In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) whose symptoms begin to appear at an early stage of life, when most of the children are included in the preschool education program. Due to the specifics of behaviour, educators face various challenges and difficulties when working with them. Namely, children with ASD need special approaches and work strategies that have effect on their functioning and enable them to be included in a group of peers. At this point educators face a lack of knowledge and competence when working with them, and gaining those often depends predominantly on their further education. Online forms of education make it to the foreground nowadays. One of these, intended primarily for educators of preschool children who have a child with ASD in the group, is online training or training that was created as a product of the ETTECEC project (Early Attention for the Inclusion of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Early Childhood Education and Care System), so it is hereinafter referred to as ETTECEC online training.
In the theoretical part of the master's thesis, we first present the field of ASD. In the following, we present the regulation of the field of education in Slovenia in more detail and the specifics for people with special needs or children with autism spectrum disorders in this area. We touch upon possible interventions and strategies for working with children with ASD. We also present the results of the research concerning the competence of educators to work with children with ASD, the regulation of education for preschool teachers in Slovenia and last but not least we present the online training ETTECEC, whose impact on the competence of educators is checked within the master's thesis.
In the empirical part we researched whether the mentioned online training as a form of independent education provides educators with the necessary content and whether it enables them to gain competence for working with children with ASD and their inclusion in the group. We evaluated the usefulness of online training in practice and based on the results of the research, made suggestions for possible additions or improvements. With this intention we carried out a multiple case study and used a qualitative research approach and a descriptive method. Four preschool teachers who have a child with ASD in their group were included into the research. The perception of self-competence before and after using the ETTECEC online training and the evaluation of the online training were checked with the help of two questionnaires designed for the purpose of the research and a semi-structured interview with educators after using the ETTECEC online training. We compared the online training with existing foreign models and suggested supplementing the contents from this point of view as well.
We found that all educators assess themselves in some aspects as more competent to work with children with ASD after using online training than before using it. The differences are in the intensity of changes in competence and in the fields in which individual educators assess themselves as more competent. Some of the contents are related to the challenges they face in their work in practice, they also made suggestions for additional contents and some other possible additions to the existing model. They believe that online training provides independent education, but they want feedback on their thinking from an expert.
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