TEACHERS' WORKLOAD INFLUENCES THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARDS VISUALLY IMPAIRED CHILDREN IN INTEGRATED SCHOOLS

Abstract

When visually impaired pupils attend public schools there are many additional challenges for them to overcome for their adjustments. Some of the challenges includes; parental expectation, sighed peer attitude and teachers workload. The study assessed the attitude of 19 male and 29 female teachers in integrated classrooms on whether their workload influenced their attitude towards integration of visually impaired pupils. The main objective was to find out if teachers with less than 20 lessons per week differed with those with more than 20 lessons per week [heavy workload]. The sample was selection criteria was any teacher who taught an integrated classroom. There were 48 teachers in this regard. The instrument used to measure attitude was a 24 item likert scale which had a cronbach alpha of 0.7. Collected data was coded and analyzed through SPSS to get mean grades of 67.13 for those teachers with more than 20 lessons per week. The calculated mean difference was -2.66 while the P value was 0.278.This implied that there was no statistically significant difference between teachers with less than 20 lessons per week and those with more than 20 lessons per week. However, there were minimal differences favouring teachers with less workload per week.