Influence of Home Background on the Education of Persons with Special Need in the Buea Municipality
Department: Educational Psychology
No of Pages: 41
Project Code: EPY10
References: Yes
Cost: 5,000XAF Cameroonian
: $15 for International students
ABSTRACT
Students
with special needs face diverse challenges in institutions of higher learning,
which greatly affect their access, and full participation in academic
programmers. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to find out the influence
of home background on the education of persons with special needs in the Buea
municipality.
The
study was guided by the following four objectives: to establish how the socio-economic status of
parents affect the education of persons with special needs, to establish how
family type influence the academic performance of children with special needs,
to investigate how parent level of education influence the performance of
special needs children and to determined how parents perception influence the
academic performance of students with special needs in the Buea municipality.
A survey design was use to gather data from
two institution. the sample population of the study included 80 students with
special needs. A random or purposive sample was use to select the two
institution. The research instruments used for collecting data were mainly
questionnaires.
The
findings indicated that home background, adapted classrooms and extra notes and
handout, parental assistance influence the academic performance of students
with special needs in the Buea municipality. The study recommended that; the
various legislation enacted such as the persons with disability so as to
improve accessibility.
Lecturers
and support staff be given mandatory training on disability training and that
library content be available in electronic format as well as braille. The
finding will be useful in institutes of higher learning to assist in creating a
disability friendly learning and physical environments as helping to create
confidence as well as a can-do attitude in the students with special needs.
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The
right to education is now acceptable to all human right for the educational
needs of persons with disability. Students’ academic performance is a key
feature in education; personal, social, psychological and economic factors as
it plays a great role in producing the best quality leaders and man power for
the country. Ali, Tambo, peiser (2009)
Learning
is complex: humans have the ability to maintain knowledge and experience in
relatively stable ways, which is called “schemes’’. Learners improve their scheme
because they need to adapt to the environment, which it takes to be solved, and
skill to be learned. (paiget 2002).
According
to (DCSF, 2007), learning is complex since it being from birth and continue
throughout life. Parents are the first teachers and role model for their
children and therefore have a strong influence on their education, yet many
parents are not aware of the important they play in their children education.
Parents are seen as the first educators.
A
child home environment and family have a strong influence on his or her child
development and academic achievement. Many home backgrounds, variables affect
children education such as socio-economic status, level of parent education,
family size, parent’s perception etc. (Flouri and Buchunan, 2004).
Specifically,
parents’ involvement with reading activity at home has significant positive
effect not only on reading achievement, language comprehension and expressive
language skills. Also, on the interest in reading attractiveness in the
classroom.
This
chapter compresses of the background of the study, the statement of the
problem, objectives of the study, research question’s, research hypothesis, and
justification of the study, significant of the study, scope of study and
definition of key terms.
Background to the Study
Historically,
more than a century ago, most students with a disability are uneducated or not
given proper access to education. Following the segregation from the middle up
until the late 19th century, special schools were created for children with
disabilities, effectively excluding them from normal school institutions.
This
continued for a while up until the 1920s, when educators first began seeing the
value of providing proper care and education for those with disabilities. The
first change then came in the form of rehabilitation Act of 1973, followed by
its amendments of 1986 and 1992, where institutions that guarantee the
employment and education right of disabled people were given proper funding.
This
was then followed by the passing of the individuals with disabilities education
Act (IDEA), where every school district is required to provide free and
appropriate education for all children. Its further give reauthorization in
1997 also did wonders, as it further protected and guaranteed the right of
disabled person to a quality education.
As
far as the United States is concerned, special education has come a long way
since the beginning of the 19th century. However, for other nations, most
especially developing ones, it’s still trying to find stable footing.one such
nation is Africa.
Viewed
as a fundamental and crucial human right of everyone, the importance of
education and knowledge can never be stressed enough, but with poor government
funding and lack of resources, countries in Africa like Kenya and Nigeria are
still struggling, especially children with disabilities.
Now,
in the 21the century the aspect of inclusion education in schools accept both
students of (disable and normal ones) where they are put to study in the same
institution and the environment is structure in such a way that persons with
disability is comfortable.
Conceptually,
special needs education seeks to explain learners with barriers (special needs)
arising from disability condition usually required specialized support services
for example sign language interpreter, braille transcribers); specialized
teaching methods.
Special
education serves children with emotion, behavioral, or cognitive impairments or
with intellectual, hearing, vision, speech, learning disabilities, gifted
children with advanced academic abilities and children with orthopedic or
neurological impairment.
