Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation (Sep 2013)
THE SOCIAL PRACTICE OF READING AND WRITING INSTRUCTIONIN SCHOOLS FOR INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED PUPILS
Abstract
In Sweden, schooling for children who are regarded as intellectually disabled is organised in a special school, Särskolan. The overall aim of this article was to investigate the teachers’ attitudes towards the social practice of reading and writing instruction in Särskolan.Therefore, 40 teachers from Northern Swedenwere sampled for the empirical study. The teachers were asked to fill out a questionnaire. One of the findings was that the teachers reported different attitudes towards the social practice of reading and writing instruction. Another finding was that the teachers reported they did not practice the documentation of reading and writing difficulties. Furthermore, the practice of documentation was associated with professional competence in reading and writing literacy. The study suggests that literacy education did have an effect on teachers’ attitudes towards their practice of documenting.However, the openness towards organizational learning was polarized, and consequently, it produced a threshold for change. Accordingly, more studies are necessary for further description and explanation of the complexities of the present findings.
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