Good Practices and Challenges of Special Needs Education Itinerant Teachers in Addis Ababa Special and Mainstream Schools
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Date
2017-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was conducted to assess the good practices and challenges of itinerant teachers in the mainstream primary schools with Special Need Education Resource Centers in Addis Ababa city. This descriptive research design used both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods. Data were collected through structured questionnaire distributed to 34 purposively selected respondents. Additionally, 15 key informant interviews were conducted with the itinerant teachers, school principals and Special Needs Education experts, and also secondary data were collected from various sources. The technique used to analyze the quantitative data was frequency and percentage using SPSS version 20. The major findings indicated that the itinerant teachers program in Ethiopia particularly in Addis Ababa city has good practices as well as challenges. The good practices identified in this study are; there is the support system established at selected special and primary mainstream schools with resource centers. Thus, children with disabilities are benefiting from the support of itinerant teachers and the Resource Centers (RCs). On the contrary, there are challenges that itinerant teachers are facing in the course of their work. Among them, lack of boundaries between the job descriptions of the itinerant teacher and other support specialists, absence of standard screening, assessment and identification tools are the majors. Due to these and other reasons many children remain unsupported from the school support systems. The study also revealed that there is not only shortage of services, materials and necessary equipment in these resource centers but also the available materials in the RCs are not being used by the class teachers due to lack of coordination awareness and other factors.
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Good Practices and Challenges of Special Needs Education Itinerant