Kindergarten as an inclusive community

According to Kroflič (2002), there are individuals with different abilities entering kindergarten. The institution has to ensure them such curriculum adjustments which guarantee everybody the same possibility of optimal progress in development, taking into consideration the idea of inclusion. An important part is also the kindergarten's goal to enable a quality life, especially for children with special and additional needs, to strengthen their feeling of self-worth, to prepare them and to ensure their participation in making important social decisions (right there). The goal of my thesis is to check this. I wanted to see how Slovene kindergartens and their professional workers know and follow the concept of inclusion, how inclusion is covered by the legislation, whether professional workers are qualified enough and where the biggest problems with realising the inclusion are. The theoretical part of my thesis is based on theories of Slovene and foreign authors, and legislative acts from the field of preschool education, which are also relevant from the point of the empirical part. The empirical part is divided into two parts. The first part is a case study that I did on an example of a kindergarten practice in one of the Slovene kindergartens. The case study presents an integration of a child with special needs into a regular class and a view from different perspectives on this integration. Legal limitations, segregation and the parents' and professional workers’ effort to accept the child with special needs, with a severe disability, into the regular kindergarten class, are presented on a concrete example. With the case study I would like to show how it is possible to provide children with various disabilities integration and inclusion into the regular kindergarten class, if there is a wish, professional foundation, professional readiness of the kindergarten employees and the support of the local community. With the help of the interviews with parents and workers from different professions, I will try to show the imperfections of collaboration and inclusive integration into kindergarten. I would like to determine the largest and most common obstacles for carrying out inclusion in kindergartens, because, as Oliver (Peček in Lesar, 2006) emphasizes, changes have to occur on all levels of society if we want to achieve the inclusion of kindergarten. The second part of the empirical part of my thesis represents a statistical research of inclusive disposition, which was carried out among professional workers in Slovene kindergartens. I was interested in how they are familiar with the concepts of integration and inclusion and how the following variables are connected to their knowledge: years of experience, working position, level of education, title, and the environment in which the kindergarten in situated. In the end the concluding findings of my thesis are emphasized. These are a synthesis of literature study, legislation and research results. One of the key findings of my thesis is that the inclusion is poorly known among professional kindergarten workers. A few solutions and changes that could improve the quality of work in the preschool profession are also emphasized