AUTHOR : 장수연,정옥분
INFORMATION : page. 163~195 / 2012 Vol.19 No.1
The purpose of this study was to develop an intervention program that promotes acceptance toward children with disabilities and to then test its effects in an inclusive preschool setting. The goal of the intervention program was to promote the acceptance by young children of those of disabilities in inclusive preschool settings while providing information and direct as well as indirect experience regarding disabilities. The intervention program consisted of 32 sessions and included the following components: indirect experiences (story-time/discussion about children with disabilities), and direct experiences (structured play with children with disabilities/disability-simulation activities). The participants were 31 children enrolled in a preschool class that included a classmate with a disability in Daejeon-, a city in South Korea. All of the children participated in all of the sessions of the intervention. About 20-30 minute sessions were held four times a week for a total of 8 weeks. Students also took a pretest, a posttest, and a follow-up test. The interview method utilized for this study was the Picture Sociometric Technique (McCandless & Marshall, 1957) and this was used alongside sociometric assessment tools to evaluate the children's attitudes toward their aforementioned classmate. Classroom observations during free play sessions were analyzed using the Code for Active Student Participation and Engagement-Revised: CASPER-Ⅲ(Tsao, Odom, & Brown, 2001). This served to record the frequency of the children's positive and negative social behaviors toward their disabled classmate. The data were analyzed using a paired sample t test and the Wilcoxon matched pairs signed-ranks test. The results indicated that children had significantly higher scores on measures of acceptance of a classmate with a disability after participating in the intervention program. On the pretest, the children showed low levels of acceptance of a classmate with a disability on measures of sociometric assessment. On the pretest, they also exhibited low levels of positive, and high levels of negative, social behaviors toward a classmate with a disability were exhibited according to classroom observations. On the posttest, significant gains in the levels of acceptance were found on measures of sociometric assessment and in levels of positive social behaviors toward their disabled classmate. In addition, a significant decrease in the levels of negative social behaviors toward their disabled classmate was also found. Moreover, on the follow-up test, these positive changes were sustained. Therefore, the program appears to be an effective strategy for promoting the acceptance of individuals with disabilities in inclusive preschool settings.
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