Habilidades sociais relevantes para alunos com e sem necessidades educacionais especiais segundo avaliação do professor

Abstract

In our culture school plays an important role in our children's development, as it promotes not only academic skills but also social skills. It is important to consider the role of teachers in the social and emotional development of their students hence this study aims to gather information on the variables which influence the value they place on their students' social skills as such information is currently lacking. We will begin by a) identifying the skills teachers considered most important for the social and emotional development of the students b) comparing teachers´ evaluations of the importance of social skills for children who have and don t have special educational needs. We will also look to identify possible influences of the variables age, gender, socio-economic status, level of qualification, length of time as a teacher and age group worked with on the importance placed on social skills. In order to achieve these goals, this study interviewed 70 teachers who worked in the first five grades of public regular elementary schools. Eighty per cent of them answered they had in their classroom, or have had in the last two years, at least one student with special educational needs. The participants were asked to rate the importance of each social skill in the social and emotional development of their students who had and who didn´t have special educational needs. These ratings were then transformed into scores and analyzed according to the principles of descriptive and non parametric statistics. The results showed that social skills related to civility, empathy and academic performance were more important to the teachers. Comparing the means of the total importance scores using the Wilcoxon test it was possible to see that the participants considered learning social skills more important to children without special needs. Of all the teachers´ characteristics analyzed in this study, only graduation appears to exert significant influence on how the importance of students' development of social skills is rated. Participants who had completed their education considered social skills less important in childhood, than those who did not graduate or those who had completed post graduate study.