Inclusive education in the conditions of Czech schools

The area of inclusive education is one of the key areas of education policy in the Czech Republic. Faculty of Education of Palacky University in Olomouc is trying to flexibly respond to the needs of educational practice and think of inclusive education for several years to the research areas of the faculty. In this paper the authors introduce about problematical areas that could have significantly affect to the quality of the process of inclusion in routine practice at primary school. In the paper the authors are based on research conducted in the years 2013 - 2015. Respondents were teachers and parents of elementary school children and as major actors of the educational process. The present study introduces selected results of the research implemented in the Czech Republic. The purpose of the research was to discover and describe current condition of inclusive education from the viewpoints of the major actors of the educational process, i.e. teachers and parents of elementary school pupils of the Olomouc region. Regarding the specifics of the required information we prepared questionnaires for the teachers and for the parents in correspondence with the purpose of the inquiry, with subsequent test run for verification of appropriateness of the individual item formulations. Each of the questionnaires included 22 items with dichotomy as well as scale answer variants, including the open question variant. The questionnaires were filled out by the selected research subjects in anonymity. The analysis shows the positive attitude of parents and teachers to implement inclusive education. Worrisome is the current level of teacher's readiness to manage this process. It shows the need to promote inclusive education not only by the undergraduate training of teachers, but also in further education is necessary to focus on the systematic development of teacher's competence for inclusive education.