the personality as a versatile and harmonically developed human being; step up his/her social activity; form his/her social responsibility in a consistent and scientifically grounded format; help establish a positive and friendly environment in the team of peers and educators; and help the universal human values – like family, labour, knowledge, culture, society and human rights – being accepted by every participant of the education process.

In the sports education process going in the inclusive environment, the students are encouraged to become more active in transition from adaptation to interiorization process (meaning the process of norms and values being digested and accepted by the internal world of a human being, i.e. the method of the norm and values being included in the “self” structure) [4].

Study results and discussion. The study was designed to develop individualized educational tracks in the university curricula to help the trainees acquire general knowledge and skills in the physical education and health protection and improvement sector; and use this background as a base for their individual physical education and health agenda with an emphasis on the personified physical education and health practices to master the activities that originally are fully or partially beyond control of the student experiencing some health disorders/ impairments. Prime conditions for the personified physical education and health environment were preset as a framework environment for the health-impaired students to adjust and personify these conditions to their own lifestyles, at the same time help shape up their own identities in the personification process (through exploring own gifts and individual traits) and accept the valid social standards [3].

When the educator masterly applies a wide rabge of modern technologies to help shape up the individualized educational tracks, it gives him the means to maximize the potential benefits of the education curriculum and secure reasonably high academic accomplishments for everybody of the trainees. The more and more challenging social environment implies the requirements to the physical education university graduate (physical education teacher) being duly updated to ensure that he/she starts the individual teaching career being not only knowledgeable and skilful enough but also highly creative, independent and self-reliant.

As demonstrated by our studies, the main principle of the modern education system is to give “everybody a chance to learn at his/her own pace within the curriculum”, and this principle is viewed as a foundation for a variety of modern tools to form individualized educational tracks within the frame of an inclusive high education system. The education process is basically designed on the principle of stepped education that gives every student with health impairment an opportunity to learn at his/her own individual pace within the frame of standard curriculum. Reasonably flexible educational process structure and management system will be put in place for the education process being highly efficient even in the variable-age groups of students having different adaptation needs and different physical/ mental abilities, i.e. in the inclusive educational environment [2].

When students with health disorders/ impairments are grouped for education, a clustering principle should be observed that means the trainees being distributed in groups based on specific clustering criteria to form a few clusters including, for instance, functional/ technological; adaptive/ correctional;  vocational/ valueological; compensatory; specialized/ applied; vocational prolonged; administrative/ management; creativity developing; research  clusters etc.[3].

Conclusion

In the process of transition to the next stages of the harmonized interdisciplinary cooperation in the inclusive education system implementation process, the following need to be done:

• Create a training system for the education process participants to help involve the people with health impairments/ limitations and foster tolerant attitudes to the latter through positive cooperation courses, teacher training courses etc.;
• Support the initiatives to establish a training, skills improvement and retraining establishment for the relevant specialists at the Adaptive Sport and Physical Rehabilitation Research and Practice Centre under Orenburg State Pedagogical University;
• Encourage development of individualized educational tracks within the special professional educational curricula with consideration for the individual physical limitations of the students; and
• Develop and offer a variety of personified education tracking models.

When the above items are duly implemented, they will form a basis for a pilot implementation of the interdisciplinary inclusive education project in some educational establishments followed by a permanent inclusive education model being implemented on a large scale in the regional educational system. Different higher establishments of the national education system may benefit from the project accomplishments in their own initiatives to design and improve the interdisciplinary inclusive education system in their university curricula.

References

1. Alekhina S.V. Inklyuzivnoe obrazovanie. Vyp. 1 (Inclusive education. Vol. 1) / S.V. Alekhina, N.Ya. Semago, A.K. Fadina. – Moscow: Shkol'naya kniga, 2010. – 272 p.
2. Artem'ev A.I. Sotsiologiya lichnosti: ucheb. posobie (Personality sociology: study guide) / A.I. Artem'ev. – Almaty, Bastau, 2001. –253 p.
3. Golikova E.M. Personifikatsiya lichnosti studenta s otkloneniyami v sostoyanii zdorov'ya v protsesse fizkul'turno-ozdorovitel'nykh zanyatiy (Personification of student with impairments during health and fitness activities) / E.M. Golikova, P.P. Tissen // Fizicheskaya kul'tura: vospitanie, obrazovanie, trenirovka. – 2014. – № 6. –P. 60–63.
4. Orlova A.B. Psikhologiya lichnosti i sushchnost' cheloveka: paradigmy, proektsii, praktiki: ucheb posobie (Personality psychology and essence of man: paradigms, projections, practices: study guide) / A.B. Orlova. – Moscow: Akademiya, 2002. – 272 p.
5. Webster’s New Unabridged Universal Dictionary, 1994.

Corresponding author: gks-07@mail.ru

Abstract

The paper reveals the role of socialization and integration as a form of social life of students with impairments providing their unlimited participation and free choice of forms and methods in social processes, in the implementation of various social roles and functions at all levels of education, at work and during leisure time. Development of an individual educational route for students with impairments definitely provides a plan, specifying the moment when a student masters social qualities such as courage, ability to advocate his views, intolerance of shortcomings, which are at the end of the value hierarchy of this category of students, and starts to develop business skills such as accuracy, scrupulosity and punctuality, which are more valuable for students with impairments.