INTEGRATION OF SOCIAL WORK SPECIALISTS INTO MULTIPROFESSIONAL TEAMS OF INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS: FOREIGN EXPERIENCE AND ROLE TRANSFORMATIONS

Abstract

The article substantiates the relevance of diversifying support infrastructures in inclusive education based on the analysis of foreign experience in integrating social work specialists into multiprofessional teams (MPTs). The study aims at the theoretical comprehension and empirical verification of functional roles, competence spheres, and interaction barriers of social educators involved directly in the classroom process under inclusive conditions. Within the framework of the research, differentiated modes of professional interaction are structured, encompassing the levels of information exchange, functional division of labor during the implementation of Individual Education Plans (IEPs), and joint design (co-construction) as the highest degree of specialist integration based on the consensus alignment of professional paradigms and solidarity-based responsibility. The research findings revealed the formation of a hybrid professional profile of MPT specialists functioning at the intersection of social-pedagogical and special-education paradigms. It is proven that assigning untypical didactic, evaluative, and diagnostic functions to social workers directly within the classroom space leads to the phenomenon of role diffusion and the ambivalence of professional identity. Concurrently, a comparative analysis of the professional responsibility spheres of special educators and school social workers has explicated a complex of their convergent and divergent features according to such determinants as the conceptual status of support institutions, teleological orientation, paradigmatic foundations of the consultative function, organizational vector of intervention, differentiation of the object-target focus, as well as the functional specificity of diagnostics and assessment. It is noted that the staff structure of the studied multiprofessional teams is formed by specialists from related educational and pedagogical groups with higher university degrees in social, general, and special education or social work, alongside certified educators. Finally, emphasis is placed on the fact that the examined fields of professional training for specialists are characterized by a high level of heterogeneity, as they eclectically accumulate the core determinants of school social work (networking and parent participation) and canonical elements of special education (diagnostic-monitoring activity, intervention strategizing, and personalized support) under the imperative requirement of their direct integration into the learning space.