The Investigation Of The Development And Needs Of Homebound Students In Shanghai

Homebound instruction is one important educational placement in China to guarantee the rights of children with severe/profound and multiple disabilities to receive education. Advanced countries and region have been fully developed in the field, and researches on the topic are rich. Practical activities in Chinese mainland are rapidly developing, while researches are rare. Therefore it is necessary to investigate the homebound students’developments and needs. This study investigated the development and needs of homebound students in the Shanghai, analyzed their developmental characteristics and needs, which will enrich the theoretical work of this field and research on the development and needs of children with severe disabilities. Also will give references to the regulations of homebound instruction, and help the service providers to make suitable service plan, all of which will promote the quality of homebound instruction.This study adopted semi-structured interview outline to interview the family members and service providers of homebound students (n=41) on the development and needs of the students in five developmental areas:sensorimotor, language and speech, self-care, social adaptability and emotion, learning.The results are as follows:(1). Large majority of homebound students are physical disabled and intellectual disabled, and most of them with severe/profound disabilities. Homebound students stay in lower developmental level.(2). As for different developmental areas, nearly30%homebound students can understand and express normally in language and speech area, and few of them passed the assessment of self-care and sensorimotor area, one of them passed the assessment of social adaptability. Also, nearly30%of them have emotional and behavioral problems. In the learning area, homebound students lag behind their typical peers about two levels on average. In addition, these students have significant differences in each areas, which shows the trend of polarization. (3). There is relationship between developmental characteristics and needs.The medium able students in certain area have more developmental needs,and higher able and lower able students have less developmental needs. Within those students who have developmental needs, the better the students can do, the higher level do the students’developmental needs.(4). Generally, parents and service providers have the same opinions on the developmental needs of the students and parents are more conservative than service providers about the needs. In addition, parents pay more attention on self-care abilities, and service providers attach great importance on the learning development.(5). Students with mild/moderate disabilities have more developmental needs than severe/profound students on the area of language and speech, self-care, social adaptability and emotion, learning. And also students with physical disabilities have more developmental needs on the area of learning than students with intellectual disabilities and multiple disabilities.According to the results, this study suggested that service providers provide suitable services according to students abilities; explore education and foster approaches of students with severe/profound disabilities; give more support to help students students with mild/moderate disabilities and students with physical disabilities study in school; provide different education content to students with different kinds of disabilities.