Supportive Educational Technology and Teacher Attitudes Toward the Inclusion of Children with Special Needs

Abstract

Technology is an important and effective tool for helping students with disabilities and others access the education they deserve, just like other students, and provide them with the educational facilities necessary for this process. It works to integrate them into the educational process. So, the current study aimed at identifying the utilization of supportive educational techniques that could be applied to change the attitude of teachers of students with special needs to allow the integration of such children in the general education system in the Egyptian context. A sample of 217 male and female who are special needs teachers in integrated schools for special needs children in Minia Governorate, Egypt was used for the study. Two main questionnaires were used for the study. The first questionnaire covered the utilization of supportive educational aids for special needs children, while the second questionnaire aimed at investigating attitudes of teachers of special needs children towards integrating supportive educational techniques for special needs children into general education schools after the verification of their psychometric characteristics. The key findings show that there is low (2.54 out of 5) of using supportive educational techniques by special education teachers in special needs institutions. Additionally, the research found significant statistical differences at level (0.01) between the mean scores of male teachers and female teachers in utilizing supportive educational technology for special needs children. Furthermore, there is a positive and significantly correlated relationship between the utilization of supportive educational techniques by the teachers of special needs children and teacher’s attitudes towards the integration of children with special needs into the general education system. Conclusion: Teachers with positive attitudes toward the inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream schools effectively use a variety of supportive educational techniques to teach people with disabilities. Teachers with negative attitudes, however, tend to use less assistive technology in teaching people with disabilities.