Assessment Of Developmental Characteristics Among Children With Special Need In Inclusive Pre-Primary Schools

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to assess developmental characteristics among children with special need in inclusive pre-primary schools. It was mainly guided by Cognitive Development Theory, Social-Cultural Theory of Learning and Montessori Theory. The study involved 5 inclusive pre-primary school‟s teachers and 20 children with special need (10 visual and 10 hearing) aged 5-6 years old. The participating teachers were purposively selected. Data were collected through observations and interviews and were analyzed by using thematic analysis procedures. The findings revealed that the hearing impaired children demonstrated relatively high levels in physical, cognitive, language and social-emotional development aspects. However, with regard to the cognitive domain especially in terms of memory and social-emotional specifically in the aspects of relationship with others, visually impaired children performed relatively higher. However, the study found that inclusive pre-primary teachers organized different activities for fostering physical, cognitive, language and social-emotional developmental characteristics among the children. The study further found that there were numerous challenges encountered by teachers and students in improving child‟s developmental characteristics. It was therefore recommended that, the government should allocate remarkable budget for inclusive pre-primary education program in order to facilitate supply of adequate and enough teaching and learning materials. Again, educational stakeholders‟ were recommended to put more efforts to promote the visually impaired children‟s development so as to balance their levels to those of hearing impaired children.