The evaluation of a ten-week programme in Cyprus to integrate children with multiple disabilities and visual impairments into a mainstream primary school.

Autor: PAPAGEORGIOU, DORA, ANDREOU, YIANNOULA, SOULIS, SPYROS
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Zdroj: Support for Learning; Feb2008, Vol. 23 Issue 1, p19-25, 7p, 4 Diagrams
Abstrakt: A basic need for a child is to belong to a group ( Maslow, 1970 ). Groups help children: to develop relationships and to foster individual mental health ( Johnson and Johnson, 1989 ); and disabled and non-disabled children, when given assistance, can develop relationships with each other ( Sideris, 1998 ). But there are very few opportunities in Cyprus for children with multiple disabilities and visual impairment to learn alongside mainstream school children. A ten-week pilot programme was developed and implemented in a Cypriot mainstream and specialist school to examine whether interaction between children with multiple disabilities and visual impairment and mainstream school children can be achieved through the co-education of the two groups. Three primary school children with multiple disabilities and visual impairment from a specialist school and 15 children with no disabilities who attended a neighbouring mainstream primary school took part in this programme. Central to the programme was the principle that every child has the right to participate in common learning and playing ( Feuser, 1982 ). This paper reports those key findings from the evaluation of the programme from the perspective of the children that took part in it. We show that, even over a short period of time, co-education can be achieved and be of benefit to both groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index
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