ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND BLOCKCHAIN INTERACTION IN THE CONTEXT OF INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND BLOCKCHAIN INTERACTION IN THE CONTEXT OF INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

Anton Dziatkovskii

PhD in education CEO of PLATINUM software development company,

Australia, Queensland

ABSTRACT

The article talks about trends in the changing individual approach to children in inclusive education. Justifies the role of digital technology in its provision. The author compares the possibilities of blockchain and artificial intelligence in inclusive education, shows the advantages of their combination in data collection, preparation and conducting supervisory groups. A conclusion is made about the importance of further research in this direction, the transition from a theoretical to a practical platform.

Keywords: inclusive education, individualization, biopsychosocial approach, supervisory group, blockchain, artificial intelligence. 

The big problem of inclusive education is to provide individualization of learning taking into account the special educational needs of students. Special educational needs are special (atypical, specific) mental conditions of an individual, in which in the process of mastering an educational program he/she experiences a lack (or excess) of objects necessary for mastering knowledge, skills and competencies. Previously, it was considered that special educational needs are the needs in the conditions necessary for optimal implementation of actual and potential capabilities (cognitive, energetic and emotional-volitional, including motivational), which a child with developmental disabilities can manifest in the learning process [6].

Today the approach is changing. It is believed that every child may have special educational needs at some time in his or her life. Whereas previously such children were permanently "labeled" as having learning difficulties, today there is the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health - ICF [7]. It was developed and published by the World Health Organization not to fix the diagnosis, but to measure the state of health of the individual (body function and structure) and social environmental factors that affect health. The ICF is particularly important for inclusive education. It overcomes reductionism in the approach to health, without fixating on either the medical or the social approach to inclusion. The theoretical basis of ICF is the biopsychosocial approach to health [2,5,9].

According to the ICF, everyone can experience health problems and some degree of disability. That is, disabilities and disabilities are not specific to only a small group of people. ICF is a tool to implement UNESCO's position that accessibility for all means education for all The UNESCO World Report on Monitoring Inclusion and Education: Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (2021) is called: "for all" means "for all". [11].

Inclusion is designed to address the needs of each child. All children need teaching methods and support mechanisms to help them succeed and become members of society.

ICF shifts the educator's focus from the child's deviations from the norm to the child's need for special resources and conditions. The teacher's task is to identify and implement these needs in a timely manner by making adjustments to programs, lesson plans, and educational activities. The teacher's problem is not only that educational needs are individual, but also that they are inconstant, can be primary and secondary or conditioned by social factors, depend not only on the child's diagnoses, but also on his functional state of health, social environment, content of the topic being studied, organization of the lesson, etc. That is, children of the same disability group, who generally have largely similar educational needs, may have largely different educational needs here and now. How can a teacher understand and make sure that the list of educational needs he or she has identified is sufficient and correct, and that taking these needs into account will help a particular child to be successful?

Obviously, it is possible to talk about taking into account individual educational needs only after a comprehensive study of each child, which should be carried out with a certain periodicity and with systematic recording of measured indicators in the course of educational activities, which show the degree of satisfaction of the identified educational needs. Both the study of each child and the results of his or her feedback require the participation of different specialists, i.e., an interdisciplinary approach (psychological, psychophysiological, neuropsychological, pedagogical, physiological, medical).

The increasing interdisciplinarity of the science of the 21st century is its characteristic feature. According to research by Rhoten D., today more than 60% of research is conducted in an interdisciplinary paradigm [8].

Interdisciplinarity is not a multifaceted view of the problem, not haphazard use of methods of related sciences. It is the introduction of new objects of research, the choice of which depends on the researcher himself, it is a solution to the problem of translation of selected concepts and methods of individual sciences in relation to new objects of research. This approach ensures the complexity of diagnostics, standardization of diagnostic methods, scientific validity of the results of data analysis.

In our research we rely on the model of interdisciplinary research and the corresponding complex medical-psychological-pedagogical technique of studying the state of regulatory systems of the child's organism and personality [3,4]. The general object of interdisciplinary research is control (regulation and self-regulation) of a child's educational activity by internal and external factors. Key words: regulation and self-regulation, regulation profiles (harmonious, accentuated, stuck), stress-limiting and stress-activating factors (internal and external in relation to a child).  

We assume that any defect activates protective-compensatory abilities of the human body and personality, affects its adaptive potential and adaptive reactions both on biological and psychosocial and behavioral levels. The level of compensation is determined by the reserve forces of the body and external social conditions, inclusion in active activities, cooperation, self-regulation skills. 

Inclusion is the consideration of the educational needs of each child in the dynamics of the educational process. Naturally, there are problems related to accumulation and analysis of big data on each child in dynamics, methods of their collection, technology of their joint interpretation by specialists, formulation of clear and understandable recommendations for teachers, training teachers to track results. The model of all this work includes organization and activity of a supervising group whose participants are not only monitoring specialists, but also teachers - direct implementers of recommendations. The supervisory group, or group of professional mutual help, reviews the results of previous recommendations and makes corrections for the future [e.g., 1].

The bottleneck in this work is the stage of data collection (it must be technological) and its interpretation. The large volume of data and the need for their thorough interdisciplinary analysis raises the question of the technical support of these stages.

So the attention to the possibilities of using blockchain technology in inclusive education was born. Such attention is due to the capabilities of this technology in the collection of information, its storage in an unchanged form, confidentiality, control of the reliability of the data [4]. However, blockchain alone cannot significantly save the time of specialists to process the collected data. Therefore, the idea of combining this technology with artificial intelligence arose.

UNESCO experts have prepared a study that focuses on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education [10]. The possibilities of using AI to improve learning outcomes were analyzed, and the problems, risks and consequences of active use of artificial intelligence in education were considered (link to panel discussions). The analysts of the Roscongress Foundation have highlighted the main theses of this research, accompanying each of them with a relevant fragment of video broadcasts of panel discussions held as part of the business programs of the key events held by the Foundation.

It is known that modern robotics allows children with special educational needs to attend classes from home, from the hospital, to help educate blind and deaf children. From the point of view of our research, the possibilities of artificial intelligence for supervisory group training are important. Both technologies interact with data in different ways, but combining them can take the use of data to the next level. Artificial intelligence can greatly improve the efficiency of blockchain, help professionals "see" patterns that can get lost in a large body of material, and better prepare materials for the supervisory group. And blockchain can make data analysis not simultaneous, but succesive, making the conclusions of artificial intelligence transparent, consistent, with justification. This will allow you to track and understand why the artificial intelligence made this particular decision and why it is important to the task at hand.

The Internet is accumulating information about the possibilities of combining these two technologies from a theoretical point of view. It is believed that such a tandem will contribute to the development of decentralized artificial intelligence technology, increase the speed of analytical data processing, help to solve "intelligent" tasks using automatic methods.

However, there are still few real practical applications adapted to education. The reason is that the combination of the two technologies cannot be mechanical. We need their new unique design, generalization of the terminological apparatus used, definition of the range of feasible tasks. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, computers will be able to help specialists diagnose not only the functional state, but also diseases and monitor the vital signs of patients. The set of analytical data is also increasing. For example, analysis of a child's speech, which can tell a lot about his or her mental health. The use of the tandem of these technologies seems particularly promising in neuropsychology [3].

References:

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