PhD, Professor V.A. Vishnevsky¹
Postgraduate N.R. Usaeva^1
1Surgut State University, Surgut

Keywords: special educational needs, inclusive education, universal educational actions, health culture.

Introduction. The names of the winners and medalists of the Deaflympics - Surgut State University students M. Bgan, Yu. Lyubchik, K. Salmin, M. Salmin, V. Shmygin, P. Fatin and others are known far outside Yugra. The educational process for health-impaired and disabled students needs to meet special educational needs traditionally associated with creation of an appropriate educational environment. Albeit, the issues related to the ability of health-impaired people to learn, maintain and expand their adaptive capacities, formation of the necessary level of universal educational actions (UEA) and health culture are still most often sidelined. As a rule, inclusive education is focused primarily on health-impaired people. At the same time, very little attention is paid to the rest of the educational process actors and overall climate formed within such a small population group. Meanwhile, according to Professor V.I. Lubovsky, "...insufficient understanding of the role of special educational needs and partial satisfaction of the consequent requirements, even in special (correctional) schools, leads to underexploitation of the children’s actual and potential opportunities... it is quite obvious that most of these requirements cannot be implemented in the inclusive educational environment... if these requirements are implemented in a regular class they will harm healthy growing classmates, as this will cause their developmental delay" [3].

Objective of the study was to define sporting hearing-impaired students’ attitudes to the inclusive education and degrees of satisfaction of their educational needs.

Methods and structure of the study. Subject to the study were sporting hearing-impaired students and their healthy peers (n=59) and faculty (n=25) of the graduate sub-department and other relevant departments contributing to the inclusive education.

The sample competence in the universal education actions was rated by an expert valuation system based on the concept offered by the group of national psychologists under leadership of Professor A.G. Asmolov [1], with determination of the sample personal, regulatory, cognitive and communication UEA. The health culture development and self-development rates in the sample were obtained as recommended by the Institute for Educational Innovations under the Russian Academy of Education [2] with the sample motivations, values, cognitive, guiding and operational components and practical health-improvement experiences being surveyed and rated. Social positions of the students in the group were ranked using sociometry, with the group cohesiveness index estimated on the Seashore’s scale. Attitudes to the inclusive education and degrees of satisfaction of the educational needs of the process actors were surveyed by a special questionnaire survey to find out the students’ and educators’ opinions so as to rate by importance every educational need on a 5-point scale.

In addition, all students were subject to the complex tests to measure the following parameters: body weight, fat and muscle components, carpal and torso dynamometry, heart rate, blood pressure, Kerdo vegetation index (KVI), vital capacity (VC), orthostatic test index, type of response to standard exercises in the Letunov’s test, type of warming-up, maximum anaerobic power in the cycle ergometer step test and Margaria test, maximum oxygen consumption in the submaximal exercise test, cycle work test in the closed power loop, left and right brain function, psychoemotional stress level, attention switch, time of motor reaction, reaction to a moving object using the hardware and software complex "Activatiometer", state and trait anxiety, Romberg’s test with the eyes open and closed using strain gauge dynamometer.

Results and discussion. The analysis of the level of formation of UEA in sporting hearing-impaired students revealed the following areas of concern: not always adequate self-esteem and level of claims; lack of personal self-regulation and reflexive attitudes to own self, own actions, social community; prevalence of external motives for learning; lack of educational and cognitive, positional and social motives; difficulties in anticipating results of own activity; lack of criticism of the quality and level of knowledge acquisition; difficulty in formulating arguments, considerable difficulties in hypothesizing and hypothesis substantiation; lack of independence in choosing solutions, difficulties in solving creative and search problems; difficulties in understanding the purpose of reading and choosing the type of reading depending on the purpose; a limited set of communication and speech strategies and communications tactics, communication of information, difficulty in interaction with a partner; prevalence of egocentrism in interpersonal and spatial relations.

