Dr.Hab., Professor J.B. Safonova
Postgraduate J.V. Semenova
PhD, Associate Professor E.N. Stratilatova
Omsk State Technical University, Omsk

Keywords: inclusion, physical education, disabled students, importance of physical education.

Background. Presently the federal government policies give high priority to the national human resource being employed in a most efficient manner with due involvement of health-impaired people to the national economy to attain the relevant benefits including, among other things, positive and socially responsible life values and healthy agenda being formed in this vulnerable social group to oppose the regretfully common social dependence attitudes dominating in this and some other social strata. Disabled student may be described as the individual diagnosed with health impairments manifested in long-lasting functional disorders as a result of disease, trauma or health deficiency that largely restricts his/her living functions and, therefore, requires the relevant social protection system being applied.

Objective of the study was to explore some issues of the academic inclusive physical education model applicable at higher professional education establishments.

Study results and discussion. Inclusive higher professional education and other activities to make a health-deficient individual fit for productive labour are referred to today as a purposeful process geared to involve the disabled individuals in the social environment and give him/her every right and opportunity to effectively contribute to it [1]. It is a high priority for the modern education system to shape up and develop a highly mobile and adaptable individual capable for permanent learning and highly competitive on the modern labour markets [2].

As things now stand the world over, disabled people are increasingly recognized as rightful members of society rather than people making and facing social problems. The disabled people’s communities, in their turn, have welcomed and supported the efforts to promote the modern socialising models giving special attention to socialising transformations of disabled people. [4]. Such a socialising model makes a special emphasis on the physical, mental, cultural, communicative, behavioural and transport barriers being removed in the living environments for convenience of disabled people. Their inclusion in the general education process is not limited by the relevant mental and educational support and individual educational trajectories, but also offers a facilitating educational environment to encourage good professional progress of health-impaired and disabled students.

It was in the late 1990ies that the Russian government came up with the systemic social reformation initiatives including, among other things, a project to develop a national inclusive education system model to facilitate education of health-impaired children at general education schools. The inclusive education system has been designed for application at secondary, vocational and higher educational establishments with a special emphasis on the facilitating educational environments. To help the health-impaired students highly competitive specialists, special professional education conditions need to be created with reasonable customising, mental, educational, socialising and rehabilitative support being secured in the educational process [13].

It should be noted that our country have long operated a special cultural and educational system for health-deficient children including special preschool establishments and corrective schools – albeit, as argued by G.A. Mukhamedyarova [11], the national general education system has always stood aloof of this process in fact. Children with auditory and vision deficiencies, musculoskeletal system disorders and intellectual retardations were referred to the above special educational establishments, and the present situation is largely the same as before. A key objective of an education system is to help mobilise the reasonably feasible abilities of every health-deficient child by means of an inclusive education model. Our goal was to analyse the available study reports on the issues of inclusive physical education of health-impaired and disabled people.

It should be noted that presently physical culture is ranked among other key components of general culture and obligatory disciplines in the secondary and higher education systems subject to the relevant standards and requirements including general cultural competences, progress rating systems and interim/ final knowledge assessments on a quarterly (for schoolchildren) or semester (for university students) bases. An objective of an academic physical education model equally beneficial for the healthy and disabled students is to help them develop high individual physical culture with the abilities to efficiently apply a variety of physical education, sporting and tourist tools for personal mental and body conditioning and self-training for success of the individual professional careers. The physical education process is to be customised to body conditioning, morphological, functional and mental needs and abilities of every disabled student determined by his/her inborn or acquired health disorders/ pathologies.

In the inclusive education system design, due consideration is to be given to the fact that, apart from the above-mentioned health disorders, children and adolescents may be diagnosed with cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrinal, blood circulation and/or gastrointestinal system diseases. Normally such students are qualified for special health groups with physical training restrictions at general education establishments. The inadequate physical practices in these groups result in the students being underdeveloped and poorly fit for challenges of both the academic education process and future professional career; and, hence, special initiatives need to be taken to find ways to eliminate or mitigate negative effects of the group-specific physical inactivity. However, even more concerns are raised, as was mentioned by G.A. Gilev [6] by the common practice of students diagnosed with minor health disorders being totally exempted from academic physical education by physicians. Physical education departments are being flooded today by medical certificates exempting students of practical training courses under this academic discipline. As things now stand, at least one student out of five is sentenced by such medical certificates to physical inactivity that only aggravates the diagnosed health disorders [8].

