Abstract:

This study focused on strategy planning at kindergartens. The main research question was whether the attendance of children with special educational needs (SEN) provides impact on the strategy planning.

The research was conducted in 26 pre-primary institutions in the Czech Republic, in the Northern Bohemia region, which were attended by 1240 children. First, children were divided into two main groups following the criterion whether they have special educational needs, or do not. Then, the recognized questionnaire on inclusiveness and strategy planning in kindergarten “The Evaluation of Kindergarten Inclusiveness” was applied to consider whether there are differences in planning strategies in the above detected two groups. The questionnaire consists of three main parts. Part 1 focuses on planning to accommodate educational work and thus meet diverse needs of all pupils. Part 2 deals with work and planning of kindergarten community, to community culture and relations among pupils, teachers, professionals and parents. The final part the policy planning and developing the environment that respect and value diversity are concerned.

The main research objective is to find out whether the higher proportion of SEN children makes impact on planning mechanism in kindergartens. We assumed that kindergartens with low proportion of SEN children use less innovation and support for all children in their strategy planning.

The main point is that higher proportion of SEN children in kindergartens could be beneficial for the whole institutions and all children via the involvement for strategy changes needed.

Data collected by the questionnaire. Hypothesis was set as follows: Kindergartens with higher amount of SEN children tend more to plan for kindergartens development for meeting diverse needs of pupils than kindergartens with none or very low number of children with SEN.
Inductive statistics for hypothesis testing was used. Data did not show normal distribution; therefore, nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test was applied.

Results showed significant differences between an amount of planning strategies in relation to the proportion of SEN children. It proves an assumption that there is a positive impact of higher proportion of SEN pupils on the amount of planning strategies and extent of inclusive environment in kindergartens. Hypothesis was verified thus stating that increasing amount of SEN children provides positive impact of progression and strategy planning in kindergartens. As proved in numerous researches, the strategy planning and developing of inclusive environment has positive impact on SEN pupils. We can state that the kindergarten development is in relation to the proportion of pupils, therefore, we recommend to do further researches in this field.

Keywords:

Inclusive education, kindergarten, inclusive strategies, SEN