Supervisors info:
Ευδοξία Ντεροπούλου-Ντέρου, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Εκπαίδευσης και Αγωγής στην Προσχολική Ηλικία, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Summary:
The present qualitative research aspires to explore the dominant disability perceptions, as they become apparent through the curricula of general, but also, special, early childhood education in Greece. However, the research subject could not be investigated without following an extensive theoretical framework; models and resulting conceptual approaches to disability, school inclusion as a general phenomenon, in addition to its application in preschool education, had to be studied thoroughly. Previous research has also revealed that the adopted approaches to disability are ultimately responsible for the inclusion or exclusion of students with disabilities. Respectively, remarkable is the acknowledgement of education’s inclusive nature not constituting the utmost purpose, but an instrument for the foundation of social equality. Consequently, the aim was to detect the ways disability is conceptualized by the heads of curricula, and by extension, the wider dictations of educational policy. We precisely attempted to highlight the terminology used when referring to disabled student population, as well as its interconnections with dominant models of disability. The influence of conceptual disability approaches was simultaneously examined as shaping the key objectives of education, through the sample’s curricula. Lastly, findings from the pivots’ text contents, as mentioned previously, revealed various stereotypical representations of the disabled community. The sample’s research units were consisted of all the legislative, but also the informal pilot curricula of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, which jointly address the general, in addition to special preschool educational institutions. The search for the sample was carried out on the website of the Pedagogical Institute, through the method of purposeful sampling, which is mutually interwoven with the qualitative orientation of the research. Due to this general direction, as well as the type of the sample (formal, written word), content analysis and more precisely, thematic analysis, was utilized as the analysis method of our qualitative data. Research has shown that content analysis has the potential of classifying lengthy text in significantly fewer categories. In view of the most crucial research findings, the immerse assimilation of the medical and the individual model of disability, was initially discovered in the use of terminology. The usage of more contemporary terms was partially existent, yet not realistically representative of the social perception of disability. Subsequently, with regard to the targeting of the curricula, the impact of several conceptual disability approaches (either basic or resulting) was observed with both the social, in addition to personal tragedy, models, being on the same level, creating this way a more diffused, ambiguous and, therefore, not so explicit, climate. Finally, the existence of multiple stereotypes that appeared to strike the disabled group, was also spotted. Through the consolidation of medical authority, disabled students are being treated as diseased subjects, that are facing serious shortcomings in integral aspects of their lives, as well as an assumed absence of functionality and adaptability, pointing out this way the need for them to be submitted to therapeutic and rehabilitative procedures.
Keywords:
disability, curricula, early childhood education, inclusive education, social model of disability, stereotypes-preconceptions, social justice