Hence,
Home background is the base of education and care services as defined in
section 10 of the education and training, as those that provide “education or
care to children who are under the age of 5years and above”. According to Tambo
(2003), the home has always been recognizing as number one agency of informal
education.
This
is because much is transmitted through the interaction with siblings that is
brothers, sister, relative and the home environment as a whole. The home and
the school are seen as two primary setting that transform the children with
special needs in to an adult capable of dealing with the support towards life
independency.
It
has long been recognizes that the character of a child home situation affect
their r intellectual development and learning. This goes further to explain
that children who do well in school come from family which provides an enriched
environment for learning in the home. In addition, children who do less in
school often come from family were support for school learning is limited.
Therefore, the home is seen as a crucial
place: as parents are seen as the greatest influence on the achievement of
young people through supporting their learning at home rather than supporting
school activities. Parents early intervention is vital, the early parents
become involved in their children literacy and language practices, the more
profound the effect and the long lasting the effects.
Children
learn long before they enter formal education (Emily Mottram and Emily McCoy,
June,2010), suggest that any policy aiming to improve language literacy
standards cannot be limited to formal education settings, where children spend
only a small proportion of their time.
On
the contrary, it need embrace the family as a whole and it include parents as
patterns in their children education from the very beginning of their children
education lives and in trying meet the different requirements and needs.
National
policy of education 2004, defined special education as a formal special
education training given to people with special needs. This group of people may
be classified into three categories which arte the gifted and the talented, the
disabled and the disadvantaged. A child with special need can only have
training through the following agencies; the home, the school, town and
village, communicates and peer groups.
Apparently,
the development on the education of special needs children began with the
united nation universal declaration of human right 1975 from which other
countries like Cameroon have developed ideas and recorded and has developed
many policies and ministerial orders which they intend to use to make special
needs education better for special needs children in the country.
Peiser (2008) trace the long road to inclusive
education, which began with the universal declaration of human right in 1948.
This declaration ensures the rights to free and compulsory education for all
children.
The 1994 Salamanca declaration and framework
for action of special needs education was made in a conference at Salamanca in
Spain. The guiding principle of the framework was that ordinary school should
accommodate all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social,
emotional, linguistic and other conditions. According to the framework all
education policies should stipulate the disable children attend the
neighborhood school that would be attended if the child did not have a
disability.
Theoretically,
Urie Bonfenbrenner (1979) ecological system theory came out with some system
that explains how human development is influence by environmental aspect such
as (the micro system, meso-system, exo-system, and the chrono system).
Albert
Bandura social learning theory (1971) talk on modeling, observation and
imitation and through this process socialization comes in where children learn
basic aspect. Ever since disability researchers launched the social model of
disability and criticized the field of special education for preserving an
understanding of disability in accord with a medical model, the special
education field has been in a state of crisis.
The
implication of this has been the embarrassment of talking about categories and
levels of functional difficulty; as well as diagnoses, all of which enable
individual assessments necessary for building the IEPs (individual educational
plans) and child-centered teaching within special needs education.
The challenge for special needs education and its understanding of disability, yet at the same time to develop an understanding of the phenomenon of disability, identifying pupils’ needs without contributing to the negative effect that classification, categorization and labeling in education. The rationale for the social relational model of disability is that it is better conform to the morality of inclusion because the main issue of the social model, oppression, is not obliterated.
Contextually, the following such as learning disability, physical challenge and illness was recognizes as parents and the institution responsibility for procreating child rising. The important of childhood and the effect of home life on personality and character formation and improvement of child special need have wildly recognizes.
As a basic primary group, the family has more to do with special need student ultimate improvement pattern that any other environment factor. Considering that he/she has been brought up .it is clear that special need children attitudes towards education depend on their home background.
Statement of the Problem
The
issues of home background and it influence on the education of person with
special needs called for consent this is because the home is the place where
the child up bring begins. The quality of parents to child relationship is
fundamental to the child development. This influence may arise from
socio-economic status of parents, family type, parent’s attitude and parents’
education.
Some
of the special children who face academic difficulties are those who cannot
meet up with demand of schooling or who are not sent to school or who lack
adequate advice, lack encouragement from parents towards their education.
Hence, this study aims to find out as to what extent home background influences
the education of persons with special needs.
General Objectives
To
investigate the influence of home background on the education of person with
special need in Buea municipality.
Specific Objective
- To examine the influence of socio-economic status on the education of persons with special needs.
- To examine the parents’ level of education and it influence on persons with disability
- To examine family type on the education of person with special need in the Buea municipality.
- To investigate the level of family perception on the education of persons with special needs in the Buea municipality.
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