UNIVERSITI Kebangsaan Malaysia is inviting parents to participate in a year-long research to determine the scope of services needed for the Education Ministry’s special education programme.
Headed by Dr Hasnah Toran, senior lecturer in Special Education at UKM’s Education Faculty, the research entails doing content analysis based on the questionnaires fielded to parents with special needs children.
Launched in the last quarter of 2009 and to be completed by the last quarter of this year, Hasnah hopes to get a size sampling of 500 that cuts across socio-economic classes.
“We have so far collected data from 200 respondents who are mainly in the lower socio-economic strata. We urge the middle and upper class respondents to come forward and participate in our research to make it more representative of the population,” she said.
The initial analysis shows that respondents in the lower income group had very little awareness of the services that are needed to cater to respective groups of students who fall under the learning and physical disabilities category of the Education Ministry.
“Based on our observation, families in the lower income group are sending their special needs children to government schools, whereas those in the upper and middle class are sending theirs to private schools and centres,” she noted.
As a result, there appears to be a gap of knowledge in terms of interventional therapies needed for the respective groups of special needs students as reflected in the respondents’ degree of awareness based on their socio-economic standing.
“This research is critical because we need to prove to the Education Ministry that interventional therapies are critical to realising the potential of the special needs students, regardless of their degree of disabilities,” Hasnah added.
To participate in UKM’s research, e-mail Hasnah at hasna1@yahoo.com.
(The Star, May 5 2010)
