Special education teachers' attitudes and strategies for teaching sex education for students with mental retardation

• Main Author: Yang, Chung-Chuan (Alex)
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2003
• Subjects: Special education teachers > Attitudes; Teaching methods; Sex instruction for people with mental disabilities; Mental retardation
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/3069
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study determines the attitude of sex education teachers toward sex, sexuality and sex education, as well as the teaching strategies they employed and the instructional materials they utilized to teach sex education for children with mental retardation (CWMR). Likewise, the study looks into the relationship of teachers' attitude and teachers' qualifications and experience. A validated researcher-made questionnaire was administered to 30 SPED teachers. The study revealed that sex education teachers have positive attitude toward sex (mean = 3.89) and sex education (mean = 4.10) while, on sexuality, they were uncertain (mean = 3.22). Furthermore, the strategies most commonly used to teach the different topics in sex education for CWMR consisted of: recitation for body hygiene, showing care for others, privacy, intimacy, manipulation by others, rape and community risks, teachers discussion for menstruation, student discussion for masturbation, intercourse and pregnancy. Moreover, the instructional materials used in most topics (9 out of 14) were pictures followed by TV and OHP. The use of computers, slides, graphs or charts were minimal. Finally, the results revealed that the attitudes of teachers are not related to teaching experience (r = -0.038) and teachers' qualifications (r=0.145).