Student engagement: Perspectives of teachers of children with autism (CWA)

• Main Author: Miciano, Alana Z.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2012
• Subjects: Autistic children—Education; Teachers of children with mental disabilities; Special Education and Teaching
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6842
• Institution: De La Salle University

A necessary element for acquiring skills and knowledge in the school setting is the student’s engagement in the learning process. However, a problem often faced among children with autism is their non- or disengagement. This qualitative study was conducted to investigate student engagement of children with autism in the school setting from the teacher’s perspective. Using interview, photovoice, and photo analysis, the study looked at how teachers perceive student engagement and what factors affect it. Five teachers participated in the research. The data were gathered in three stages: first, the teacher respondents were interviewed; second, photovoice was done by asking them to take pictures of their concept of student engagement for one week. Then a second interview was scheduled for the purpose of describing student engagement using the photographs. The third stage was the analysis of the photos. The data collected were content analyzed per case then cross-case analysis was conducted. The analysis of data showed that the teachers primarily define engagement as showing compliant behavior or responding appropriately to the instruction which is classified as task-related engagement. Subtypes under task-related engagement emerged from the data which were labelled as instruction-directed, interest-related, and self-directed engagement. The other major type of engagement identified was people-related engagement. Between the two, task-related engagement specifically instruction-directed type was the dominant form of engagement manifested by the students. The factors perceived to be associated with it are both internal to the child (deficit, preference, and emotional state) and external (teacher-, environment-, program-, and home-related). Based on the findings, a framework was created to describe the teachers’ perception of student engagement of CWA.