Teachers’ Perceptions of Students With Special Educational Needs in Two Western Districts of Bhutan

Abstract

The present study examined Bhutanese teachers’ general perceptions, challenges towards special educational needs (SEN) students, professional development (PD), and teachers' training with their levels of stress. A total of 53 teachers of two SEN schools in western Bhutan participated in this study. The data were collected using an online survey. This study's findings suggest that although 55% of teachers felt that teaching students with or without disabilities together is a good thing, one of the challenges certainly was the inadequate numbers of trained and specialised teachers. The findings also indicated that teachers learned SEN skills mainly through personal initiatives such a doing further research and reading.

Similarly, the study results showed that the female teachers were said to have experienced more stress than their male counterparts. Further, the study also revealed that some of the challenges identified by teachers while teaching SEN students were the lack of teacher collaboration within the school, lack of resources, overcrowded classrooms and the lack of professional development and training. Alternatively, the correlation and the prediction analyses further revealed that an estimated 52% variability of stress could be predicted by the PD/training attended by the teachers.