DESCRIPTORS: accessible quality education, inclusive educational environment, habilitation, team work; psychological, medical and social support, interaction patterns, systematic and activity-oriented approaches.
SYNOPSIS: The author, principal of the Kursk regional center, describes primary methodology and activities of this institution and explains its main mission and goals. The author also defines the term inclusive educational environment and explains how it is used in schools and in the process of professional development of special education teachers and experts.

Accessible quality education is among core life values of a citizen in any country. It is also a key factor in achieving social justice and political stability of the society in general. That is why it has become really important today to implement inclusive educational environment (IEE) which would meet the needs of all children irrespective of their financial, intellectual, social, emotional and other conditions, and which would encompass both children with disabilities and gifted children, living in remote locations, representing various language, ethnic and cultural minorities, as well as disadvantaged children. It is equally important for the IEE to provide accessible quality education and successful socialization of students without dividing them into the “fully-able majority” and “disabled minority”.

Inclusive educational environment is characterized by value-oriented attitude to education, upbringing and personality development of children with special educational needs (SEN), integrated resources (facilities, internal and external conditions) of their life activity in mainstream institutions and orientation towards realization of students’ individual educational strategies.

Methodology of systematic activity-oriented, personality-centered and resource-based approaches makes it possible to represent the IEE in the form of adaptive multilevel system which ensures total integration and personal self-realization of students by means of specially designed and constantly developed integral educational environment equipped with a great number of various resources. And the barrier free physical and psychological environment is an inalienable IEE component.

The guiding IEE principle is the ability of the environment to adjust to individual needs of various child categories by the use of structural-functional, content-based and technological modernization of educational system at a given institution so that each student (child) without any exception should be offered equal medical, correctional and psychological support in school (nursery). Among the IEE development criteria we distinguish primarily the increase of the total number of students (not only SEN children), openness and accessibility of IEE both to children and adults, etc.

Implementation of IEE in mainstream educational institutions requires the definition and realization of the following:

• philosophy of inclusive education, the system of its basic and professional values;
• mission of educational institution in terms of major functions of inclusive activity, scale and levels of their realization, specific priorities;
• informational, human resources, planning, methodological and organizational policy – general approaches and principles of SEN children’s activity in a mainstream school, approaches to establishment and development of interrelations, to the choice of specific resource distribution priorities, phases and terms of task completion in inclusive education for SEN children;
• optimal instruction structure, integration of its functions (in education, upbringing, correction, psychological development, creative activity, health support) and their resource provision for SEN children’s socialization.

Every child must be provided with counseling, psychological facilitation, attention and necessary conditions offered by experts of the psychological, medical and pedagogical council in order to help the child achieve the highest results in learning.

It is of utmost importance that the inclusive educational environment in a comprehensive school should be created collectively, by a team of likeminded people. It should involve elementary school teachers, specialist teachers, teacher-psychologists, speech therapists, speech pathologists, social care teachers, occupational therapists, mentors, additional qualification courses teachers and tutors (child support), and medical personnel.

The constitutive role in shaping IEE is given to the psychological, medical and pedagogical council (PMPC). The PMPC serves to facilitate and plan a SEN child’s educational route as well as define exact package of habilitation treatment. The PMPC is responsible for diagnostic, correctional, psychological, pedagogical, medical and social facilitation of SEN students including children with disabilities and/or in a state of decompensation taking into consideration the school’s real opportunities and according to special educational needs, age, individual features, somatic and neuropsychic health condition of students.

IEE implementation requires a high level of professional competence, top qualification, interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, motivation for constant professional growth, social and professional mobility. However, there are quite a few challenges on this way. When an educational institution has just started to implement inclusive environment, there emerges the necessity to create interaction patterns for all participants of educational process where the child is in the center.

Application of systematic and activity-oriented approaches, design of professional PMPC activity aimed at IEE made it possible for us to define the structure and content of PMPC’s professional competencies as a high performance goal oriented basis of further professional development. PMPC participants should be ready to perform the following formats of professional activity: pedagogical design, pedagogy, diagnostics and correction, education, correction and development, scientific research, social pedagogy, cultural education. If PMPC experts demonstrate mastery in the above formats, they may be considered to possess professional competence in PMPC design.

Further professional development of PMPC experts is carried out based on the following principles: training programs comply with social requirements and professional standards of PMPC activity, advance professional training, professional and personal self-development of pedagogues, creative and practically oriented professional approach.

