Communication interaction in special education preschool classrooms

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this research was to examine the key features of interactions between special education classroom teachers and children with disabilities. Opportunities for communication made available by the teachers and the responses from the children in five special education preschool classrooms were investigated.

Results: The results showed that the 28.2% of coding interval bins contained a communication opportunity provided by the teachers. The mean percentages of the provided opportunities to request, name/comment, answer, and imitation were 10.06, 69.64, 1.2, and 19.08%, respectively. However, 42.0% of the provided opportunities for communication by the teachers did not receive a response from the children.

Conclusions: In summary, the opportunities for communication were infrequently provided by the teachers and the children's responses to these opportunities were found to be infrequent in these classrooms. The four types of communication opportunities were not equally provided by the teachers, furthermore, the four types of the children's responses to these opportunities did not equally occur. Different implications for the research and clinical contexts were also provided.

Keywords:

• communication opportunities
• disabilities
• classroom teachers
• special education preschool classrooms