Socio-Psychological Features of Students with Special Educational Needs as a Cause of Conflicts in Inclusive Groups

Abstract

The article examines the causes of conflicts in inclusive student groups and means of their prevention. It has been found that the success of inclusive education in higher education institutions mainly depends on interpersonal relationships in inclusive student groups. This is due to the fact that communicating with each other, students with special educational needs acquire skills of social interaction, widen the range of their social roles, learn more about their own personality. However, the peculiarities of moral attitudes, values, behavior, features of the emotional and volitional sphere development, cognitive processes of students with special educational needs lead to conflict situations in inclusive student groups. To determine the causes of conflicts in inclusive student groups, a diagnostic study was conducted among the full-time and part-time students with special educational needs of Khmelnytsky National University. The results of the diagnosis showed that main causes of conflicts in inclusive student groups are the following socio-psychological characteristics of students with special educational needs: low level of self-esteem due to which they get painful experiences because of critical remarks addressed to them, try to adapt to other people's opinions, have low motivation for achievement, feel lonely and anxious; low ability to establish new contacts for communication, low level of sociability; the desire to avoid conflict or to get out of it with dignity accepting the opinions and interests of others without seeking compromise solutions. Taking this into consideration, we have developed and substantiated conflict prevention tools for inclusive student groups that can help students with special educational needs to interact effectively with other students while studying at higher education institution.