There are the following methods of further professional development: academic lectures, lectures-dialogues, lectures-conversations, problem-oriented lectures, lectures based on evaluation of specific situations, visual lectures, two-speaker lectures, lectures with intentional errors, lectures with feedback technology, online lectures-workshops-discussions, pedagogical workshops, interdisciplinary council panels, on-the-job training, problem situations simulation, viewing and discussion of video films on latest achievements in neurophysiology, use of multimedia technologies and video sequences which illustrate the essence and dynamics of correctional and psychological methods, video manuals, specialized instructional software for various types of children.
While designing the Kursk regional model of further professional development for IEE design experts, we worked out a program of upgrading their professional competence and offered substantiated pedagogical conditions of course and intercourse activity (personal and interpersonal, motivational and value-oriented, organizational, pedagogical, and resource-based activities).
During our work, we consider the fact that an adult learner (PMPC expert) is active in creative his educational environment, i.e. gaining knowledge from those areas which are necessary for his own self-realization. Only in this case the expert enriches his own intellectual potential, emotional world, and strong will, which leads to crucial changes enabling the person to reevaluate himself and the world around. That is why we see our council participant who undergoes further professional development as an open and self-developing system featuring enormous possibilities for self development by means or open interaction with the outer world.
In our opinion, it is advisable to resort to the competent-modular technology of training in the system of further professional development for the above category of learners.

Competent-modulartechnology involves the following: participation of employers (comprehensive schools, boards of education, etc.) and learners in defining key professional competences; course orientation towards final results presented in the way of key competences of learners; compulsory and thorough work on each component of the didactic system with its visual representation in the modular program and modules; clear structural organization instructional; concise theoretical presentation; assessment and control of acquired professional competence in order to adjust instruction; instructional diversity; adaptation of instruction to learners’ individual abilities and needs.

Practice of course instruction at Kursk Institute of Continuing Professional Education (further professional development and retraining) in the area of education shows that the most efficient mechanism of such instruction is corporate training of PMPC experts. Its advantage is in the unified educational environment for all PMPC specialists which makes it possible to achieve higher-priority goals in the system of education for SEN children on the level of each particular educational institution.

The pedagogical pattern of competence-oriented professional development for PMPC specialists in IEE implementation is based on systematic activity-oriented, personality-centered and competence-oriented approaches, principles of conformity between training, goals and types of professional activity, advance education, professional and personal self-development, creative and practically oriented professional emphasis; it implies acquiring a number of professional competences (standard and creative, project-oriented, diagnostic and consulting, pedagogical, educational, correctional and developmental, scientific and methodological, social and pedagogical, psychological, cultural and educational) in the process of corporate-modular instruction with the use of interactive forms, methods and technologies of professional training by means of integrated pedagogical conditions of PMPC experts’ professional competence development in the system of further professional development. The pattern also includes definite criteria and parameters to determine any shifts in the route of further professional training and in the quality of the resource provision for the course of instruction and its performance.

Implementation of the competent-modular pattern of PMPC participants’ further professional development is realized through various ways of learners’ facilitation: short-term and prolonged facilitation within creative team activity, study groups and self-study, individual and group consultations.

Further professional development is also based on the PMPC specialists’ experience gained during their professional activity (such experience may have both positive and negative influence), specific learning challenges (typical of adult learners: limited study time, negative influence of previous experience, etc.), adult learner’s ability to take responsibility for his own education.

We have developed a modular study program, “Theoretical and practical basics of psychological, medical and pedagogical council experts’ activity in designing inclusive educational environment” (144 academic hours), which features the following:

• the council experts’ instruction is carried our collectively, i.e. the study group includes educators in various areas (psychologists, speech therapists, social pedagogues, speech pathologists, experienced teachers, nursery school teachers) as well as school administrators;
• the program is built on interdisciplinary basis;
• the program includes an invariant module in a general range of problems of inclusive education for SEN children as well as variant modules for PMPC experts including basic and specialized components which take into consideration the development level of motivational, operational and reflexive components of professional competence and PMPC experts’ length of teaching experience. The core element of each instructional module in professional training and retraining is the system which involves maximum of practical orientation and is related to real time inclusive education activity and particular SEN children;
• a whole number of classes are set in the field mode, i.e. in real time (during the academic year) instruction of specific educational institutions and those institutions where certain areas of PMPC experts’ activity (who practice inclusive education) are held on a high level;
• professional competence formation has a diagnostic and prognostic character encompassing not only the previous professional experience but also the prospect of further professional development;
• techniques used for the starting and final assessment are not only evaluative but they also serve as a tool of further professional development, i.e. they include tasks to upgrade motivational, operational and reflexive components of PMPC participants’ professional competence;
• each instructional module includes the introductory and final evaluation (questions for self-study and reflection); the overall assessment is based on the results of the program acquisition which enables the experts not only to estimate the level of their current professional competence components but also to evaluate the course results in each instructional module and for the course in total.

As a rule, the final result of the course becomes the positive changes in the content of the specialists’ professional orientation which is revealed in acquisition of significant motives for their activity, in a higher level of their own professional evaluation; the course results in qualitative changes both in PMPC educators’ professional competence and in their professional self-consciousness as well as in the increased realization of their own responsibility in the overall system of integrated psychological, medical and social  facilitation for a SEN child. However, we find the most important result to be the current efforts of IEE implementation in specific institutions which will certainly result in improved quality of child education.

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