Special Education

            The type of education designed to provide learning opportunities to the students with special needs such as mental, physical, emotional, and social needs in order to help them acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes are called special education.

Competencies of special education teachers

Competencies are derived from five common approaches namely sensory-motor, vocational-social, remedial, normalization, and therapeutic approaches to educating children with special needs. On the basis of these approaches, going through the training programs, special education teachers develop the competencies as discussed in the following paragraph.

Special education teachers possess the knowledge of the common characters of students with special educational needs. The teachers have the knowledge of the methods and techniques of modifying the behaviors of the differently able students. They demonstrate command over designing, implementing, and evaluating the practices to modify the behaviors of students. They show the ability to design individualized programs for the students with different disabilities in a variety of educational settings. Special education teachers implement various assessment techniques to find out the information through a variety of sources about the achievements of special children and plan required instructional strategies to facilitate students with diverse needs. 

The special education teachers have the ability to conduct a relevant assessment of students’ behavior through standardized and non-standardized means of data collection tools and analysis to improve the instruction further. They have the understanding of identifying the criteria for students with disabilities. The teachers facilitate and provide opportunities that promote choice and self-direction among the children with special needs. They also encourage and support the parents of the special children to play their active role in educating the students with different needs.

Significance of competencies of special education teachers in Pakistan

In Pakistan like in other developing countries, the efforts to cater to the needs of children with special needs regarding education services have not been so encouraging. From the inception of Pakistan, meager efforts have been made to provide education to children with special needs. However, non-government organizations extended their share to provide education to students with disabilities in cities. Through different education policies, special education was provided to some extent but those efforts could not meet the needs of the special children according to the population. In various national education plans, education service for special children was reflected but not implemented wholeheartedly. 

The reasons behind reluctance in implementation of those plans included lack of funds, trained teachers, and other facilities related to the requirements of the students with special needs. After the 1980s government focused the special education on the basis of international events such as the international year of the child, the international year of persons with disabilities, and the decade of the disabled. Special education centers were established and separate education policies were designed. However, efforts need to be triggered to provide education to the students with special needs to a large population of such students. For this purpose, training programs for special education teachers are significant where the teachers could be equipped with competencies to address the needs of special students in classrooms. In order to contribute to supporting the governments to play their role in addressing the needs of students with disabilities, teacher education programs for special teacher education teachers bear a high level of significance. 

Developed competencies among the teachers of special education are of great importance to provide maximum efforts for education services and rehabilitation of the students with special needs. Education providing agencies at the district level needs to provide facilities to benefit students with disabilities and one of the major facilities is the trained and competent teachers. Thus, the teachers having competencies to educate students with disabilities may play a critical role in the Pakistani context. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also play their role in addressing the needs of the students with special needs through teacher training and other facilities. 

In order to capitalize the efforts of governments and NGOs in providing education services to special children, teachers with competencies may prove to be an effective ingredient to achieve the desired objectives. Ensuring the effectiveness and rehabilitation need the role of a variety of professionals, educations agencies, and parental involvement to a greater extent. For this purpose, the teachers having required competencies play a significant role in ensuring the involvement of different groups providing special education.