SENSITIVE COMMUNICATION AND INTERACTION SKILLS FOR CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL EDUCATION NEEDS USING THE PRINCIPLE’S OF THE ICDP PROGRAM

In the earliest stages, sensitive special educators interpret a child’s activities as he or she expresses his or her will, purpose, emotions, and desires. The child is participating in a dialogue with the special educator, based on the educator’s interpretative reactions. In this way, the child gradually enters the world of common human values, intentions, wishes, and emotions.The basic aim of the master thesis, presented in 227 pages, is to realize the necessity of implementing more sensitive communication techniques and interaction skills with pupils in special schools and institutions, according to the principles of ICDP program. This was accomplished through self-evaluation questionnaires given to special educators, asking them to make an evaluation of their own communication skills with pupils in special schools and institutions. Consideration was also made toward the need for establishing sensitive communication skills between the special education teacher and the child, as collected from the responses given by pupils and their parents.The thesis contains the following parts: introduction, theoretical approach to the research problem, research methodology, research results, discussion, conclusion, proposal recommendations, and bibliography, along with the data from questionnaires and surveys used for the research. The introduction highlights the need for research in assessing the importance of implementing sensitive communication techniques and interaction skills for special educators who work with children who have intellectual disabilities in special institutions.The theoretical approach to the research problem describes the intellectual disability by defining the concept, etiology of intellectual disability, classification, prevalence and characteristics of children with mild, medium, severe and profound intellectual disabilities. Furthermore, this section makes a detailed description of the ICDP program’s aims, tasks, and theoretical grounding, emphasizing the importance of early interaction throughout all stages of early interaction. The contents of the ICDP program describes the concept that the caregiver has for the child, the eight principles for good interaction and empathetic identification, the seven principles of sensitivity, and all areas and ways of implementing this program. Finally, in this section the current ICDP experiences in the Republic of Macedonia are described.The methodology section defines the subject, aim and character of the research, tasks, hypothesis, variables, methods, techniques and instruments, population sample,