Facing different situations leads us to experience and express different emotions, including unpleasant ones – among them anger. The school environment includes the situations that trigger anger in children, so in the master's thesis we will focus on the recognition, expression and regulation of anger in students with a mild intellectual disability from the first to the fifth grade of elementary school with an adapted program with a lower educational standard. Recognizing, expressing and regulating emotions in children with intellectual disabilities is still a largely unexplored area, so the goal of our research is to broaden the insight into it within the school situations. For the purpose of the research, we used a part of the data from the survey “Students' emotions in the classroom” (Smrtnik Vitulić and Prosen, 2016). We obtained the data through observation according to a pre-prepared observation scheme entitled “Students' emotions in the classroom" (Smrtnik Vitulić and Prosen, 2016). We analyzed a sample of 52 students in whom anger appeared during the observation period. We quantitatively analyzed the data of the observed students with a mild intellectual disability from the first to the fifth grade of a primary school with an adapted program with a lower educational standard, as we were interested in how often, in which situations and with what intensity the students express anger. We were also interested in how students express their anger verbally and non-verbally, and what are the reactions of their classmates and teachers when they express the anger. The results were also compared according to the gender and age of the students. For a better insight into the recognition of anger and knowledge of anger management strategies, we conducted semi-structured verbal interviews with ten students who had previously participated in the aforementioned observation. We found that students express their anger most often in social interactions with classmates and teachers, second placed are situations in which students felt psychological or physical distress. Students express anger more often non-verbally than verbally. Verbally, anger was most often expressed by command, complaint, remark/comment, when non-verbal anger was most often expressed by frowning, looking, loud/stern tone of speech and gesture. We found that the verbal responses of classmates and teachers to the expression of anger in students are short, immediate and extremely modest in content. The research results were also compared by gender and age (between the middle and late childhood age groups) of children. There were statistically significant differences between the genders in the expression of anger in situations of breaking the rules (female students more often than male students). There were no statistically significant differences between the age groups in the different situations of anger expression. There were no statistically significant differences regarding the intensity of anger expression between genders, nor between the age groups. Statistically significant differences in the verbal expression of anger were found between the genders and age groups of children. Between genders in the categories: expression of desire, swearing or insults (in both cases more often female students) and "no verbal response" (more often male students). Among the age groups of middle and late childhood, in the categories: explanation (more often in late childhood), question, curses and insults (more often in middle childhood). In the area of non-verbal expression of anger, statistically significant differences between the genders were shown in the categories - withdrawal and physical restlessness (more often in male students) and posture (more often in female students), while differences between age groups of students were shown in the category of handling objects (more often in late childhood). In the interviews, students with a mild intellectual disability mostly recognized the emotion of anger, a few times they confused it with the emotion of sadness. As the most appropriate anger management strategy, students most often chose solving the problem and thinking about further action. With this master's thesis, we want to emphasize the importance of paying attention to emotions during childhood, as early intervention could greatly contribute to the appropriate recognition, expression and regulation of anger in people with a mild intellectual disability.
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