Non-Pedagogical School Personnel as Agents in the Functional Assessment of Students with Disabilities and Special Educational Needs

Abstract

Functional assessment, as opposed to classical psycho-pedagogical diagnosis, has been playing a significant role in the new model of inclusive education in Poland, launched by the Ministry of Education in 2020. It is a multispecialty process of collecting data about the child or youth’s functioning in order to design an adequate support plan in the ecological niche of the young person’s school. While the specialist role is well described in this process, subject teachers’ and parents’ roles are still being discussed. Little is known about the possibility of playing an active role in this process by the school’s non-pedagogical personnel. The paper aims to explore this role, which was done in a focus group research. The results are promising: they show a high level of non-pedagogical personnel observation awareness of the children’s functioning and their readiness to learn more about the nature of children’s needs and play a more active role in the functional assessment process.