20295
Inclusive Education of Children with ASD in Argentina. Support Teachers and Support Devices
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN) marks a great change in relation to state policies regarding the rights to education, health, participation and full social inclusion of people with disabilities in the community. In Argentina's education policies must adapt inclusive practices in mainstream schools and promoting reasonable accommodation support systems such as support teachers. There is no research available on the subject and we need to promote this kind of experience in the education system.(Booth & Ainscow, 2011; Valdez, 2009)
Objectives:
Explore, describe and analyze the functions of support teacher in the process of inclusion of children with ASD in mainstream schools.
Analyze strengths and weaknesses of its function, which strategies and resources used.
Methods:
Surveys were conducted in 230 support teachers (ST) from Buenos Aires City, Province of Buenos Aires and Patagonia.
Results:
94% of ST teachers believe that teachers in classrooms do not have adequate training to respond to diversity; 73% believe that schools do not have adequate resources for inclusion and 48% expressed a feeling of discomfort in his work in educational institutions.
98% of respondents are women.
In terms of academic education: educational psychologists (41%), Special Education Teachers (30%) Psychologists (20%).
Support teachers selected a wide variety of roles, including:
Develop strategies and activities, 99%,
Fostering relationships with their peers, 94%
Interfering with specific support 90%
To promote the relationship with the teacher in charge, 82%
Provide assistance and guidance to managers and parents, 76%
Develop tailored assessments, 64%
Promote participation in games with rules, 57%
Organize meetings between school and family, 54%
Promote participation in sports games, 38%
As for the factors considered that can affect the process of educational inclusion, 83% believe that the school staff is not qualified, 72% think designs inclusive education projects are not consistent.
48% say they feel uncomfortable not have the means or resources to deal with the inclusion of some students.
Conclusions:
Beyond the various interpretations that can be made from these data, we believe that constitute a first step in exploring the practices of support teachers, providing an overall picture showing the complexity of the task, the problems that own experience of support teachers to be "included" in schools, the poor training they perceive Held by classroom teachers to participate in inclusion projects and difficulty working cooperatively with school teams, managers and teachers.
These results can undoubtedly help to understand the scope and limitations of the work of support teachers and the real needs of intervention to improve the support devices for the inclusion of students with ASD in mainstream schools.