Educational needs of preschool children with recognized rare disease and intellectual disability - teachers` perspective

Abstract

The studies concerned the creation of a picture of needs of children with a rare disease and intellectual disability in the post-positivist paradigm. The author used a quantitative strategy. She also used the preexperimental study, one-group pretest-posttest design - the experiment on the test group including the pretest and post-test, but without the control group - modified by the cascade strategy (double measurement), because it is more suited to the actual learning and consolidation of teachers' knowledge. The research involved teachers of randomly selected primary schools in Poland. On the basis of literature analysis, 27 educational needs were identified, which referred to three categories: rare disease, intellectual disability and common needs. Teachers creating a picture of educational needs of a child with a rare disease and intellectual disability perceive the most of their common features. With each stage of research, the awareness (ability to perceive) of educational needs related to diagnosing a rare disease in a child increased.