The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not a well-organized community experience to learn activity individual training program for developmental disabled children had any effects on the social skills of developmental disabled students, i...
The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not a well-organized community experience to learn activity individual training program for developmental disabled children had any effects on the social skills of developmental disabled students, including cooperativeness, self-assertiveness and self-control.
The subjects in this study were 2 developmental disabled students who attended H middle school on inclusion class in Hadong, south Gyeongsang province.
Before community experience activity program, I examined IQ and the degree of social maturity as basic data for understanding experimental group students.
To identify the effects of an community experience to learn activity program on the social skills of the developmental disabled students, they were divided into two groups: pretes and posttest.
I designed this study by before and after examination in same group in order to find out the effects of Community Experience in learning activity on the social skills of the students with developmental disabilities. Three sub-factors of social skills include cooperativeness, self-assertiveness and self-control.
The community experience to learn activity program used in this study was prepared by this researcher, and the instrument used in this study was Social Skills Scale that was selected from Social Skills Rating System used by Professor Kim Huang-ji in 1996. This scale Consisted of 30 items about cooperation(C), assertion(A) and self-control(S).
Immediately after pretest was implemented, the students participated in the community experience to learn activity program for 14 weeks, and then took posttest.
The findings of the study were as follows:
The community experience to learn activity program was effective in improving the cooperativeness, self-assertiveness and self-control of the developmental disabilities students.
They got to have the chance to communicate with many people through the community experience learning, shared their opinions about something not to have done in classroom and became willing to follow what`s suggested by their teacher. As a result, they expressed, shared and understood others' opinions and feelings. In addition, they insisted their own opinions, controled themselves and cooperated one another properly according to situation.
Based on the above-mentioned findings, there are some suggestions:
First, more effects are believed to be gotten when an appropriate program is applied to each student after an exact research on the actual state about the developmental disabled students with cooperation both school and home,
Second, an administrative and financial support system are needed to be able for students to have a community experience education easily by making the most of factors in a community in the scene to educate the disabled students on inclusion class.
Third, a variety of teaching strategy are needed that can develop and apply a lot of ways to improve social skills for the developmental disabled students.
Making a detailed list to observe practically behavior change of experimental students and observer' efforts to observe, measure in every parts of life are required.
Fifth, in addition to activating a community experience learning training for social adjustments of disabled students, the ways to improve social environments should be considered that can be considerate to the disabled in our society to be able to change our prejudiced view to them from the view of mainstreaming.