Early Childhood Teachers' Knowledge in Assisting Children with Special Needs in Their Classroom

Abstract

Indonesia has started to pay attention in inclusive education. The government issues regulations to manage inclusive education system and supported by cities or districts were ready to implement. Salatiga is one of the cities which declared as inclusive city in around 2012. However, after more than five year of its implementation, the initial observations and interviews with early childhood teachers revealed that the implementation of inclusive education faced many challenges, specifically in human resources. Therefore, the researcher made a simple poster and book to help teacher understanding their roles and other parties' role in inclusive education system. The aim of this research is to measure whether the socialization can improve teachers' understanding regarded inclusive education services. The poster and the book were socialized in groups of preschool teachers and groups of playgroup teachers in 4 districts in Salatiga. The statistic test result showed that there was a significant difference of teachers' understanding before after the poster and book socialization. Result of this study suggests that the government needs to build an effective communication system when they set a new policy. Simple tools, such as poster, which cover basic concept and the role of each party, can make significant difference for better policy implementation.