Hurst Christina, Corning Ken, Ferrante Richard
School of Health Professions, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA.
J Genet Couns. 2012 Dec;21(6):873-83. doi: 10.1007/s10897-012-9516-8. Epub 2012 Aug 14.
Elementary school is a transitional and impressionable period for any child. In inclusive classroom settings, children with disabilities may experience the challenges of acceptance and integration into peer relationships. The experience of children with disabilities in such classrooms can be positive if their classmates are accepting and open. One way to encourage these attitudes is by increasing awareness through disability-simulation. This study evaluates an existing school program, whose goal is to increase acceptance of others with disability. We surveyed students to assess the influence of the program. An adapted acceptance scale was distributed to students before and after participation in the program. Our hypothesis was that student acceptance would increase after participating in the program. Additionally, we hypothesized that physical, visual, and auditory disabilities would be easier for students to understand, making acceptance scores for these disabilities higher than those for a learning disability. We report changes in acceptance using group means. Our results reveal that post-survey responses showed higher acceptance than pre-survey responses, especially for auditory disabilities. Other significant findings include differences in attitudes between the two schools and differences based on prior experience with someone with a disability. By evaluating the effectiveness of this type of program (whose efficacy has been controversial in the literature), this study can provide teachers, administrators, genetic counselors, and parents with a better idea of how to address children's attitudes towards peers. In our study, the effectiveness of promoting understanding through disability-simulation has proven its worth to improve children's acceptance.
小学对任何孩子来说都是一个过渡且易受影响的时期。在全纳课堂环境中，残疾儿童可能会面临被接纳以及融入同伴关系的挑战。如果他们的同学接纳且开放，残疾儿童在这样的课堂中的体验可能是积极的。鼓励这些态度的一种方法是通过残疾模拟来提高认知度。本研究评估了一个现有的学校项目，其目标是提高对其他残疾人士的接纳度。我们对学生进行了调查，以评估该项目的影响。在学生参与项目前后，发放了一份经过改编的接纳度量表。我们的假设是，学生参与项目后接纳度会提高。此外，我们假设身体、视觉和听觉残疾对学生来说更容易理解，使得这些残疾的接纳度得分高于学习障碍的接纳度得分。我们使用组均值报告接纳度的变化。我们的结果显示，调查后的回答显示出比调查前的回答更高的接纳度，尤其是对于听觉残疾。其他显著发现包括两所学校之间态度的差异以及基于与残疾人士的过往经历的差异。通过评估这类项目的有效性（其有效性在文献中一直存在争议），本研究可以为教师、管理人员、遗传咨询师和家长提供更好的思路，以了解如何处理孩子们对同伴的态度。在我们的研究中，通过残疾模拟促进理解的有效性已证明其在提高孩子们的接纳度方面的价值。
