장애이해 프로그램이 일반 중학생의 장애학생에 대한 태도 및 자아존중감에 미치는 효과

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a disability-awareness program on enhancing middle school students' self-esteem and attitudes toward those with disabilities and to examine the effects of the program in relation to the students' gender. This study was conducted following a non-equivalent control-group design, a type of quasi-experimental designs. Two eighth-grade classes at a middle school in G metropolitan city were randomly recruited and assigned either to the experimental group or to the control group. The experimental group participated in a 10-week disability-awareness program from April 29 until July 15, 2004, 45 minutes per session and one session a week, in moral subject classes (four sessions) or creative activity classes (six sessions). The program, implemented by the researcher, addressed the topics such as unbiasing stereotypes about disabilities, terminology and characteristics of each type of disabilities, a case of an employed adult with autism, a society in which people with disabilities and those without disabilities live together, and etc. The strategies for this program included providing and searching for information about disabilities, role-playing and experiencing disabilities in simulation, participating in volunteer activities, reading about and discussing topics related to disabilities. A teacher, who was not otherwise involved in the study, administered three measures to both groups. The Disability Acceptance Scale (Voeltz, 1980) and the Activity Preference Scale (Siperstein & Gottlieb, 1977) were used to measure two aspects of the participants' attitudes toward students with disabilities. Rosenberg's Self-esteem Scale was administered to assess the self-esteem of the participants. The major findings of this study were as follows: First, the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with the pretest as a covariate revealed that the disability-awareness program had significant effects on increasing the level of disability acceptance and activity preference among middle school students without disabilities. Secondly, the ANCOVA indicated that the program was effective in enhancing the self-esteem of middle school students without disabilities. Thirdly, based on two way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with gender and group assignment as two independent variables and pretest-posttest differences as the dependent variable, the effects of the program on enhancing the participants' self-esteem and attitudes toward students with disabilities did not differ significantly between boys and girls. The results of this study indicate that a disability-awareness program employing a multitude of strategies can enhance middle students' self-esteem and attitudes toward students with disabilities. This study implies that moral subject classes and creative activity classes can be used for implementing disability-awareness program with the aim of improving middle school students' attitudes toward disability and self-esteem.