The inclusion of students with special needs in higher education: Perceptions from the academic community

Introduction: Currently, there is an increasingly frequent arrival of students with special needs at higher education. So, multidisciplinary work is a request to guarantee the permanence and the success of those students. Consequently, educational responses need to be rethought and organised.
Goals and Methods: The main goal of this work is to present the perceptions that a community of a Portuguese public university revealed regarding the inclusion of students with special needs at higher education. The sample was formed by 160 students (105 women and 55 men), with an average age of 25.5 years (SD = 9.167), 20 teachers (11 women and 9 men) with an average age of 51.50 years (SD = 10,013) and 17 non-teaching staff (14 women and 3 men) with an average age of 48.12 years (SD = 7,745). The instrument used was the Questionnaire about the Perception of the Academy Members Regarding the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs at Higher Education. It was constructed within the scope of this work and was formed by open and closed questions. Voluntary participation was assured through informed consent. Descriptive statistics were calculated to quantitative data and content analysis was made for qualitative data. In this case, an inductive process of categorisation was followed and discussion between three researchers occurred to a better definition of categories.
Results: Participants from the three groups revealed some knowledge about students with special needs, but also the need of specific knowledge about special educational needs, and training regarding attitudinal and instrumental support measures.The categories that emerged from the qualitative data allow us to better understand this reality and its needs.
Conclusions: The data allows us to understand the necessary regulation, and the importance of training, which constitute important pillars for the achievement of inclusion.