Effects of two intervention approaches on Korean general and special education teachers' goals, attitudes, factors affecting willingness to teach, and knowledge regarding sexuality education for students with intellectual disabilities

Even though the importance of sexuality education for students with ID has been emphasized in Korea, there is a lack of sexuality education programs for general education teachers and special education teachers. In order to provide appropriate sexuality education to children with ID, it is important for teachers to gain positive attitudes toward sexuality education and appropriate knowledge on the topic.;The objective of this study was to asses the relative effectiveness of two interventions in terms of their effects on the goals, attitudes, factors affecting willingness to teach, and knowledge of both general and special education teachers towards sexuality education for students with ID. Participants were recruited from general and special education schools in Korea that teach students ranging from eight to 20 years of age. Twenty general education teachers and 20 special education teachers were assigned to the control group and another 20 general and 20 special education teachers were assigned to each of the two experimental groups (information only and information plus film). The results indicated that, relative to the teachers in the control group, the teachers in the two intervention groups had significantly higher posttest goals (total and all subscale scores), attitudes, factors affecting willingness to teach, and knowledge scores. The scores of teachers in the two intervention groups, however, did not differ significantly from each other on any of the four measures. Results indicated that special education teachers and general education teachers differed only on the 'encouraging respect for diversity' subscale of the goals questionnaire and their attitudes toward sexuality scores. Special education teachers had higher 'encouraging respect for diversity' scores than general education teachers. However, special education teachers had significantly less positive attitudes toward sexuality education than general education teachers. There were no significant interactions between treatment condition and teacher type. In addition, teachers' age and the number of years spent teaching sexuality education were significantly correlated with the teachers' attitudes towards sexuality education. Thus, the older the teachers were and the more experienced the teachers were in teaching sexuality education, the more positive were their attitudes towards sexuality education. Furthermore, age level taught was significantly correlated with knowledge in the area of sexuality education. Specifically, the older the age group taught, the better the sexuality education knowledge of the teachers.