Ninh Ngoc Kieu Anh

EZKZ82
Class: Social Integration
Reaction Paper
Inclusion4Schools International Conference 2023

I have had the pleasure of attending the Inclusion4school conference on the 28th

afternoon. Throughout the 2 sessions, there were many insightful and interesting

presentations about inequalities and measures to be more inclusive in the education field in

Europe. In my paper, I would like to talk about “Transformative process in further

enhancement of IE in Serbia” by Dr Snežana Vuković and Mrs Marina Starcevic Cviko and

Dr Clemens W. Pachlatko’s lecture “The Evolution of School Social Work in a Medium

sized city of Switzerland”

Dr Snežana Vuković and Mrs Marina Starcevic Cviko’s lecture highlights Serbia's

efforts in enhancing Inclusive Education (IE) through the 2030 Education Strategy. Key

elements include unconditional enrollment, individual educational plans, and inclusive or

support team in each school. Some of the notable points in the IE progress are Additional

support to students, assistive technologies in teaching and increased inclusion of children

from vulnerable groups. However, the lecturers also mentioned the challenges that persist

such as the lack of initial education for teachers (pre-service), the impact of Covid 19 and the

struggle with financing. After listening to this insightful lecture, it’s clear to me that Serbia

has achieved some success, as seen in the reduced enrollment in special schools and

increased opportunities for vulnerable kids. But there's still work to do, especially in teacher

education and financing. Especially, at the end of the lecture, we were shown a video from

UNICEF Serbia titled Learning Together. Through the video I can see the incredible job that

IE has achieved, seeing students with special needs being treated with equality and being

given apprenticeship as well as education opportunities is very touching.

 Through Dr Clemens W. Pachlatko’s lecture, I was able to learn about the birth of

SWW and how they implemented school social work in Winterthur, Switzerland - a topic

completely new to an international student such as myself. In the lecture, Dr Pachllatko

touched on the evolution of SWW which he referred to as a process from birth to adult year

which I found very interesting. He also explained the educational system in Switzerland

which was very intriguing for me since their system is something very different from what

I’m used to or even heard of. A key principle of SWW that I want to highlight is accessibility,

which Dr Pachlatko described as easily accessible with an office in the school and an

open-door policy. This is a very important principle in school social work especially when

they have to deal with child protection. On the topic of child protection measures, the lecturer

highlighted the 4th measure which was the Assitance conference/ Helpers-conference &

Discloses Discussion, he followed up with an anecdote from his own experience which he

recalled police officers have to be present discreetly at one of their conferences in case of

aggression from parents. To me, this underscores the importance of their work.

During the networking dinner, I got an opportunity to have a short conversation with

Dr Juliette Torabian during which I learned some interesting perspectives from the point of

view of an educator. Dr Torabian shared that the main purpose of her participation at the

conference was to help and learn from her fellow colleagues from around Europe. She also

mentioned the struggle to not lose oneself under the pressure to please many parties including

the parents in her line of work. Dr Torabian also brings up the problems she countered when

teaching like inattentive students or the uses of AI when it comes to assignments. At one

point in our conversation, she mentioned that she had worked in my home country - Vietnam

before, she expressed her affection for the country to me, which I found to be very

heartwarming.
 In conclusion, I’m very grateful for this experience. I learned about a lot of topics that

I'd been ignorant about prior to the conference. As a student, it’s so incredibly interesting to

have the opportunity to hear from the perspective of educators and professors.