Crafting a blueprint for enhancing emotional well-being in special education post-pandemic: A fuzzy Delphi approach

Abstract

The well-being of a person includes different parts of life, such as mental and emotional health, physical health, and social relationships. Emotional well-being is especially important and refers to how people feel psychologically, including finding meaning in life, feeling positive emotions, and being satisfied with life. For students with special educational needs, focusing on emotional well-being is especially important after the COVID-19 pandemic to help them grow and succeed. This study aimed to create a plan for supporting the emotional well-being of these students in special education after the pandemic. The study had two main goals: (i) to find out if experts agree on the key components needed to create a model for emotional well-being for students with special needs after COVID-19, and (ii) to identify if there is agreement among experts on the important factors needed to build such a model. The Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) was used, gathering input from nine experts through questionnaires. The data were analyzed using triangular fuzzy numbers and the defuzzification process to rank each variable. The study found more than 75% agreement among experts, threshold values (d) below 0.2, and α-cut values above 0.5. The FDM analysis identified six main elements for an emotional well-being model for students with special educational needs after COVID-19. These results offer important guidance for developing emotional well-being models for these students, providing key support for both teachers and students in managing emotions in the post-pandemic period.