Authored by Abduelmula R Abduelkarem*
Abstract
Introduction: This study aims to assess the attitude and perception of specialized teachers regarding autistic student’s performance, cooperation and affection of autistic students, in terms of providing the best techniques and environment to reach success in education.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted over a period of 4 months. A total of 133 teachers participated in the study from 8 autism centres in the Emirates of Sharjah, Dubai and Abu-Dhabi, In UAE. The questionnaire used included four sections: the demographic information, including the participants’ qualifications and training, where autism students should be in school, and lastly the autism students’ performance, and behaviour.
Result: About 133 teachers participated and completed the study, giving a response rate of 66.5%. Majority of participants were well educated and trained to manage communications and aggressive behaviours of autistic students.82% of participants agreed that autistic children should be in special classes. Also, 84.0% of them mentioned that visual education videos could improve the education process of autistic students.
Conclusion: Autism teachers’ support using new techniques in autism students teaching, such as visual education. However, teachers had contradicted responses regarding involving students in general or special classes.
Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD); Autism; Perceptions; Autism education; Autism teachers; UAE
Introduction
Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) is neurodevelopmental disorders identified as pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). People with these conditions, characterised by three core deficits: impaired communication, social interaction and restricted, and repetitive actions or interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Furthermore, people with autism disorders had a seizure and mental retardation in up to 25% and 70% of cases. Moreover, Autism can affect children’s skills and can be noticed in school by their handwriting, reading and eye contact. Those skills were the most common skills affected by such disorder. Simpson, et al. reported in his study, that children with ASD require professional, individualized planning to educate them successfully, independent of the severity of their case.Autism is currently identified in approximately 1 in 59 children, according to CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network estimates. The prevalence of autism is variable, in the USA, reported a median of 21.6 per 10,000 cases, while reported in Europe, an average of 18.75 per 10,000. Furthermore, the male to female case ratio ranged from 1.33:1 to 16:1.1. Other studies were conducted in the Middle East, specifically in Gulf countries, to measure the ASD (Autism Spectrum disorder) Prevalence. The prevalence of ASD was 1.4 per 10,000 in Oman, 4.3 per 10,000 in Bahrain, about 18 per 10,000 in Saudi Arabia (Al- Salehi, Al-Hifthy and Ghaziuddin, 2009), and 29 per 10,000 for PDD in UAE.
According to this Increase in prevalence of ASD in the UAE, the needs and challenges of children, particularly in the area of medical care, and education are steadily growing. Several studies were conducted for the same purpose and had highlighted the high prevalence of negative attitudes and misunderstanding towards children with PDD [1,2]. However, there is still inadequate research on public awareness, knowledge and attitudes in Sharjah, UAE. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes and investigate of the teachers’ awareness about autism since teachers are the ones who hold the key to raise awareness amongst children and their families. Knowing the teachers’ weaknesses, and improving them, can enhance their role, besides the parents and institutions, in order to provide the autistic children with a better environment to become independent, and normally interact in all life aspects. In general, the rates of intellectual disabilities, precisely Autism prevalence is growing, raising awareness and knowledge about PDD is needed, and if limited, we need to improve the training curricula in the primary and secondary schools in UAE.
Materials and Methods
Ethical approval
The study procedures were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Sharjah (REC/16/09/29/S).Study design
This was a cross-sectional study involved 200 Autism teachers from eight Autism Centres in cities of Sharjah, Dubai and Abu- Dhabi, in UAE, from September to December 2016. The study was conducted to assess the attitude and perception of autism specialized teachers in the UAE. A three sections questionnaire was used to collect the data, and it highlighted the points related to the autistic students’ teachers. The autism centres were found by Internet search engines.Participants
A convenience sample was used. A total of 200 teachers were participating in their job in the eight autism centres, and out of the 200 distributed questionnaires, only 133 surveys were utterly solved, giving a response rate of 66.5%.A total of sixty-seven teachers refused to do the survey or did not complete it, for different reasons such as busy schedules, limited time or not interested in research.Furthermore, each survey was attached with a consent form to ensure that there was no bias and that the teachers participated voluntarily in the study
Questionnaire development
After reviewing several similar articles, the authors obtained samples of each variable survey and developed the questionnaire, inspired by Autism Inclusion questionnaire. The survey was modified, shortened, and included 16 questions only.The survey questions were organized as follows:
The first section is the demographic information including gender, age, grade level and academic education, their roles in teaching and whether they are trained to manage the difficulties of communications and aggressive behaviour of the autistic students. The second section addressed where autism students should be in school systems from the teachers’ perspective and what they observed from the student’s actions. In The third element, it clarified the observations of the performance and behaviour of the autism students, including their performance in the visual and verbal tasks and their cooperation with others, ability to display eye contact, cooperatives, and showing affection. The participants were asked to answer our survey questions or statements by using the answer options: “Yes or No”, and three points scale: “strongly agree, agree, and disagree”.
Study procedure
The purpose of this study was explained to the centers’ management and teachers. The teachers were assured about the anonymity and confidentiality of their response, and personal data were guaranteed.Data analysis
The data collected were encoded and analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS version 23.0). Descriptive analysis was used to calculate the respondents’ percentage of each group with all statements in the questionnaire. Chi-square test was used to measure the significant association between demographic data of the participants and their response to different items of the survey. The value of P-value ≤ 0.05 is considered the significance.Result
Among the 133 teachers participated in this study, the majority were females (60.2%). Of teachers, 98.5% were involved in the teaching of autism students. The highest percentage (69.2%) were from the age group of 25-34 years and only 4 of the participants who are in the range 45-54 years old. Only 9.0% of the teachers reported that they hold a high school grade levels certificate. The most abundant grade level the teachers were teaching is the Elementary school. All participants’ demographic characteristics are presented in (Table 1).Autism teachers’ qualification and training to manage communication and aggressive behaviors of autism students
In the first section, we asked participants, if they consider themselves to be prepared to work with autism students or not, 49.9% and 44.4% reported “Yes” through colleges or special development programs respectively, and 5.7% stated that they are not prepared academically. Furthermore, the majority of the pooled sample reported that the teaching of autism students is within their job description (97.0%) and they have had enough training programs on how to manage the students’ communications problem (95.5%) or aggressive behaviour of autism students (91.7%).Where autism Students should be in the school?
Participants had contradicted responses, regarding whether autistic students should be in general or special classes. More than half (56.4%) of interviewed teachers believe that autism students should be included in general classes. However, about 82.0% of the participants were either agree or strongly agree with the survey statement “autism students should always be in special classes”. Furthermore, 34.6% of the teachers disagreed with the statement “autism students benefit more if they will be in general classes (Figure 1).Autism students performance, cooperation, and affection
The majority of participants (84.0%) believe that autism students’ performance can be improved if teaching materials are presented visually. According to the results, 82.0% of teachers reported that they either strongly agree or agree with the survey statement “autism students display poor eye contact”. Moreover, more than half of the participants disagreed that the autism students over the study period were un-cooperative (51.1%) and did not show affection (66%).Table 2 summarized the autism student’s teacher’s opinions regarding tasks performance, poor eye contact, uncooperative, and affection of autism students (Table 2).To read more about this article...Open access Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmacology Research
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