Professor, Honoured coach of Russia M.P. Spirina¹
PhD, Associate Professor V.P. Shlykov^1
1Ural Federal University (UrFU), Yekaterinburg

Keywords: disabled students, accessible education environment, educational process support, health-improvement physical education, rehabilitation, social adaptation.

Background. More than 20% of the entrants to Ural Federal University (UrFU) are presently diagnosed with health disorders. It was in the late 1940ies that A.M. Vishnevskiy, a first head of the Physical Education Department of UrFU (PED UrFU), made a special emphasis on the physical education services to this special health group and developed a special health improvement model for the students diagnosed with different health disorders. In October 1953, the first PhD dissertation “Health services to special health group students: design and management model” was defended at P.F. Lesgaft National State University (St. Petersburg) [1], and the UrFU management still gives a high priority to the relevant research, with new education models driven by modern health technologies being developed and implemented. The long and successful practical experience accumulated by UrFU is effectively applied to implement special education models for disabled students.

One of the priority goals of the modern national youth policies is to “offer equal education opportunities for disabled students in their socialisation, creative resource mobilising, employment and entrepreneurial endeavours” [2]. The modern physical education service is designed to meet the social demand for the young specialists including due health and physical education standards as required by the relevant professional responsibilities. Presently the UrFU faculty offers a variety of general and special education services with their tools and models customised to the individual educational needs and physical abilities of the students including the relevant correction toolkits.

It was in 1953 that A.M. Vishnevsky in his dissertation provided theoretical basics for the health services to the special health group (SHG) students. The SHG were recommended being composed with due consideration for the gender-, academic-year-, functionality- and physicality-specific abilities and needs, anthropometrical measurements and chronic health disorders of the students [1]. Later on the basic education models were upgraded based on the years-long practical experience and ideas of Manngame system (i.e. the education models customisable to the abilities and fitness rates) to form special health groups and duly design and manage their educational processes [3]. Such policies and practices are designed to help the SHS students actively benefit from the special education services.

The special accessible education service is often complicated by the students’ transitions during an academic year (on the doctor’s orders) from the regular to special health group with potential conflicts of the individual health agendas and goals with the SHG health improvement curricula. Such situations, as demonstrated by our practical experience, may be effectively settled via a constructive cooperation of the students with teachers.

Objective of the study was to provide theoretical grounds for the individualised physical education and health improvement technology for disabled students.

Methods and structure of the study. The popular academic group education models have their pros and cons, with the most obvious disadvantage related to their poor customisation to the individual needs and learning capacities of the SHG students. The frame education technology scheme we have developed is customisable to offer individualised health program for every student with due assistance from a teacher. In the sixth semester, the senior students are required to present basics of their programs in practical sessions with junior students for further discussions, adjustments and amendments as recommended by the Bell-Lancaster mutual instruction method.

When student groups are widely different in their physicality and functionality rates, certain tools of the selective education system are applied; i.e. every education group is split up (after the preliminary part) into a few sub-groups as required by the individual health programs. Furthermore, the SHG education process is supported by the process follow-up system with the relevant monitoring and tests to rate the physical and functional development and performance rates of the students.

The P.V. Shlykov’s dissertation (2002) offered a SHG Student’s Physical Education Credits Record for implementation in the training process to help rate the students’ progress in theoretical competences, physical development, physical fitness, functionality and health by the relevant express tests [5]. In actual practice, the above Record was modified to a Health Card to meet requirements of the valid state standards and apply the relevant rating criteria.

It was due to the vast and valuable practical experience and high professionalism of the faculty that the SHG education model was successfully designed and piloted to both secure the physical progress and correct a variety of secondary health deviations by the relevant education tools. Therefore, the SHG education model is highly customizable to the natural abilities of the students. The high priority to special physical education tools applied in the SHG education model at UrFU makes it possible to attain the key objective of the educational process i.e. to establish facilitating physical education and health provisions for the personality self-fulfillment. The individualized education trajectories for the SHG students gave us the means to successfully correct or offset a variety of secondary deviations in the educational process traced by the physical and performance test rates in the process.

Furthermore, we based our SHG education model on the modern special education principles in addition to the general education toolkit so as to develop a facilitating education provisions for the disabled students [4]. The education facilitation concept makes it possible for the educator to effectively support a student at the beginner training stage and later on reasonably scale down the assistance in a gradual and timely manner to give more freedom to the student in the motor/ sensor skills building and mastering process. It should be noted that the SHG students are always in need of a reasonable assistance from a teacher for the reason that their ‘school of movements’ is relatively underdeveloped, particularly in the post-rehabilitation periods following traumas, surgeries etc.

Driven by the modern inclusive education concept that recognizes the genuine right of every student for an effective education service regardless of how his/her functionality is limited or specific, the Department faculty has been determined and optimistic in developing the relevant facilitating provisions for the SHG students within the actual resource of the university. A special emphasis on the education optimism helps every student keep actively committed in the educational process regardless of the individual health limitations. Special applied physical education practices offered in the SHG education model make it possible to build up the relevant social and personally valuable life competences in students to facilitate their adaptation to the life environments. This optimism-driven education concept has made it possible to develop the facilitating educational provisions for the SHG students.

