Some special educational problems of physically handicapped children / report of an enquiry conducted in 1949 by the National Association for Mental Health in conjunction with the Central Council for the Care of Cripples.

  • National Association for Mental Health (Great Britain)
Date:
[1950?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some special educational problems of physically handicapped children / report of an enquiry conducted in 1949 by the National Association for Mental Health in conjunction with the Central Council for the Care of Cripples. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHILDREN (i) Selection At each school the Teachers were asked to refer for in- dividual examination the children whom they considered most backward in school attainment, for whatever reason, in relation to their fellow pupils of corresponding chronological age. In this way it was hoped to see every child who constituted a really serious educational problem on grounds of backward- ness, regardless of whether his difficulties arose from innate dullness or from other circumstances. (ii) Examination All these children had a personal interview during which each was given an individual test of intelligence—The Revised Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale. Children who presented special problems in testing on the Stanford Binet were sometimes given in addition Raven’s Progressive Matrices Test, 1938, or in the case of young children, the Merrill Palmer Scale and some items from the Pintner-Patterson Performance Scale. Two further tests were also given to each child, though not all children succeeded in gaining scores—Kohs Block Design Test (a Performance Test of Intelligence), and Schonell’s Vocabu- lary Test (a test of reading attainment). For further details of these tests see above Section II ‘F’, “Assessment of ability in physically handicapped children.”’ There was as a rule not time to attempt a standardised arithmetic test during the interview, but some children later completed the Southend Arithmetic Test, under school super- vision, and information was always obtained from the Teacher and usually from the child about this subject. It was felt that reading was the most important skill to examine, both because it provides the key to progress in so many other school subjects, and because backwardness in reading is less commonly explained than is backwardness in arithmetic, merely as a result of brief patches of absence. Moreover there has been considerable modification of thought in recent years on the teaching of number, and formal arith- metic of the type normally contained in tests has been shown to be of less educational value than was formerly believed. In addition to these formal tests an attempt was made to gain some impression of the child, his background and any special interests or difficulties, through conversation, often, especially with younger children, starting off from 2 or 3 drawings he was asked to do—both free drawings, and of things he liked and disliked.
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