Eureka! Institutional Repository

Current educational policies place special emphasis on fortifying integration practices and on promoting inclusion. Special education is no longer understood as a special, distinct educational subsystem but as a well- organized supportive service which pertains to the school community as a whole (that is to say, officers, educators, psychologists, parents and pupils). Special schools’ administrators are believed to play an important role in the process of implementing these new organizational and pedagogical guidelines. Based on these premises the current study aimed to depict special schools administrators’ views regarding the implemented educational policy in the Greek special education system. 12 special school administrators took part in semi-structured interviews. A qualitative content analysis was applied for the analysis of the produced data. According to the study’s findings school administrators face difficulties in defining which the prevailing educational policy is. Furthermore, the findings highlight two more factors as important for the implementation of the propelled inclusive policies: the school culture, as it is distinctively depicted in each school and the styles of collaboration that exist between the professionals involved in the inclusive procedures.