Browsing by Subject "grundskollärare"

Goal. The purpose of this study was to investigate school teachers' experience of stuttering and students who stutter. The goal was to identify school teachers' knowledge about stuttering and the characteristics of stuttering. The purpose was also to investigate what kind of knowledge school teachers feel they need about stuttering. School teachers' awareness of stuttering has only received little attention in the field of logopedics. Researchers have emphasized the teacher's important role in school children who stutter, but previous research findings have shown that teachers have a defective knowledge about stuttering. School teachers' experience of stuttering and students who stutter has not, as been claimed, been investigated in Finland before. The goal of this study is to identify school teachers' experience of stuttering and students who stutter. Method. This was a quantitative survey. All principals in the Swedish speaking primary schools in Helsinki and Espoo were contacted and asked to forward an email with a link to a questionnaire to primary school teachers in the schools. E-questionnaire reached an estimated 400 primary school teachers. A total of 40 primary school teachers participated in the survey. Responses were analyzed by suitable quantitative analytical methods. The open questions were analyzed by using appropriate qualitative methods. Results and reflection. Over half of the teachers indicated that they had no knowledge of stuttering from the past. Half of the teachers assessed their knowledge of stuttering to be poor. Majority of the respondents reported that their current knowledge of the underlying cause was poor and consequently stuttering characteristics seemed to be unfamiliar to many. Only a fraction knew the different strategies they could use in the classroom with a student who stuttered. There seems to be a need to inform and educate primary school teachers on stuttering, to improve school teachers' knowledge about stuttering and inform them about how best to respond, assist and support students who stutter in the classroom setting.