2011 Volume 53 Issue 3 Pages 250-260
This study aims to clarify the needs of training programs that enhance Yogo teachers' coordination ability. A survey with a self-registered questionnaire was conducted on Yogo teachers at 1,030 special support schools nationwide. Five hundred and sixteen answers (50.2%) were collected and 514 answers (49.9%) out of 516 were analyzed. As a result, it has been found that 493Yogo teachers (95.9% of respondents) consider that Yogo teachers play important roles in coordination. Moreover, the Yogo teachers regard [a crisis control method in an emergency] and [understanding of the growth/the development of students with handicaps] as the most important, while [a budget with all processes] and [the way to generate group dynamics in a team] as the least important among the training contents. It has also become clear that each kind of support schools put on a different priority on the training contents, from the fact that Yogo teachers at support schools for the invalid put high importance on [understanding the students with handicaps from an educational point of view], while Yogo teachers at support schools for the physically handicapped put low importance on [the way to generate group dynamics in a team] and [a method to take the leadership in the team]. Furthermore, it has been found that Yogo teachers who have been working at special support schools for less than three years have a distinctive feature that they consider [the way to accept the feeling of the students and their guardians/to sympathize with them in their feelings] highly important and that they feel difficulties in understanding the students and their guardians even with their experiences outside the special support schools. In future, it is desirous to make a good use of these findings in making training programs for coordination ability enhancement aimed at Yogo teachers at special support schools.
