Inklusivnoe Visshee Obrazovanie: kontekst i model Shvetsii [Inclusive Higher Education: Swedish context and model]

Inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN) has approximately a 50-year Swedish Higher Education history, taking place since 1960–70s. A systematic special education support service for students with SEN in Sweden has developed during the last two decades. During this period, educational support for students’ services has become an integral part of the well-functioning network among several Swedish national actors: special education services of HEIs, UHR, SPSM and Stockholm University. Remaining autonomous in carrying out their functions, coordinators of the network universities cooperate with other Swedish universities and develop their high-quality professionalism. Examining the theoretical foundation engendered conceptual approaches to understanding inclusion in HEIs from both individual and institutional perspectives. Responding to the expansion and belief in the fundamental value of inclusion for European HE, the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR) initiated the development of a new program for standardizing different aspects of the inclusion of students with SEN in HEIs, creating NAIS and started its cross-country university functional network implementation in 2017, linking it with 32 HEIs all over Sweden. Introduction to this study data, collected by the NAIS program, is of great interest for the further development of university and societal knowledge about the inclusion of young people with special educational needs in HEIs. The questions discussed and formulated in this presentation reveal that inclusion in Swedish HE got its strong platform for further development