Mainstreaming of mildly mentally handicapped children : obstacles as perceived by the regular classroom teacher

Abstract

The basic purposes of this study were (1) to develop a questionnaire that would assess the obstacles present in the provision of educational services to mildly mentally handicapped children in a regular classroom; (2) to investigate the obstacles to the provision of educational services to mildly mentally handicapped children in a regular classroom for a specific teacher population through the use of the questionnaire; (3) to determine if a relationship exists between these perceived obstacles and certain personal and situational variables. -- A questionnaire consisting of 26 items, covering ten (10) categories, was developed by the researcher and administered to a population of regular class teachers. Teachers were asked to rate their perception of each item as an obstacle to the delivery of educational services to mildly mentally handicapped students in a mainstreamed setting. -- Through an examination of response patterns, the degree to which each item was considered an obstacle was determined. Items were then ranked accordingly. -- Comparisons were made between teacher responses with reference to the personal and demographic data gathered, namely: gender, teaching certificate, training through special education courses, level of teaching assignment, teaching experience, and experience teaching exceptional children. -- To examine the relationship between each of the selected variables and perceived obstacles in educating mildly mentally handicapped children in a mainstreamed setting, a one-way analysis of variance was employed. -- The following conclusions were reached: (a) a significant number of teachers felt that there are obstacles to the education of mildly mentally handicapped children in a regular classroom; (b) the category most frequently perceived as a potential obstacle was "Learning Environment"; (c) the obstacles selected as most critical were "Present pupil-teacher ratio" and "Increase in the stress level"; (d) teacher training programs for regular class teachers are in need of revision if teachers are to be adequately prepared for mainstreaming; (e) in general, obstacles that were more closely related to actual teacher classroom performance were rated as more critical; (f) teachers perceived the attitudes of parents of regular children toward mainstreaming as a greater potential obstacle than the attitudes of others involved in the process; (g) the variable gender was significantly related to teacher perceptions in two obstacle categories; (h) the variable teaching level was significantly related to teacher perceptions in one obstacle category; (i) the variable teaching experience was shown to be significantly related to teacher perception in each of the ten (10) obstacle categories as measured by the questionnaire.