EVALUATION OF EDUCATIONAL ABILITIES IN CHILDREN WITH MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, FIRST GRADE STUDENTS, FROM SPECIAL PRIMARY SCHOLS

Abstract

Educational process for children with mild intellectual disability in special primary schools in the Republic of Macedonia is realized by special Curriculum for students with difficulties in psychological development, prepared by the Bureau for Development of Education from the Ministry of Education and Science. These programs are developmental, and specially adapted to the abilities and capabilities of students with intellectual disabilities. The special educator observing the individual characteristics of his students should maximally respond to their specific needs and aspirations. The aim of the research was to determine the educational abilities of first-grade students with mild intellectual disability for following the teaching contents of the subjects Macedonian language, Math and Introduction to environment, provided by the Curriculum. Educational abilities of the examinees were especially weak in Math, while in the Introduction to environment they had average abilities and a little better ability they showed in the area of the Macedonian language. Regarding the variables gender and age, educational abilities of the examinees did not differ, while regarding the variable level of general abilities there were significant differences in their educational abilities. Special educators said that most of the examinees were completely or partially able to follow the Curriculum. Curriculum for the first grade students with intellectual disabilities generally corresponds to the educational abilities of these children. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Headnote

Abstract

Educational process for children with mild intellectual disability in special primary schools in the Republic of Macedonia is realized by special Curriculum for students with difficulties in psychological development, prepared by the Bureau for Development of Education from the Ministry of Education and Science. These programs are developmental, and specially adapted to the abilities and capabilities of students with intellectual disabilities. The special educator observing the individual characteristics of his students should maximally respond to their specific needs and aspirations. The aim of the research was to determine the educational abilities of first-grade students with mild intellectual disability for following the teaching contents of the subjects Macedonian language, Math and Introduction to environment, provided by the Curriculum. Educational abilities of the examinees were especially weak in Math, while in the Introduction to environment they had average abilities and a little better ability they showed in the area of the Macedonian language. Regarding the variables gender and age, educational abilities of the examinees did not differ, while regarding the variable level of general abilities there were significant differences in their educational abilities. Special educators said that most of the examinees were completely or partially able to follow the Curriculum. Curriculum for the first grade students with intellectual disabilities generally corresponds to the educational abilities of these children.

Key words: educational abilities, children with mild intellectual disability, first grade students, special primary schools.

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Introduction

The development of children with intellectual disabilities is following the same rules that exist for children from general population. However, going through the developmental phases is a slower and limited process depending on the level of intellectual disability. These children have some specifics that reflect on the duration of each developmental phase, which distinguish them from children without disabilities (1). Because of the limited biological bases in children with intellectual disabilities disproportion in the quantity and quality of the development is often expressed, which is especially present in the field of cognition, motorics, communication and socialization (2). Concerning the cognitive aspects in these children tiredness of attention is primarily noticed, they cannot be focused on doing the aimed activities for a longer period especially those activities that require thinking (3). Unfulfilled selectivity of attention is very characteristic, which affects the knowledge acquisition and the successful learning process (4). One can notice easy tiredness during realization of rational intellectual activities, frigidness of thinking process, and inability for generalization of gained experiences (5). The memory ability is deficient, the greater intellectual deficit, the greater the difficulties in memory will be (6). The memory is selective and emotionally coloured. The child remembers very slowly over many repetitions. Furthermore, the child quickly forgets the remembered contents and what he remembers, and he can reproduce it with great difficulty and in false manner and cannot make a systematization of knowledge. Thinking is superficial and concrete. The thoughts are deprived of depth, and these children are unable to get beyond what is in their sight. Children may not reveal the mutual relationships between objects and phenomena (7). They have serious difficulties in classification and serrations and are unable to adopt conzervation, which means that their operational thinking is on a low level. Abstract thinking is reduced to minimum (3). Children with mild intellectual disabilities in school age have slow progress from preoperational stage to concrete operational stage with a delay of 3 to 4 years (6). During education these children are facing major difficulties in adopting the knowledge for numbers and learning the mathematical operations and many difficulties arise when acquisition of contents requires participation of abstract thinking. Their speech is often underdeveloped at the level of functional shape of the voice, words and sentences, and sometimes very poor, or it occurs much later. Compared with children without disabilities they start to speak with a delay of one year or more. They have difficulties in the expressive speech and also in the impressive speech, as well as obstacles in articulation (8). If the level of intellectual disability is greater, than the frequency of articulation disorders is higher (9). Deficiency in basic speech abilities is in high correlation with low synchronicity of movements to the rhythm, low ability to control motor movement, i.e. the organization of the whole psychomotorics (10). They can learn and repeat songs, poems or a short text with great difficulty, and there is also difficulty in understanding the learned material and its reproduction. If in the teaching process there are no obvious simple visual tools and various teaching materials, regardless of the contents, the intellectually disabled child cannot remember them. Certainly the individual approach in teaching and adjusting the contents according individual characteristics and abilities of students is very important (8).

