Experience and Challenges in Setting up a Model - Mahasarakham ...

Challenges
IJEAD 2(2) : 37-47, 2011
The main challenge faced by the
demonstration classroom is funding.
The current funding has ended and the
classroom has to depend on contributions
from the public to pay the teachers’
salary and purchase teaching materials.
Disabilities in Malaysia are viewed
from the welfare model of disability,
therefore the need to carry out research
on disabilities is not understood by the
society. As there is little funding for
disabilities to begin with in Malaysia,
there is more emphasis on funding service
provision rather than research.
At the beginning of the research
project, difficulties in finding trained
teachers in special education and autism
was a major challenge. Students who
graduate with a degree in Special
Education are all employed by the
government to teach in schools. Therefore
all teachers and teacher’s aides in the
model demonstration classroom do not
have qualifications in Special Education.
However, after 2 years of working in
classroom with continuous training by
the research team, the teachers have
shown highly satisfactory progress in
their teaching abilities. Their progress
is further spurred by a 6-weeks training
implemented by a master Special
Education teacher with thirty years
teaching experience from the United
States of America.
As teacher training has to be
implemented at the same time as the
operation of the classroom, the research
team has decided that the teaching
strategies that were to be investigated will
be implemented one at a time and not all
at one go.
This initial restrain in resources
44
turns out to be a learing curve to the
research team. The first teaching strategy
that was chosen to be implemented was
Structured Teaching. This strategy has
proven to be very successful, the teachers
found it easy to be implemented and it
has helped the classroom to be structured
resulting in the smooth running of the
classroom. The lesson thus learnt from
this implementation was that this strategy
may be the most suitable for use in
Malaysian special education classrooms,
where teachers have little information
and training on autism. A research
is currently underway to investigate
the effect of implementing Structured
Teaching in Special Education classrooms
in government schools.
Another major challenge to this
project is the lack of space. As the funding
received was small and space limited, the
research team had no choice but to set up
the classroom in a building that used to be
a cafeteria. The lack of space has hindered
the implementation of teaching strategy
that was to be implemented. The research
team is currently trying to raise funds
to build a center that will be spacious
enough where teaching strategies can be
implemented successfully.
The final challenge of this
research project is the complexity of
doing research involving not only with
children who autism, but also their
families. The research team itself has to
equipt itself with effective coomunication
and collaborative skills in order to work
with parents. Teachers not only have
to be trained to work with the students
with autism, but they also have to be
trained to work with parents and under
graduate students who come to volunteer
at the classroom. However, the efforts