We also applied a dialogue-based educational format to facilitate the cognition-encouraging communication and secure due feedback in the process that gives, among other things, a toolkit for the teacher to flexibly manage the educational process and change its tactics when necessary. The process management efficiency has been improved by the periodic questionnaire surveys timed to the end of each academic year. We surveyed the SHG students’ (n= 231) attitudes to the physical education models by the question ‘Do you like the health-improvement physical education course?’ that was responded as follows: 44.3% said ‘yes, very much’; 33.8% ‘yes, on the whole’; 13% ‘It has something I like and something I don’t’; 8.7% said ‘not really, I don’t need it’; and only 1.3% said ‘no, I don’t like it’.

A high priority in the model is given to the adequate education conditions with consideration for the different startup capacities of the SHG students, based on the normalization principle focused on the individual interests and predispositions of the trainees. It means that the educational process management and accessible health improvement environment building efforts are customized to the specific capacities of the students.

Study results and discussion. Our practical experience in the SHG education model piloting project showed that the specific social adaptation process logics needs to be taken into account in addition to the psychological, educational and medical recommendations.

One of the aspects of the students’ social adaptability is his/her ability to communicate with people around, the degree of openness, individual lifestyle and activity. Our educational process studies of the beginner SHG students show most of them facing a variety of adaptation problems in the new academic environments that may not always be fast resolved; quite often the SHG students are slow in adaptation and exposed to different behavioral disorders indicative of adaptation problems. To facilitate adaptation of the students to new environments, the faculty shall offer the relevant corrective, development and compensatory education services. The special academic physical education service is designed to help the student develop good socializing competences and social partnership forming skills. The educational provisions offered by the university and determined efforts of its faculty facilitate the students’ development with the active lifestyle formation process customized to individual abilities.

A high priority in the psychological and educational support service to the SHG students is given to the personality integration process with an emphasis on optimistic, positive mindsets with determined attitudes to the learning process. Presently the health statuses of the SHG students are tested to show progress as a result of medical, psychological, educational, economic and socializing process assistance. Timely information flow to the administrative and communal bodies from the academic progress tests helps them design and manage the education and cultural policies and practices for the SHG students within the frame of the available academic resource.

The special educational process shall be duly designed for success of the physical development process in the academic physical education service on the whole and in the SHG education in particular in view of the wide variety of their health diagnoses, associating health disorders, poor motivations and habitual inactivity that require individualized approaches and physical progress paths for every student. It is the modern inclusive education models that facilitate the social adaptation and integration of the SHG students in the academic process. A special priority in the educational process is given to theoretical substantiations for the education models and special training technologies designed to correct or remove a variety of regulatory system disorders, step up the self-regulation capacities and improve the body immunity mechanisms by focused actions to correct the functional disorders in different bodily systems.

Conclusion. The proposed and piloted SHG students’ education technology was tested to be highly resourceful and beneficial for the initiatives to establish facilitating physical education and health improvement provisions for the SHG students’ educational process. It should be noted, however, that, in addition to the SHG education model, focused efforts need to be taken to engage the SHG students in mass sports and cultural events to further facilitate their socializing process and increase the interest of universities in the SHG students and their engagement in the academic mass sports and physical education process.

References

1. Vishnevskiy A.M. Fizicheskoe vospitanie studentov spetsialnoy gruppy v vysshey shkole. Avtoref. dis. kand. ped. nauk [Academic physical education of special group students. PhD diss. abstract]. Leningrad, 1953, 24 p.
2. Osnovy gosudarstvennoy molodezhnoy politiki Rossiyskoy Federatsii na period do 2025 goda. Rasporyazhenie Pravitelstva ot 29 noyabrya 2014, no. 2403 r [Fundamentals of the state youth policy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2025. Order of the Government November 29, 2014, no. 2403].
3. Smirnov S.A., Kotova I.B., Shiyanov E.N. et al. Pedagogika: pedagogicheskie teorii, sistemy, tekhnologii. Uchebnik dlya stud. vyssh. i sred. ucheb. zavedeniy [Pedagogics: pedagogical theories, systems, technologies. Textbook for students of higher and secondary ed. institutions]. 3rd ed., rev., sup. Moscow: Akademiya publ., 1999, 512 p.
4. Nazarova N.M. et al. Spetsialnaya pedagogika. Ucheb. posobie dlya stud. vyssh. ucheb. zavedeniy: v 3 t. [Special pedagogics. Study guide for students of higher ed. institutions. In 3 Vol.]. Moscow: Akademiya, 2008, vol. 2: General fundamentals of special pedagogics, 352 p.
5. Shlykov P.V. Korrektsiya fizicheskoy podgotovlennosti studentov spetsialnoy meditsinskoy gruppy s ispolzovaniem individualnykh programm. Dis. kand. ped. nauk [Personalized programs to correct physical fitness of special health group students. PhD diss.]. Tyumen, 2002, 180 p.

Corresponding author: d_narkhov@mail.ru

Abstract

Objective of the study was to provide grounds for the physical education and health improvement provisions for disabled students based on the accumulated practical education experience. Analyses and summaries of the national and foreign study reports on the subject, own long-term practical experience, educational process monitoring, tests and questionnaire surveys were applied to develop the individualized health-improvement and physical development education model for disabled students with the individual progress trajectories customized to their needs and abilities. The health-improvement physical education model was piloted and tested at Ural Federal University (UrFU) to assess its resource and benefits for the disabled students’ rehabilitation and social adaptation with the relevant special academic progress tests and support toolkits. The study underlines the need for the disabled students being engaged in the relevant mass sports and cultural events and activity. The proposed individualized health technology of the authors’ design was proved to be beneficial for the projects to establish facilitating physical education and health provisions for disabled students.