The educational process for children with mild intellectual disability in special primary schools in the Republic of Macedonia is realized by a special Curriculum for students with difficulties in psychological development, prepared by the Bureau for Development of Education in the Ministry of Education and Science. These Curricula have been used since the academic year of 2008/09, as a program for nine-year compulsory primary education. The programs are developmental, especially adapted to the abilities and capabilities of students with intellectual disabilities and are based on the principles of individualization, progressiveness and articulateness, durability of knowledge, skills and habits and of course very important in teaching these children, the principle of obviousity. Furthermore, the special educator by observing the individual characteristics of his students, having all of them in the focus, should respond maximally to their specific needs and aspirations. Individualized approach is the basic principle of working with these children, certainly while respecting the basic didactical rules in presentation of the contents of the Curricula: from closer to the distant, from simple to difficult, from easier to harder, from known to unknown (11).

Method

The subject of the research was educational abilities of first-grade students with mild intellectual disability from special primary schools.

The main goal of the research was determining the educational abilities of first-grade students with mild intellectual disability for following the teaching contents of the subjects like Macedonian language, Math and Introduction to environment, provided by the Curricula for students with disabilities in the psychological development of first grade.

Sample

The sample consisted of 20 examinees, firstgrade students with mild intellectual disability from the Special primary schools "Dr. Zlatan Sremec" and "Idnina" from Skopje. The research was conducted from April to June 2009. It started with collecting relevant data for the examinees and then a testing was carried out. In collaboration with members of the professional school teams and special educators, the examinees were divided into two groups based on gender, age and general abilities. At the end of the school year the opinions of special educators who were working with the students during the school year 2008/09, regarding whether the examinees were able to follow the intended contents of teaching Curriculum were collected. Besides the subjective evaluation, the objective descriptive grades were also taken into consideration, which the special educators gave to each student at the end of the school year.

Description of test

The applied test was specially created for the purpose of the research. It consisted of 15 tasks that evaluated general knowledge and abilities from the subjects Macedonian language, Mathematics and Introduction to environment. In Table 1. a detailed description of the applied test is given.

Results

From Figure 1. it may be noted that examinees showed a particularly weak results on the task 2 (identification and naming of colours), task 9 (differentiation of colours and shapes), task 13 (analogies), task 6 (counting concrete objects), task 4 (naming pictorially presented objects) and task 5 (classification of the same objects in groups). On the other hand they showed relatively good average results on task 1 (storytelling according images), task 7 (counting to 10), task 8 (classification of the basic forms) and their drawing (task no.10.).

On Figure 2. it can be noticed that, on average, girls achieved better results on the test (59.75) than boys (44.75), but the difference in points was not significant.

From Figure 3. we can see that the difference in average score achieved on the test is quite low among both groups of examinees. Children who have more or exactly 9 years are slightly ahead (54.92) before those children who are over the age of 9 (52).

From Figure 4. it may be noted that examinees who have higher abilities have significantly better results on average (64.29) than the average achievement of participants with lower abilities (29.16).

On Figure 5. it can be seen that according to the opinions of special educators, about 11 examinees can fully follow the Curriculum, five students partially and four children could not follow the contents provided by the Curriculum out of 20 examinees.

Discussion

It can be concluded that on neither question on the test students have obtained the maximum points. Particularly poor results were achieved on issues of Mathematics (e.g. counting, naming the colour, performing differentiation by two signs, colour and form, etc.). Also about issues from Introduction to environment they achieved average results (e.g. determining by analogy, determining and naming of the seasons), while better abilities examinees showed in the field of Macedonian language (e.g. storytelling by images, describing the image, graphomotorical lines). The difference in the achieved points according the gender and age of examinees is insignificant, while about the variable abilities it is significant. According to the evaluation of special educators about the ability of students for following the contents provided by the Curriculum, it can be concluded that most of the examinees were completely or partially able to follow it, as opposed to a smaller number of those who could not. It should be mentioned that despite the twenty students, who entered the sample, 6 children, first-graders from special schools were not covered with testing because of their limited capabilities, poor speech and communicative ability what made them no testable.

The possibility to generalize the obtained results is questionable because of the methodological limitations about the chosen sample, which is not random and representative but convenience, and also because of the impossibility to compare the gained data with others, because the conducted test was created for this research and till now it was not used in similar researches.

Conclusion

As a result of analysis of the gained data, we can conclude that the educational abilities of the examinees were especially weak in Math, while in the Introduction to environment they showed average abilities and a little better ability they showed in the area of the Macedonian language. Concerning the variables gender and age educational abilities of the examinees did not differ, while regarding the variable abilities (i.e. the level of general abilities of students), there was significant difference in their educational abilities. Special educators said most of the examinees were completely or partially able to follow the Curriculum. Curriculum for I grade students with intellectual disabilities generally corresponds to the psychological development of these children and their educational abilities. The good side of the programs is that they are developmental and are realized in stages. Flexibility and creativity by special educators is required, they need to plan individually and implement instruction according to characteristics and potentials of children. Observation is necessary, as well as adjustment and respecting the specificities in order to meet the needs of each student. At the same time it is necessary to respect the level of intellectual disability, quality of perception, ability of analysis and synthesis, thinking, memory, verbal abilities, motivation, motor and social competence. Children who are more intellectually disabled, with highly limited verballinguistic skills, elements of autistic or problematic behaviour, have serious difficulties in following the projected teaching contents for students with difficulties in psychological development, and we believe that for them more appropriate would be a Curriculum for multihandicapped children or a Curriculum for children with autism, also prepared by the Bureau for Development of Education from the Ministry of Education and Science.

References

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