Building a dynamic indicator on inclusive education in higher education

ABSTRACT

The goal of inclusive education is to address students’ special educational needs so that they are able to fully participate in the education community. The universities have been increasingly attempting to cater for the diversity of students by undertaking innovative projects through the adaptation of new technologies, which is key to their development. However, the evolution of inclusive education is uneven and largely depends on each university, as the resources, methods, and practices vary across institutions. The purpose of this paper is to propose an indicator to evaluate the state of inclusive education at each university. This indicator could ascertain the extent of curriculum adaptation and the degree of accessibility at universities, as well as the resources and projects they are developing to achieve inclusion. It will allow for a ranking of institutions according to the progress made in the field of inclusive education and, more specifically, for the comparison across universities regarding the quality of the specific measures taken to help students with special educational needs. This inclusive education indicator is a dynamic tool that may be updated immediately and provides the university community with the means to guide students with specific needs and their families in pre-university and university stages, among others.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• disability
• diversity
• university
• indicator

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).