A multidisciplinary approach to Special Needs Education; Professionals in Special Needs Education
Professionals in Special Needs Education are team members that are trained to help disabled persons to feel less handicapped about their situation and maximize the best out of them adequately.
The services in special needs education require the service of a multidisciplinary approach due to their complex nature in delivery. This goes a long way to facilitate the teaching of special needs individuals.
A multidisciplinary team is a team of specialists such as educators, medical professionals, and social workers, coming together to plan, assess and implement recommendations to make the person’s disability less of a handicap. The following category forms the multi-disciplinary team members.
- Special education teacher: He is the consultant to the regular classroom teacher who provides instructional assistance to the regular classroom teacher He also helps to administer educational tests, observe in other classrooms, helps with screenings, and recommends Individualized Educational Programmes (IEP) goals, writes objectives and suggests educational interventions.
- Regular Education Teacher: He is the teacher who teaches groups of children including those with some degree of disabilities. He plays the role of referring children with special needs to the appropriate professionals. He also has contacts with parents of special needs children and other professionals.
- Itinerant Teacher: He is the specialist who diagnoses and draws remedial programs for kids with special needs. He has the additional responsibilities of moving from school to school to supervise the progress of kids with special needs and is also in charge of a district or cluster of schools in the community.
- School Nurse: She does initial vision and hearing screen, checks medical records, and refers health problems to other medical
professionals. - Peripatetic Teacher: He is a specially trained and certificated teacher who works at the District Regional Education Offices. He undertakes the roles of identification, and referrals and recommends children with special needs for placements. He provides this assistance by moving from one school to the other.
- School Psychologist: A professional, who administers individual intelligence tests, observes children in the classroom, administers projective instruments and personality inventions, counseling and train teachers to manage behavior problems in the classroom.
- Physical Therapist: Evaluates fine motor and self-help skills, recommends therapies, may provide direct services or consultant services, and may help children obtain equipment.
- School Counselors: Specialists who guide and counsel students assists in gathering information from teachers, parents, and community agents, and communicate information about learners’ progress to their parent and other professionals.
- Audiologist: A non-medical professional who conducts an assessment of hearing mechanisms to determine the level of hearing loss by teaching the use of hearing aids.
- Ophthalmologist: A professional medical practitioner who performs surgical operations on the eye and prescribes drugs and glasses.
- Optometrist: A non-medical specialist who corrects refractive errors using a lenses-eye specialist.
- Psychiatrist: A specialist who works on brain functioning.
- Ophthalmic Nurse: Assists ophthalmologist in eye surgical operation and prescribes drugs.
- Optician: Non-medical personnel who measures optical errors and prescribes spectacles.
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