We fully support the above opinion of the researcher and tend to believe that such attitudes of physicians to the academic physical education cultivate habitual negative mindsets and foster physical inactivity that effectively suppresses the young people’s natural thrust for active lifestyles [7]. The negative attitudes on the whole are due to a variety of objective factors (including the still poor economical basis for the physical culture movements) plus subjective ones. In opinion of I.V. Manzheley [10], an educational potential of a local physical training and sporting environment at an educational establishment is determined by a set of “the existing environmental conditions and opportunities for a harmonised personality development and self-development process”. There are many reasons for the above common negativism including the individual undervaluation of benefits of physical practices, low levels of physical culture, poor and unstable motivations, interests and needs of the students for physical culture values [5, 9]; and all of them result in common physical inactivity of young people manifested, among other things, in their reluctance to the academic physical culture and sports [4, 15]. Physicians who exempt students from the academic physical education courses will bear part of the responsibility for the modern student population being physically inactive and inadequately motivated for physical activity and healthy lifestyles.

A high priority should be given to this problem, otherwise physical culture and future professional careers of health-impaired students upon graduation may not be productive and successful enough. Modern science offers many theoretical and practical study reports on the subject including efficient physical training tools, technologies and systems customised to a variety of health disorders/ deficiencies, individual constitutions and diseases that could help address the problem [14].

Our pilot survey of the role of physical culture in everyday lives of disabled students showed 50% of the subjects polled being engaged in exercise therapy groups at their places or residence prior to entering the university; 17% reported going in for sports at that time; and 33% reported being totally physically inactive. Having entered the university and examined by the medical commission, 100% of the disabled students were formally exempted from academic physical education lessons; but 17% reported being still engaged in physical trainings on a systemic basis at the local Paralympic Training Centre in swimming and track-and-field sport groups, and some reported even having qualified for the titles of Master of Sport and Candidate Master of Sport. Furthermore, 83% of the disabled respondents reported being concerned by their health and health-related competitiveness in the vocational fields and acknowledged that physical training is the only way to be fit and competitive enough; whilst 17% considered physical education only as one of the “steps up” to success in their professional careers. It should be also noted that some disabled students having no sporting experience were found willing to compete in different intra- and inter-university events and this natural drive and enthusiasm may be viewed as a promising factor for inclusive physical education.

Our long-term theoretical and practical studies and good practical experience in physical education of health-impaired students have shown the recommended methodologies being beneficial as verified by the growth of physical working capacity and body adaptability of the students as a result of the long-term and purposeful physical training practices [12]. For success of an academic inclusive physical education system, the following key resources need to be available: due academic staff having a special knowledge and skills to help shape up the basic general cultural competences in disabled students by the relevant applied physical culture tools and methods that should lay a foundation for physically active lifestyle and high competitiveness on modern labour markets; and efficient cooperation of every contributor to the academic education process including educators, social workers, psychologists and physicians. The academic inclusive physical education is designed to improve the students’ physical health and cultivate optimal, adaptable and reasonable lifestyles enabling them to cope with the diseases/ health disorders and attain high levels of socialisation and well-being.

Conclusion. An effective academic inclusive physical education model is to be designed with due consideration for both inborn pathologies and the actual natural thrust of the disabled students to one or another health and fitness activity and the desire to compete, and such model is to be subject to our further studies.

References

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Corresponding author: jansafonova@mail.ru

Abstract

The article considers some issues of inclusive academic physical education and potential contributions of the academic physical education model to the disabled students’ competitive personality building process for their success on the modern labour markets. Special emphasis is made on a social model acceptable for people with disorders and geared to remove a variety of psychological, communicational and physical barriers they face. The study underlines the need for the academic health bodies revising their policies and practices in the disabled students’ physical education control to rather reasonably encourage the natural thrust and demand for inclusive physical culture and promote it than release the students from the academic physical education courses. The study spells out the necessary conditions for the academic inclusion policies being successful to contribute to the base general cultural competency building process by means of the applied academic physical education model.