Research on the needs of school teaching staff within the framework of institutionalization of inclusive education for the blind and visually impaired

Introduction. In the context of ongoing diversification of education for children with disabilities, including the blind and visually impaired, it is of fundamental importance to understand how institutionalization of inclusive education affects the key needs of school teaching staff working with children with special educational needs (SEN). The research undertaken in 2018 focused on studying the hierarchy and internal content of staffing, competency, methodological and professional communication needs of schools where children with severe visual impairments are taught in the context of building an institutional balance between differentiation and inclusion. Materials and Methods. The study was based on the content analysis. The texts of the following documents, which were published on the websites of 153 schools, where blind and visually impaired children are taught in an inclusive or differentiated format, were analyzed: the development strategy of the education setting, the results of self-assessment, and parent-teacher meeting reports. The subject of the analysis was the needs of education settings for new education professionals, for advanced training, continuing professional development and methodological support for teaching staff, as well as for enhancing their interaction within the professional community. The units of calculation were, respectively, the demand for new education professionals and their main fields of specialization, the desired topics and duration of professional development programmes for teaching staff, the desired formats of their support and issues relevant to professional and public discussions in various forms. Results. It has been established that in general, the key needs of school teaching staff providing training for blind and visually impaired children are the needs for advanced training (professional development programmes) and methodological support for currently working education professionals, which dominate over the needs for new personnel and for professional and social communication. At the same time, in terms of content, the need for advanced training appears, according to the obtained data, to be a request to create its personalized model, taking into account the digitalization of education and the institutionalization of inclusion. The content of the need for methodological support is determined by the tasks of implementing adapted educational programs, using information and distance technologies in teaching children with severe visual impairments. The need for personnel is associated, along with the retraining of the current employees, with the involvement of advanced specialists - defectologists (speech therapists), tutors, etc. Finally, the need for professional and social communication appears as a need for network partnerships, cooperation and exchange of experience in solving methodological problems of teaching the blind and visually impaired relying on various forms of joint activities for different categories of teachers. Moreover, the study revealed that the hierarchy of teaching staff needs and the nature of their combination varies depending on the school educational format for children with visual impairments and is mediated by the collective awareness of the specific problems of education for the blind and visually impaired. Teaching staff of schools where children with SEN are taught inclusively, to a lesser extent feel the need for methodological support of their activities and the need for communication with the professional community, rather than teaching staff of special schools for blind and visually impaired children, but at the same time as much more urgent feel the need for staff development. The staff members of those schools teaching blind and visually impaired children in the format of internal inclusion have a more pronounced need for new education professionals. Conclusions. The study showed that the institutionalization of inclusive education for children with severe visual impairments is a factor, on the one hand, actualizing, and, on the other hand, hierarchizing the needs of schools for staffing, competency, organizational, methodological and professional communication support of their activities. Moreover, institutionalization, combined with the establishment of new regulatory and methodological requirements for education for the blind and visually impaired and its digitalization, specifically mediates the content of these needs.