MORGADO, José    SILVA, José. Factores contributivos para o sucesso escolar de alunos com necessidades educativas . []. , 17, 1, pp.127-142. ISSN 0870-8231.

To investigate the nature of beliefs about educational outcomes of children with special needs we asked 76 special educational teachers (71 women and 5 men) to complete a questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the following variables - ‘Curriculum Development’, ‘Teaching Practices’, ‘Program Implementation’ and ‘Teacher-Student Interactions’. Also investigated were teacher background variables associated with beliefs concerning schooling outcomes. Statistically significant variations in teacher responses were found for the variables of age, teaching experience and experience with special needs students. ANOVA’s comparing teachers’ beliefs indicated that subjects aged between 40-50 differ significantly from others. Comparison of means showed that those teachers had higher scores on the variable ‘Curriculum Development’. The overall F-test on the variable Teaching Experience revealed that teachers in the group aged 15-25 had higher scores than teachers who had few or many years of experience on the variable identified above. Kruskal-Wallis test highlighted differences between groups. The post hoc analysis showed that teachers who received Training in Special Education focused on the variable ‘Curriculum Design’, while teachers with no training emphasized the variables ‘Program Implementation’ and ‘Teacher-Student Interactions’.

: Educational achievement; school learning variables; special educator’s role.

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