Diema’s Dream Foundation held a “Portage (methods)” seminar in February at the Kostroma State University as part of its participation in the III All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference, held in February-March 2020. The monograph “Psychology and Pedagogy of Social Education” was published as result of the conference. The director of our foundation Elena Volodina was co-writer of one of the materials.
The conference was dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the birth of A.N. Lutoshkin, a talented scientist and teacher, a well-known researcher of the children’s collective. We are pleased that the expert of our Foundation has joined the team of authors who are the leading scientists in Russia and abroad – development specialists in the field of psychology and pedagogy of social education.
The monograph explores many professional aspects: the value foundations and guidelines of social education, educational organizations as subjects of social education, educational space and educational environment, public associations of children: social initiative and participation experience, technologies and practices of social education, as well as issues of training workers for social education.
Elena Volodina was co-writer of the material “Technologies of individual social and pedagogical support for children with limited mobility”, where the experience of our Foundation for charitable assistance to orphans and disabled children “Diema’s Dream” (Moscow) was used as an example. We shared the results and approaches of many years of methodological support for social and pedagogical support of children with disabilities developed through the practice of Portage.
The relevance of our experience and the Portage method determined the fact that special attention has been paid to the problem of social and pedagogical support of children with limited mobility in recent years. This is due to multiplication of representatives of this category both in the country as a whole and in each individual region. In particular, 2,285 children with disabilities are currently registered in the Kostroma region, which constitutes 3.6% of all residents of the Kostroma region with disabilities.
This material of the monograph notes that there is a gradual transition from the previously established system of social protection of disabled people to a policy of eliminating barriers and obstacles preventing their full and effective participation in the life of society on an equal basis with other people.
The publication will be interesting and useful to researchers and practitioners in the field of education, youth policy, social protection of the population, teachers of education institutions, master’s students, graduate students and doctoral students, as well as students studying in the humanitarian areas of training.
We are grateful to our friends from Kostroma State University for the opportunity to popularize our experience on the topic of individual socio-pedagogical support of our wards with severe and multiple developmental disabilities among specialists of various profiles.