Showing posts with label Research in Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research in Education. Show all posts

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Goa Board to offer Custom Syllabus for Students with Disabilities


Gauree Malkarnekar,TNN | Mar 6, 2014, 02.11 AM IST

PANAJI: Children with special needs will now have their syllabus from Class IX to XII modified to their individual needs if they find it difficult to cope with the curriculum in force. The academic council of the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has approved an improvised scheme for special children to be implemented for 2014-15.

Under the modified scheme, once a child is certified for a disability, the institution along with the child, will have to decide if he or she is capable of taking up one of the existing courses of study offered by the board or if a new course based on the primary structure of the syllabus will have to be framed by bodies of the board to meet the individual student's need.

"If a particular student is unable to sit in the classroom because of his or her disability or there are other such issues, a separate syllabus can be framed under the new scheme to meet the child's individual needs. The benefits of this revised scheme have now also been extended to higher secondary students," Goa Board chairperson Jose Remedios Rebello said.

The Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) will include a description of the individualized curriculum for academics and skills, specific objectives, teaching learning strategies and assessment procedures.

The revised Goa Board scheme lays more stress on assimilating children with special needs with regular school students.

"High school teachers of regular schools are already being trained under the Central government's Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) to sensitize them to recognize the needs of special children in a regular class. Goa Board's modified scheme will require regular teacher training programmes to include at least one module on types and characteristics of disabilities and observation of these characteristics in students. Training programmes will be organized for existing teachers," Rebello said.

The revised scheme requires that special children too be assessed through continuous evaluation and the format for it will be drawn by the board of studies.

The board will also certify special children answering the Class X and XII public exams differently stating their level of disability, the subjects selected, the mode of assessment and the level of performance (preferably through grading).

Students with disabilities will be provided with some general concessions like decreasing their writing load by setting objective type questions, allowing verbal responses for children with writing difficulties, overlooking directional mistakes in maps in geography, awarding marks for the method employed in mathematics, pardoning the errors in calculation arising out of writing numbers in the wrong order, evaluating the content of answer rather than the syntax or structure and spelling errors and allowing point-form writing etc.


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Kolkata Teachers believe children with disabilities are careless, insincere, doubtful and rigid!

Teachers prejudiced against disabled kids, says Indian Statistical Institute study

Jayanta Gupta, TNN Oct 1, 2013, 04.35AM IST

KOLKATA: A study conducted among teachers in government- and government-aided schools in the city has revealed that most of them are prejudiced against pupils with disabilities.

According to the study, conducted by the Psychology Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), a large number of teachers believe that children with disabilities are "careless", "insincere", "doubtful" and "rigid". So much for the government's initiative to promote inclusive education. A study conducted by the Psychology Research Unit of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in government and government-aided schools in Kolkata has revealed that a large number of teachers consider differently-abled children to be careless, insincere, doubtful and rigid.

The same teachers believe that children without special needs are "systematic", "confident", "sincere" and "responsive".

The research paper was presented at the Indian Science Congress with a view to impress upon the state government that our schools may still not be ready for inclusive education, which the government is trying to promote.

The study revealed some startling facts. "The most negative attitude towards children with disabililies was expressed by young teachers; those with postgraduate degrees; and those from high socio-economic backgrounds. Many of those who held this attitude have people with disabilities at home," said Sumana Dutta, a research scholar at ISI .

The institute collaborated with Bikashayan, an NGO, in carrying out the study.

To gauge the attitude of 1,472 teachers in Kolkata, researchers used what is known as a semantic differential scale. "In a semantic differential scale, respondents are asked to choose where his or her position lies, on a scale between two bipolar adjectives. This scale is used to measure opinions, attitudes and values," explained Dr Debdulal Dutta Roy, assistant professor of the Psychology Research Unit. In this case, some of the pairs of bipolar adjectives used were "careless and systematic", "insincere and sincere", "doubtful and confident" and "rigid and responsive". The questionnaire with 20 such bipolar adjectives was filled in by teachers, parents and administrative staff.

A complex statistical method known as "Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation" was used to arrive at the results.

"We surveyed 1,829 people in all. While 1,472 were teachers, there were 262 parents and the remaining administrative staff. We noticed that the teachers had the most negative attitude. Teachers from north Kolkata had the worst attitude followed by those in the south and west," Dutta added.

According to Dutta Roy, who monitored the process, it was a surprise that some teachers who have children with disabilities also display this attitude. "This reveals that the teachers are not considering the limitations of a child with disabilities," said the executive council member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. "The second part of the study revealed that most schools (government- and government-aided) don't have the infrastructure required for inclusive education. There is clearly a need for remedial teaching and psycho-educational teaching if inclusive education has to be successful. Maybe the teachers will need more training. For the moment, though, special schools can't be done away with."

In the second part of the survey, 293 schools were surveyed. It was found that 42% of these schools don't have their own drinking water facility. Resource rooms - remedial classrooms where students with special needs are given specialized assistanceare - absent in 95% of these schools. It was also found that 98% schools have no resource teachers.

"Though 98% schools consider a resource person beneficial, in more than 44% schools, such teachers pay just a single visit in a month. In 53% schools, the visit is just for an hour. More than 85% schools have untrained teachers. If there is a problem, how will these teachers react? The problem lies with the non-manipulative nature of our pedagogy. Things will have to be more manipulative if children are to receive proper education," Dutta Roy added.