Special education teachers as a profession mirror the helping professions

Abstract

Introduction. The scientific major, special pedagogy, is a relatively new field in the Czech Republic. It started growing in the second half of the 20th century. Therefore, it is still evolving its assumptions for personal and professional aspects that a special pedagogue should have. The influence and evolution of society should be reflected not only in the scientific field but in the profession as well. The aims of this paper are to describe the personality of a special pedagogue, to reflect one’s personality as a special pedagogue, and to highlight the importance of an individual who is transferred to a pedagogical-inclusive process which is initiated by a special pedagogue. Study participants and methods. The main of this research was to collect reflections on the profession of a special pedagogue in the working environment. This research was focused on special pedagogues in the first stage of primary schools. The target group was not eliminated by age, gender, colour, religion, education, or the length of working experience in the position of the special pedagogue. With regard to the established research goal, we chose qualitative research – specifically, the interview method. We conducted in total five semi-structured interviews with which the respondents agreed to be shared for purposes of the research. All interviews were recorded, and respondents knew about that and agreed with it. Results. The profession of the special pedagogue, similarly to any other profession which fits in the category of so-called ‘helping professions’ requires a higher level of responsibility, which for workers could be a bit of a burden. Furthermore, special pedagogues who do diagnoses are responsible for correct diagnosis which determinates further work with a child. Thus, a mistake in diagnosis could be fatal and could be discovered a few years later. All participants talked about some level of stress. However, all of them have defined it differently. On the other hand, all participants agreed on another stressful part which is to follow the pace of a child with a health handicap. Mainly they mentioned their ability to keep themselves in the background, calm themselves down, and be very patient sometimes. Sometimes it happens that it is hard for a special pedagogue to see a sense and future in their work. About this situation, four participants talked. The profession could lose its sense, or it could be seen as stereotypical. All of this is mostly because of low feedback from a student or a student’s family. This fact was reflected by all respondents. I n relation to the data that we collected all respondents see limitations within the administrative part of their profession which keeps others from “important” activities. Further, all respondents mentioned the problem of limit right during their work, and problematic of raise of modern technologies and cooperation with modern technologies during teaching. Cooperation with modern technologies was mentioned in the context of insufficient education and non-reflection of own abilities and skills. Practical significance. In respondents’ answers, diverse topics were detected which often correlate with each other, but the individual topics were detected as well. These individual topics might be interesting for further research. However, the purposes of this research were irrelevant. With regard to inclusive tendencies, it is necessary to reflect the individuality of pupils and still maintain an approach that stems from the essence of special pedagogy.