Beliefs of university staff teaching in pedagogical study programmes on concept(s) of inclusiveness – the case of Slovenia

ABSTRACT

University teaching staff in Slovenia are autonomous in deciding on the contents of courses and thereby determine future educators’ conceptualisation of inclusiveness. This study explores perceptions of Slovenian university staff teaching in pedagogical study programmes of the main factors affecting the implementation of inclusiveness; of the quality of the study programmes in terms of providing relevant knowledge and skills for pedagogical work with marginalised students; and of the relevant contents of study programmes educating future educators. Analyses show that more than half of the participants prefer inclusiveness to integration. Preference for inclusiveness depends on the study programme they contribute to for the most part and on the amount of time they devote in their subjects to the topic of the marginalised. Almost half of the participants believe partial revision of study programmes is required. Data suggest that university teaching staff are ambivalent about the relevance of the foundational pedagogical contents and specific contents for implementing inclusiveness or integration. The implications of this ambivalence and the necessary changes in the study programmes are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Beliefs
• university teaching staff
• inclusiveness
• integration
• course evaluation
• course content

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P5-0126).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Full professor Irena Lesar is teaching and researching at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the last decade her research is focused on the conceptualisation of justice and inclusiveness, the status of various marginalised groups, in particular Roma, (new) immigrants and SEN pupil, in Slovenian schools through their social participation and academic achievement, as well as teachers’ beliefs about the impact of perceived traits on pupils’ academic achievement.

Mojca Žveglič Mihelič, PhD, is an assistant for educational methodology and statistics at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. In her dissertation, she researched methodological aspects of internal knowledge assessment in primary school. Her research area is mainly educational assessment.

ORCID

Irena Lesar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2896-9860

Mojca Žveglič Mihelič http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-224X

Notes

1 The term pedagogical refers to the scientific discipline of the Pedagogy of Continental European tradition (Biesta 2011; Lesar 2018).

2 The term University teaching staff covers all educators at the university level, i.e., (full, associate, or assistant) professors, (senior) lecturers, assistants, (language) instructors and junior experts.

3 In Slovenian legislation the following groups of children with special needs are identified: children with mental disabilities, deaf children and children with hearing impairments, blind children and children with visual impairments, children with speech and language impairments, children with physical disabilities, children with problems in a specific field of education, children with emotional and behavioural disorders, and children with autistic disorders.

4 Graduates from preschool education programmes are employed after 3 years of study (180 credits) with the option of two years of further study.

5 For the purpose of these analyses, we joined the last two categories from Table 2 into one: ‘Does not enable obtaining enough quality knowledge and skills’.