Scientific Competencies of Kindergarten Teachers for Identifying Children with Special Needs and Their Attitudes towards Them – Survey Study in Najran, KSA

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to find out the availability of scientific competencies among kindergarten female teachers for identifying children with special needs in Najran and to identify the correlation between the scientific competencies to identify children with special needs and the attitude towards them. The variables utilized in this study are (specialization, years of experience, and number of courses). The study sample consists of (150) kindergarten teachers in Najran for the academic year (2014/2015). For achieving the purposes of the study, the two authors utilized a questionnaire to measure the scientific competencies, which comprised (43) items and another questionnaire to measure the attitude towards children with special needs. The study resulted that the kindergarten teachers enjoy scientific competencies related to the skill of identifying the special-needs child and the skill of dealing with that child. There is also a positive relationship between the scores of the sample of the scientific competencies for the special-needs child and their scores on the scale of the attitude towards the child, as well as there are statistical differences for the scales of competencies and attitudes towards the special-needs child in favor of the specialization of Kindergarten and those of medium work experience (6-10) years.