The purpose of having inclusive education is to value children with special needs so they can participate equally in all educational activities alongside their peers without special needs. There should not be any discrimination, segregation or isolation of these children with special needs from being educated rather they must be given an equal opportunity to participate alongside children without special needs. This study seeks to investigate primary school teachers' views and experiences in implementing the Inclusive Education Policy in regular schools. The study was conducted in five districts of the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. Six primary schools were selected and involved 77 teachers who responded to questionnaire items, while 12 teachers within the group were chosen to be involved in interviews. Data for the study were gathered and analysed from the questionnaires, and the interview transcripts. The findings from the study revealed that most teachers supported the notion of Inclusive Education Policy and would like to implement it. However, they indicated that there needed to be a change in attitudes of teachers, peers, boards of management, and parents/caregivers to provide assistance for children with special needs. Most teachers felt that there needs to be more awareness of the principle and the importance of inclusion. Teachers' limited knowledge of teaching children with special needs was also highlighted. In this study teachers admitted they needed more training in the field of educating children with special education in order to accommodate and teach children with special needs. This shows that teachers' colleges and universities need to have trained lecturers to develop more courses in special education. Teachers expressed concern that school inspectors do not know enough about the inclusive education concept and need to be trained as well so collaboratively they could implement the policy. Government support is needed to effectively implement the inclusive education policy. This includes training of specialists to support teachers, funds for teaching and learning resources and facilities in schools. The cultural implications and geographical issues have also had some impact on the implementation of the Inclusive Education Policy, while the issue of children with HIV and AIDS was raised that teachers needed to be prepared in order to accommodate and teach those infected children. All these issues highlighted are very important and it is hoped that the outcome of the findings will provide the Department of Education with new strategies to improve and strengthen their commitment to implement Inclusive Education Policy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/238258 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Mapsea, Allan Jim |
| Publisher | The University of Waikato |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/research_commons/rc_about.shtml#copyright |
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