The work of tutors with children/adolescents with special needs in boarding schools in Northeast Slovenia

As part of school system, boarding schools allow education and training for those children who are attending schools outside their place of residence. Considering the concept of inclusion and integration they also offer this possibility for people with special needs, and it is also one of the tasks of boarding schools that they integrate students with special needs among them. Tutor is an important factor in the educational process in a boarding school. He helps and supports children, he organizes opportunities for quality learning, different free time activities … This raises the question, how tutors in boarding schools approach the work with children and adolescents with special needs and what difficulties they face. The purpose of my diploma work is to research the experience and competence of tutors working with children/adolescents with special needs in boarding schools. The objective of the paper is to indicate the professional profile of tutors who work with children/adolescents with special needs in boarding schools. Additionally, I wanted to find out if tutors in boarding schools feel competent enough to work with children/adolescents with special needs or by working with which group of children/adolescents with special needs do they feel most competent–incompetent and/if they would like to have additional information and knowledge about working with children/adolescents with special needs. With help of a quantitative methodology on non-random pattern of 47 tutors in boarding schools I found out that they have already met most group children/adolescents with special needs at their work. Mainly the tutors have pedagogical education that in majority is not special or social pedagogical. For their work with the mentioned population they feel partly competent. The tutors consider themselves the most competent with children/adolescents who have learning disabilities, and the least with blind and visually-impaired children/adolescents. They want to have more information and knowledge about this work and they also expressed the opinion that boarding schools would employ professionally competent workers for children/adolescents with special needs