Teaching styles used by teachers in special and integrated schools

Abstract

School has a special role in developing social skills in students with mild intellectual disabilities. It is often the only place where important behaviors and competencies are shaped, and the teacher plays a key part in this process. In this paper, I analyzed teachers’ assessments of their teaching styles by comparing opinions of teachers in special middle schools and in integrated middle schools. These settings follow different educational paths and, consequently, different teaching styles might be used. In the study, I also took into consideration the location of settings (Warsaw and near Warsaw). I used the Teacher Behavior Questionnaire by Grzegorz Sędek (1995). It includes the following dimensions of teachers’ activities in class: encouraging curiosity and creativity, lack of control over the class, criticizing, pushing, demanding faithful reproduction, clarity of expression and movement, stimulating students’ initiative in class, visualization and concretization of the material, and reminding students of the need to learn. The study covered 121 middle school teachers, including 56 teachers in special schools and 65 teachers in integrated schools. The majority of respondents were women (81%). Most of the teachers had 10 to 20 years of service (30%) and were appointed teachers (47%) or chartered teachers (47%). The frequency of behaviors was presented as a percentage analysis. I assumed that the 0–20% range means that the teachers declare that they never show a given behavior, the 21–40% range – that a given behavior is rarely displayed, the 41–60% range – that the teachers sometimes behave in a given way, and the 61–80% range reveals frequent behaviors. The results above 80% indicate a very high frequency of a given behavior.