Joanna Skibska

The following article is dedicated to the presentation of the opinions on inclusive education of parents of children studying in inclusive classes. This research is a kind of an image of inclusion, as seen through the eyes of both, parents of children with special educational needs and those of their healthy peers. Furthermore, the study also attempts to assess inclusive education – it indicates positive and negative sides of such a form of education. Except for giving their evaluation on the discussed issue, within the study the interviewed parents had also an opportunity to present actions that according to them should be undertaken to improve the quality of inclusive education implemented in public educational institutions.

The article characterizes the attitude of inclusion and the conditions for the adoption of a child with special educational needs to the school class group by their peers. It discusses two theories essential for inclusive education - social cognition and learning. Furthermore, the article also presents a survey research expressing opinions of parents of children at early school age on inclusive education, the analysis of which allowed the author of the study to determine the parent’s knowledge on inclusive education and learn about their assessment of this form of education.

The article presents the results of the research on personalized education in the early school education teachers’ opinion. The author of the work searches for an answer to the question on with what the surveyed teachers (with various degrees of career advancement) identify personalized education and the factors that make the personalized education either more difficult or easier to implement by them in the public school space. Furthermore, the results of the factor analysis have been also presented, which enables to determine the dimensions of personalized education and their structure. The dimensions of personalized education combined with the surveyed teachers’ professional advancement levels allow to see some differences. Together with the professional advancement of teachers, there grows a conviction that the quality of personalized education is determined by the teachers’ competencies and that it is built on the foundation of the child’s strengths and strong points, meanwhile the conviction that personalized education should be based on adaptation to the students, and that it is a type of education for everyone is decreasing. On the other hand, in the case of teachers with lower level of professional advancement, the conviction that personalized education it is an education adapted to the student and their development is increasing in popularity. Simultaneously, they also underestimate the importance of the teacher’s competency and the fact that personalized education is built only on the individualization and strong points of a student.