The Special Education Teachers’ Perception on Independent Living Skills of Students with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine special education teachers' perceived importance and performance of teaching essential independent living skills for students with intellectual disabilities to live an independent adult life and, on this basis, to propose ways to improve the school curriculum.A survey was conducted among 133 secondary school teachers teaching children with intellectual disabilities in nationwide, South Korea, in order to investigate their perception level of teaching independent living skills.The results revealed that the perceived importance of teaching independent living skills was relatively high, while the degree of actual practice in class was relatively low.Independent living skills that need to be taught more practically for students with intellectual disabilities was suggested.Through importanceperformance analysis (IPA) of 10 independent living skills by using the mean difference between the perception of importance and performance of teachers, 4 areas such as concentrate here, keep up the good work, low priority, possible overkill are suggested.There are some suggestions based on the results of the research.