The Impact of Special Education Strategies in the Learning Enhancement of Special Children during COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced education systems worldwide, leading to the closing of near-total schools, universities, and colleges. The global COVID-19 pandemic epidemic is also impacting mental health. Families are concerned, and schools are being shut down at this time, which has a huge impact not just on regular children’s education but also on teaching children ith special needs.Children with special needs are becoming complicated; they are impaired because their memory and processing ability is not equivalent to others. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic effect, the halt of therapy development, speech therapy sessions and social ability classes are halted and impacted children with special needs. While the Special Education Schools (SES) struggle during the lockdown era to interact with Children with Special Needs, it has driven them to find new ways to get them out of the school situation. The Researcher has used the convenient sampling technique to gather data from parents, teachers and administrators from the Tirunelveli district. The Researcher has sent a Sample questionnaire coupled with 2 variables relating to technology and Communication. It is to understand how technology-based inputs enhances the children’s psychological, emotional and mental development. The results revealed that 2 elements are very strong: Technological Orientation (TO) and Communicative Orientation (CO). The technological orientation results from a technology-based intervention guides the Special Education Schools to help the Special Children through techno-savvy parents. On the other hand, the parents who are slow in technology use are given orientation to use their communicative skills to help the children. Thus, the current research recommends using ICT tools and techniques support special needs children and help them learn at home.

Keywords: COVID-19, Special Children, Psychological, Emotional, Mental, Technical Orientation, Communicative Orientation, ICT

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