Educational communities of rural schools in the arctic (on the example of the Murmansk oblast): A social justice perspective on inclusion

Abstract

The article addresses the current problem of searching and substantiating mechanisms for the development of inclusive education. The research relevance is also determined by the Arctic context, which corresponds to the epistemological need of modern interdisciplinary knowledge in the development of inclusive education, the priorities of state policy, as well as to the expectations and demands of regional communities. The authors aim to study social interactions within rural schools in the Arctic from the standpoint of inclusion as an indicator of social justice (on the example of the Murmansk Oblast). To that end, rural schools are modelled and described based on the developed criteria. Difficulties experienced by the teachers in the course of inclusive educational process, including when using distance technologies, are typified. According to the results obtained, typical models of rural schools in the Murmansk Oblast include suburban schools and remote schools and their following variants: the school as a territorial cooperation, a border school, an isolated school, and an indigenous school. In all rural school models, under successful formation of external and internal social ties, a shortage of special education teachers is observed. The teachers face methodological, organizational, and social difficulties. In addition, the educational environment is not sufficiently accessible, which forms barriers to social justice. The revealed regional specificity of rural schools serves as a justification for a conceptual and substantive development of Arctic pedagogy. The results obtained are useful for further theoretical and empirical research in the field of inclusive education, as well as for the development of regional programs of inclusive educational practices, taking the differentiation of social conditions into account.