Cultural Models of Special Education in Macedonia: Towards a Systemic and Integrative Perspective

In Macedonia, pupils with special education needs (SEN) can be included in regular schools, special classes in regular schools or in special schools. The inclusive paradigm exists since 1998. Unfortunately, it is not conducted systematically in regular schools. No strategy for inclusive education exists, and therefore there are many models for inclusive practice (e.g., employment of special educators and rehabilitators on the municipal level, parents who employ personal educational assistants for their children, transformation of special schools into resource centers, etc.). One of the main critical issues of current research on special education refers to the unidimensional view of school inclusion as a rigid construct divided into favorable or adverse attitudes. This may lead to the naïve assumption that favorable attitudes lead to the actual implementation of inclusive practices. However, research findings are actually quite controversial: teachers may express acceptance but not be willing to make the adaptations and modifications necessary for successful inclusion. In addition, the lack of a systemic and integrative perspective, which takes into account different social actors’ views about school inclusion, may not support the implementation of effective inclusive practices which better fit the cultural specificities and complexity of the context. It would be useful to adopt a multidimensional approach in studying the school inclusive process, which consists of a multitude of specific symbolic and representational dimensions within a contextualized perspective, rather than using universal and fixed attitudinal constructs unable to account for cultural variability. The aim of this study is to explore cultural models of school inclusion in terms of shared representations regarding inclusive education of children with disabilities. The added value of our study consists in: − Exploring representations of the inclusive process directly from participants’ responses, based on the multidimensionality of their attitudes towards inclusions and disability; − Adopting a systemic and integrative perspective which takes into account several views of different social actors (parents, regular teachers, special educators) involved in the inclusive process. An ad hoc questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample of 228 Macedonian participants (regular teachers, special educators, parents) in order to explore perceptions of the school inclusion process, its perceived usefulness and potential problems with regard to its implementation in Macedonia. The ad hoc questionnaire examined a complex set of representational dimensions able to identify the specific cultural and symbolic components of participants in the research. This methodology favors the study of the relationship between the participants’ responses, through the use of multivariate statistical techniques, in order to formulate hypotheses about the meaning of symbolic and relational processes affecting attitudes towards school inclusion. Multivariate statistical techniques were performed in order to detect both some groupings of participants sharing the same response patterns (cluster analysis) and the main factors (multiple correspondence analysis) accounting for the overall variability. Results show that three different cultural models of school inclusion exist, which reveal a lack of shared consensus between regular teachers, special educators and parents about inclusion of students with disabilities. Results are discussed and implications for practice are highlighted.