Research On The Homebound Education

Homebound education is not only an important issue of The Second Special Education Promotion Plan(2017-2020),but also a statutory form of resettlement stipulated in The Regulations on Education for Individuals with Disabilities.It is an educational placement mode proposed under the concepts of "inclusive education" and "zero rejection",and a supplement to the placement of special education schools and learning in regular class.The homebound education in China is in the initial exploring stage.The previous research and practice are mainly focused on teaching students from the perspective of students’ rights,ignoring the importance of family strength.Only when teachers arrive at home does teaching work occur,which greatly weakens the actual effect of teaching work,and the teaching content does not really meet the needs of families.Meanwhile,families could not be provided with accurate and effective support,resulting in the less obvious overall effect of the education.Teachers’ teaching in those special families could help them to gain endogenous motivation and play a positive role in promoting the growth of students and families.Therefore,from the perspective of empowerment of families with exceptional children,this study takes teachers and parents as the subjects of the research.First,14 parents are interviewed to know the attitudes of families with exceptional children towards this teaching mode,as well as their family needs and expectations for the future.Second,14 teachers are interviewed to deeply analyze their working attitude and understand the current situation of teaching work.Third,a large-scale questionnaire survey is conducted on 328 teachers from 16 districts and counties in Chongqing,from the teaching object,subject,mode,content,difficulty and effect evaluation to understand the current situation and existing problems of homebound education.Finally,compare the gap between the content of homebound education and the family needs in Chongqing to analyze the problems existing in the work,so as to search for solutions and propose a homebound education model based on the family empowerment.The findings of this study are as follows:1.The choice of object who receive homebound education is mainly based on the degree of disability and most of them are mental retardation,which is in line with the requirements of policy.The main body who provide homebound education is mainly made up of general education teachers,but they lack cooperation.The teaching method is mainly home-based teaching with less direct teaching time.The homebound education is assessed mainly based on the integrity of materials and lacks a continuously effective supervision system.Warmth and care are the mainly teaching content,but the urgently needed education and rehabilitation,family support and parents’ participation which are needed by students and families are few.Warmth and care are the mainly teaching content,but the urgently needed education and rehabilitation,family support and parents’ participation are few.2.The teachers are faced with many difficulties and they do not have a strong sense of identity and enthusiasm for the work.Furthermore,they are confronted with difficulties from the teachers,the students’ families,the teaching work and the students’ disabilities.Among them,the difficulties are especially prominent in the following three aspects: "School teaching tasks are heavy,so lack of time to invest in teaching","Students have a high degree of obstacles so the education could not play a practical function",and "teachers lack of professional knowledge".3.The teaching content is not well matched with the family needs.The overall attitude of the families is positive,but their expectations for their children are mainly self-care and enrollment.Those families have needs in four aspects: "professional support","service demand","information needs",and "psychological support"."Financial support needs","teaching children’s self-care ability",and "policy information knowledge" and "psychological counseling" are important.The teaching content is mainly focused on cognitive teaching,which involves less self-care ability and rehabilitation training,and pays less attention to the needs of parents.In accordance to the above conclusions,this study proposes the following suggestions: on the basis of meeting the procedure,minimize the number of students who need homebound education;establish a family-centered and community-based supporting system;improve teachers’ professional skills,strengthen the construction of teaching support system;formulate a teaching plan of homebound education based on family needs,taking the whole family as the object of education;fully realize the participation of parents and give full play to the strength of family advantages;pay attention to the evaluation of homebound education quality,establish a continuous and effective supervision and evaluation system.