"Let's let the students do by themselves" How to activate students with severe physical disability in the classroom?

Abstract

A student with physical disability in the classroom can be a challenge for teaching arrangements. How to pay attention to these students' special needs and what are the best ways of supporting their learning? This research aimed at obtaining information about special education teachers' and other team members' experiences of everyday work with education of students with severe physical disability. This research was set one main question: How to activate students with severe physical disability in the classroom? The research participants of this research were the team members (N=16) who took care of 120 students participating the remedial courses during this research. The team members were special education teachers, various therapists, and social workers, who all worked with students with severe physical disability. The best practices to support students' activity and learning were teachers' positive and trusting attitudes, special solutions created in various school subjects, and multiprofessional collaboration, which are introduced and described in detail in the article.

“There are not enough hours in a day to do everything”: Parents’ descriptions of everyday life with a child with severe physical disability

“…In addition to physical disability, parents may have to face disruptive behaviors (Plant & Sanders, 2007) and difficult child temperament daily (Bailey et al, 2000). Children with physical disability need support of various kinds at home (Häyrynen, Määttä, & Uusiautti, 2018). Many of them need wheelchairs to move around (Moat et al, 2013;Nereo & Hinton, 2003).…”

“…The voices of people with disabilities are hardly heard but greatly needed in societal decision-making and promotion of equality (Cavet & Sloper, 2004;Franklin & Sloper, 2009). In the middle of busy daily chores, the parents can expected to just try to hear their child's voice (Cavet & Sloper, 2004)-especially if considering the complicated and demanding special needs and communication problems children with severe physical disabilities may have (Häyrynen, Määttä, & Uusiautti, 2018).…”