Special needs education : the investigation of perceptions of parents with special needs children and their experiences of the mainstream school system

Authors

Reid, Ciara Francis

Issue Date

2010

Degree

BA (Hons) in Social Science

Publisher

Dublin Business School

Rights

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Abstract

The aim of this research project is to investigate the perceptions of parents with special needs children and their experiences of the mainstream school system. This study was carried out using qualitative methods, and adopted thematic analysis.The researcher used semi-structure interviews. A Small sample size of 5 participants were involved in total. The results found five key areas of commonality experienced by the participants. These included issues around access to schools, SNA, curriculum, fighting for resources and sub-themes of each. These results found that attitudes from schools concluded that the system is a one size fits all approach and parents overall experience was one of „pushing and fighting‟ to acquire the resources they felt should be easily accessible. Conclusively it is felt that there is a discrepancy between what is legislated and the reality of what the participant‟s experiences are, this became evident in individual attitudinal disclosures and the difficulties in accessing mainstream school.