Pre-Service Social Educators’ Professional Competences: An Inclusive Education Context

Abstract

The quality of education is increasingly a priority area for state development. In the context of globalisation, the mission of the education system has become to create conditions for the achievement of greater stability in society, by ensuring equal rights and opportunities for all citizens, including individuals with disabilities. Amid efforts towards fully inclusive education, the professional competences of specialists addressing the needs of those with learning disabilities are crucial. High-quality training is required for qualified educator –particularly for social educators – in this field. It aimed the research at identifying the necessary professional competences and personal qualities of pre-service social educators to work in an inclusive education, as well as to identify the difficulties university lecturers face in the training of social educators. A qualitative research design was applied in the study. Fifty-one respondents-university lecturers participated in it. Its results showed that, alongside central competences, emotional-volitional qualities have played a significant role in the social educators’ engagement in inclusive education. The research enabled to identify that the professional difficulties have the highest indicator among the difficulties that lecturers face when training pre-service social educators. It can be assumed that these findings will advance improvements in the development of social educators’ professional competences and solutions to obstacles during their university-level studies.