Abstract
This study was designed to understand the educational needs of children with intellectual disabilities. We conducted a questionnaire survey to examine the needs (learning and life) expressed by parents raising school- aged children with such disabilities. We surveyed the parents of 28 children enrolled in an elementary school for special needs education in Tokyo from 200X to 200X+13. We classified their responses into seven major categories of learning needs and nine primary categories of living needs by using the KJ method. Examining the proportion of each major category in each grade indicated a high demand for “Japanese” in terms of
learning throughout the six years, followed by “Needs of life” and “Physical education.” Additionally, there was a high demand for “Personal care” in terms of living needs throughout the six years, which was followed by “Social participation skills.” The differences in educational needs based on the type of disability (such as Down’s syndrome or autism spectrum disorder), degree of disability (middle, mild or severe), and grade (lower or higher) were examined by Quantification III (correspondence analysis). The results indicated that learning needs differed based on the type and degree of disability.
