
The Role of Special Teacher in the Special
Education
Gabor TOTH, Takeshi MATSUISHI
Firstly I have to write about what other
scientist thought and wrote about the teacher
of the Special School (after this special-teacher),
mainly in Europe. Deinhart and Gerorgens (1861, Germany) wrote a two volumes book
about "how to teach handicapped children".
They say that the special-teacher's duty
is a "curative or medical education"
(Heilerziehung). In Hungary we still use
this name Hungarian version, gyógypedagógus(curative-pedagogy),
for the special-teacher.
Luriua,
A.R. in the "Handbook of mental deficiency"
calls the special teacher's speciality for
"neurological compensation". It
means that the special-teachers work is educational
rehabilitation, psycho-pedagogy, re-adaptation,
compensation, correction, regeneration and
education,while the normal teacher usually
uses the last one the education function.
After all these - as a special-teacher -
my personal opinion about this, the special-teacher
speciality is not just a kind of education
or teaching method. This job is more habilitation
and rehabilitation then teaching. It is not
"only" a teaching (to give suitable
knowledge and information for students),
it make a kind of life-style. The special-teacher
not working only with school age children,
they start to work sometimes right after
the birth, with the early-developmental method
and they teach after school age too, during
the adult hood.
It gives us a 3-point time scale:
1. upbringing (teach handicapped children
after birth, not only from school age)
2. education (this is not finishing after
school age, continuing during the life span)
3. personality development (this is the main
part of the individual developmental theory
during life span)
In the 70's Wolfensberger, Nirje and Bank-Mikkelsen made a strategy how to take care of handicapped
people during their life. This concept name
is "Normalisation in human services".
Ever since this way of thinking influenced
the whole Special Education and is still
continuing. The eventual goal of this theory
is to adjust these children to be larger
society of non-handicapped before they leave
school. After this they may have a life as
near normal as possible.
The other hand is - why special is this job - that this has close relationship
with sciences. During the last century many science developed more than
during the previous 500 years (e.g. 15 years ago, we knew a small number
of neurotransmitters; these last 5 years, we discovered much more ones
and has much of detailed knowledge, that is why we call the last ten years
"the decade of the brain"). Because the special education has
a strong relationship with other sciences the new approaches strongly changed
it. It is enough if we think about the prenatal-diagnosis, the period of
incubator, neurological results, psychological and sociological methods
etc. This transition is still continuing, so the special educators have
to pay attention for all these sciences to use the new results to make
more effective the therapy and the care of the handicapped people. We call
this "a paradigm changing" during science-development. This is
all part of the special-teacher's duty, that is the reason why they are
different from the teachers of normal education. Figure 1. summarise this
part(see Fig. 1)

The special-teachers other speciality is
that s/he has to work a kind of academic-work
(educational approach) and therapeutic-work
(medical, psychological approach) in the
same time. That makes him/her a specially
trained teacher that is why also different
from the normal teacher. The special education
has to concentrate for the next 7 developmental
fields to make the best educational conditions:
1. behaviour
2. social skills
3. language skills
4. emotional skills
5. self-care skills
6. cognitive skills
7. academic development
To make all these, the special-teacher has
to work together with others like doctors,
psychologist, social-workers etc(see the
figure above) to make a team, to do
a teamwork. To make the best developmental
plan for the child and to understand each
other, the special-teacher need a greater
amount of knowledge about anatomy, neurology,
pathology, psychology and sociology etc.
It means they must have a special knowledge
of many different sciences, that is why their
job name is in English "Special Education"
and that is why they call it a "Complex
Science". In this case the special teachers
work is to manage the teamwork, to make the
developmental-plan for the children together
with the others on the base of such a knowledege,
because s/he will be the one, who is making
the effective therapy with the child.