Optimising Special Education: Active Language and Psychomotor Education

Abstract

The present paper provides an alternative intervention model for improving the education of children with special needs. The educational model proposed involves both the teaching staff specializing in various curricular areas, and the pupils with sensory, physical, intellectual and language deficiencies. The initial stage of the study refers to an informal approach of the educational process including children with special needs, explaining the multifaceted terms special education, language education, psychomotor education, recovery, and normalization. Special education needs adapting to the individual peculiarities and characteristics of a certain learning deficiency, that is why the second part of the study proposes a series of methods and techniques aimed at optimizing the educational process. These intervention means are mainly focused on the systematic observation of the children with special needs and the difficulties they have to face: 1) Oral communication disorders: refer to reception problems, lack of vocabulary development, weak linguistic component and language deficiencies; 2) Reading difficulties: the main issues refer to recognising, decoding and understanding the words read; 3) Writing difficulties: manifested by difficulties in performing writing tasks; 4) Deficiencies of general and advanced motility: the pupils are challenged in point of the spatial coordination of motility.The final assessment of the entire process should be multidimensional, including all the specialists involved, viz. psychologists, physicians, pedagogues, teachers, educators, sociologists, welfare workers, and speech therapists, thus achieving a genuine partnership beneficial to the children in need.