Research to assess the impact of school parliaments on promoting child rights and inclusion
Promoting child rights and inclusion
- Crnogorski
- English
Highlights
The data indicate that UNICEF activities of School Parliaments aimed at bigger inclusion of children with disabilities had a significantly positive effect on knowledge, attitudes and behavior of children towards children with disabilities. The data indicate that members of School Parliaments, protagonists of these activities, more frequently than other children know, socialize or have friends among children with disabilities, and show a more positive attitude towards these children and increased willingness to socialize with them.
Activities of School Parliaments aimed at promotion of inclusion arouse very positive impressions among the participants themselves, according to whom, they led to changes in their behavior and attitudes. Besides that, the data indicate that they drew the attention of a big number of pupils who are not members of School Parliament, but go to the same school.
Activities which pupils liked the most were visits to Day Center for children with disabilities.
Findings of focus group discussions suggest that this activity also triggered the biggest changes in pupils’ behavior. However, the findings also indicate that this experience could have been more communicated to other pupils in school.
Pupils generally believe that children with disabilities have support in their school and in their town, but this attitude has become even better through the activities of School Parliaments aimed at promotion of inclusion of children with disabilities Attitude towards School Parliament is positive both among members and their classmates. Only pupils from other schools have a somewhat less positive attitude towards their School Parliaments, thinking that they should be more active and inform other pupils more about its activities. Nevertheless, circa one third of pupils still think that children with disabilities should go to specific schools. The reason for that lies in still insufficiently organized teaching in inclusive classes, which primarily refers to teaching assistants, that the findings of FGD and interviews point to.
