EMPOWERING TEACHERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

A prerequisite for effectively integrating higher education students with special needs into the educational process and their professional development is the preparation of teachers to work with this category of students. The article is devoted to studying the problem of inclusive education in higher education, namely, preparing teachers to work with students with special needs. The study used questionnaires, a comparison of teachers’ training levels in an inclusive learning environment before and after the training of teachers to work with students with special needs and statistical calculation of the results. A pedagogical model of teacher training for working with students with special needs has been developed, which consists of five blocks of teacher training: theoretical, general practical, practical and technological, psychological and social, monitoring and analytics. The result of implementing the proposed model is the acquisition by teachers of competences in developing and implementing inclusive educational environments and readiness to work with students with special needs. Basic, sufficient and advanced levels define the readiness of teachers to work with students with special needs. According to Pearson’s criterion, a statistical assessment of teachers’ readiness was carried out using four criteria: theoretical and content, practical and technological, psychological and social, and performance and analytical. A comparison of indicators before and after implementing the outlined model showed increased teachers’ readiness to work with students with special needs for each criterion. The training of teachers to work with students with special needs should be based on an integrated approach that includes theoretical knowledge on the formation of inclusive environments, practical aspects of training, including methodological, didactic, technical and technological means, psychological training and development of analytical competences of teachers to form personalised educational trajectories of higher education students.