The overall level of formation of health culture was equal to 50.7% in healthy students and 43.4% in health-impaired ones. In terms of the motivational-value component, the health-impaired students are second to none, and sometimes even get ahead of their healthy peers. Individuals with a high motivational-value component put their health ahead of other priorities in life (r=0.613, p<0.01), pay more attention to their health (r=0.604, p<0.01), often set themselves a task to form own culture of a healthy and safe lifestyle (r=0.573, p<0.01). Among the types of correlation of the motivational-value component with other health culture components we can single out one with the total score (r=0.601, p<0.01), experience of recreational activities (r=0.487, p<0.01), knowledge of various recreational techniques (r=0.455, p<0.01), ability to formulate health-improvement goals (r=0.370, p<0.01).

On the issue of health and healthy lifestyle competency, health-impaired students slightly yield to their healthy peers. Moreover, the cognitive component was found to have only an average correlation with the total score (r=0.444, p<0.01), and a weak correlation with the experience (r=0.336, p<0.01) and operational (r=0.267, p<0.01) components.

In terms of the guiding component, health-impaired students did not differ significantly from healthy students either. The ability to set oneself health-improvement goals and general awareness of various aspects of health-improving activity have an average correlation with the total score (r=0.583, p<0.01), experience of health-improving activity (r=0.573, p<0.01) and operational component (r=0.560, p<0.01), whilst their correlation with the motivational-value component is weaker (r=0.381, p<0.01).

The level of methodological and technological support of health-improving activities is generally low, and that is where we find health-impaired students to lag behind more significantly. The operational component has a number of expressed correlations with other health culture components: total score (r=0.853; p<0.01); experience (r=0.779, p<0.01), guidance (r=0.577, p<0.01), and motivational-value (r=0.439, p<0.01) components. Its correlation with the cognitive component is much weaker (r=0.247; p<0.01).

The weakest component of the health culture is experience, and that is where health-impaired students lag behind the most. However, experience is the most significant health culture component. It is highly correlated with the total score (r=0.893, p<0.01) and operational component (r=0.782, p<0.01) and has an average correlation with the guidance (r=0.569, p<0.01) and motivational-value (r=0,479, p<0.01) components. Weaker correlations were observed in terms of the level of knowledge (r=0.338; p<0.01).

The comparative analysis of the students' morphological status failed to find any fundamental differences between healthy and hearing-impaired individuals. There were much more significant differences in power. Health-impaired people demonstrated lower indices of vital capacity, maximal anaerobic and aerobic capacity, slow mobilization of physiological reserves and lower recovery rate, less than perfect response to the orthostatic test and higher tension of the sympathetic nervous system. Health-impaired students were found to have lower left and right brain function, greater functional asymmetry of the hemispheres, lower variability in the test "Reaction to a moving object," significant difficulties in switching their attention. Low-level psychoemotional stress may indicate an insufficient level of claims and mobilization when achieving the set goals.

The comparative analysis of the structure of intragroup relations, conducted using a sociogram, revealed the following: one health-impaired student of the group is completely rejected, another - female student has three negative choices and one positive, and only one health-impaired student has two positive choices. This conclusion was also confirmed by the calculation of the sociometric index. The group cohesiveness index equaled 87.9% of the maximum. In addition, we have another proof of the exceptional position of the health-impaired individuals and the difficulty they find determining which group they belong to.

When analyzing the attitudes of healthy students, health-impaired individuals and teachers at the beginning of special education, we found that the leading was the viewpoint that all students requiring special education (sick, athletes, having life problems, etc.) need additional assistance, and this additional assistance to health-impaired students is to be provided right away when they start their education. Health-impaired individuals consider that the most effective forms of vocational orientation are: cooperation with social services in the region; creation of a subject-oriented class; vocational orientation testing to determine the major available to a disabled student; cooperation with educational institutions, sports organizations, coaches in various sports, sports federations.

