The purpose of this study was to find out the difficulties of adapting to teaching profession and the efforts to adapt to the teaching profession through the experiences of beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities.
This study conducted in-depth interviews with three beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities that have below five years of career. These interviews were recorded using a cell phone recorder. Data collected through individual interviews made an analysis on the contents. The results obtained through this study were as follows.
The experiences of adapting to teaching profession of beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities in this study were categorized into three types.
First, beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities had realistic difficulties owing to disability on their school life. They experienced discomfort about commuting and had difficulties in helping students learn. They thought that becoming the homeroom teacher is virtually impossible owing to inconvenience of physical disabilities. In addition, their colleagues and students’ parents have insufficient understanding and the prejudice about persons with disabilities. Some of their colleagues were overly kind to them and some of their students’ parents expressed reluctance about teachers with disabilities. Moreover, they had to manage physical strength through physical exercises and health food supplement at normal times.
Second, beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities made a number of efforts to adapt to teaching profession. They tried to attend a small group meeting for friendship with their fellow teachers, so they were able to develop a stronger relationship between fellow teachers. In addition, they encountered difficulties in doing administrative tasks because of a lack of experience and physical disabilities. Moreover, They received teaching supervision for better teaching and were likely to apply teaching supervision to improve their teaching skills. They observed other teachers’ open classroom and tried to gain know-how about teaching-learning method.
Third, beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities utilized their disabilities in a positive way in order to adapt to teaching profession. They tried to teach disabled students with sincere empathy and real understanding. As a teacher with disabilities, they were concerned for disabled students’ future and taught disabled students how to become independent based on their own experiences. In addition, the education for persons with disabilities of beginning special education teachers with physical disabilities had positive effects on non-disabled children’s attitude to disabled children. Besides, they had inner tension between students’ parents during the early days, but they formed the respectful relationship between students’ parents through their constant effort.