All inclusive educational process actors agree with the introduction into the content of education of additional sections, excluded from the content for healthy students, in the form of special courses or electives, the use of special equipment, visualization, speech to text conversion software, sign language interpreters. It is emphasized that remote education is required not only for health-impaired individuals, but also for athletes spending much time training and participating in competitions. At the same time, students did not support such training means and methods as computer-based exams and tests, appointment of healthy students to help them with studies.

All educational process actors emphasized that an individual approach is equally essential for all students, that both health-impaired and healthy students equally benefit from collaborative learning, that sports training and competitions outside their university are important in the education and socialization of health-impaired students, that they need to be more actively involved in the extracurricular university activities and city life. Health-impaired students are skeptical about the medical-psychological-educational support of their learning process, but they believe that the head of the graduate sub-department is quite able to cope with the tutor’s function, while the psychologist’s function can be entrusted to the training group supervisor. They emphasized that parents must be fully engaged in the educational process of health-impaired students, that it is necessary to conduct special training sessions dedicated to their special educational needs, and that healthy students of the group are to attend such sessions too. The educational process actors are unanimous about the necessity of an accessible and safe architectural and information university environment, arranging sanitary and hygienic premises, ensuring comfortable living conditions in the students’ dormitory.

Conclusion. The need to form universal educational actions and health culture of hearing-impaired students is an independent special educational need. When designing the basic tailored educational program, it is necessary to take into account biomedical, psychological, social and organizational-methodological conditions actually emerging within a particular inclusive education group, and to monitor these conditions. According to the findings, among the most critical problems is satisfaction of the educational needs of all inclusive education process actors.

References

1. Asmolov A.G., Burmenskaya G.V., Volodarskaya I.A. Formirovanie universalnykh uchebnykh deystviy v osnovnoy shkole: ot deystviya k mysli. Sistema zadaniy. Posobie dlya uchitelya [Formation of universal educational activities at middle school: from action to idea. Task system. Teacher's Manual]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie publ., 2010, 159 p.
2. Lazarev V.S., Afanasyeva T.P., Eliseeva I.A. Printsipy i protsedury opredeleniya trebovaniy k rezultatam innovatsionnogo obrazovaniya na osnove kompetentnostnogo podkhoda: Metod. rekom. [Principles and procedures to determine requirements to innovative education results based on competency building approach: Guidelines]. Moscow: IIA RAE publ., 2006, 64 p.
3. Lubovskiy V.I. Osobye obrazovatelnye potrebnosti [Special educational needs]. Psikhologicheskaya nauka i obrazovanie, 2013, no. 5, P. 63. Available at: http://psyedu.ru/journal/2013/5/Lubovskiy.phtml (Date of access: 14.04.2017).

Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru

Abstract

The study analyses the most critical problems of the inclusive education process with an emphasis on the special educational needs. Subject to the study were sporting hearing-impaired students and their healthy peers (n=59) and faculty (n=25) of the graduate sub-department and other relevant departments contributing to the inclusive education. The sample competency in the universal education actions was rated by an expert valuation system based on the concept offered by the group of national psychologists headed by Professor A.G. Asmolov. The health culture development and self-development rates in the sample were obtained as recommended by the Institute for Educational Innovations under the Russian Academy of Education with the sample motivations, values, cognitive, guiding and operational components and practical health-improvement experiences being surveyed and rated. Social positions of the students in the group were ranked by the relevant sociometry, with the group consolidation indices estimated on the Seashore’s scale. Attitudes to the inclusive education and degrees of satisfaction of the educational needs of the process actors were surveyed by a special questionnaire survey to find out the students’ and educators’ opinions so as to rate by importance every educational need on a 5-point scale. 

The study data and analyses demonstrate that the health-impaired and disabled people tend to feel the need, in addition to their usual needs, for universal educational actions to form the relevant skills and motivations for modern health culture. The study analyzed the medical, biological, psychological, social, institutional and practical provisions for success of the inclusive education of the hearing-impaired students.