The Development of the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool (SNEAT) to Evaluate the Educational Outcome of Special Needs Education

Abstract

It is currently difficult to find the tools to assess educational outcome in the field of special needs education. Therefore, this study aimed to develop the tool to evaluate the educational outcome of special needs education, called as the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool(hereafter, the SNEAT), that will enable teachers to evaluate their classes according to the changes of children with disabilities; for the development of the SNEAT, its content validity was verified with the draft of the SNEAT. For the content validity verification of the SNEAT, the surveys via interview and questionnaire were conducted for the researchers for special needs education, teachers who are affiliated with educational research institutes run by Prefectural governments and in-service teachers. In results, over 90 percent of the respondents answered that it is valid, which showed that the content validity was verified. The scientific methods to verify the SNEAT in the field of Education, however, need to be explored in the future, because the content validity verification method is done based on the subjective opinions of respondents. Ⅰ. BackgroundEven though the evaluation of academic ability has been considered as the major way to evaluate the educational outcome, the difficulty lies to apply it in the setting of special support schools; thus, whether the goals of the class on independent activities have been achieved or not has been used as an indicator to evaluate the educational outcomes in the setting of special needs schools (Kohara & Han, 2014). The new Courses of Study pointed out that "for the evaluation of the class on independent activities, the validity of plans as well as the effects and evaluation of education should be sufficiently reviewed, because the goals and contents of guidance are individually set up"; both the learning of students and the practices of teachers during the class need to be evaluated. Suzuki (1995) emphasized the importance of evaluation by suggesting that the evaluation of students should be used to reflect the classes, to understand the changes of students and to determine the appropriacy of classes.Nevertheless, it is difficult to find the tools that are built based on those aforementioned considerations and, moreover, it is hard to find the tools that have been scientifically verified and structured assessment tools. Nozaki, Kawasumi (2012) found that over 60 percent of in-service teachers have difficulty in the learning and practice evaluations by conducting the survey for school teachers on the learning evaluation and practice evaluation of special needs education, which presented the necessity of the development of education assessment tools for special support education. In this context, this study aimed to develop the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool(hereafter, the SNEAT) to enable to evaluate lesson evaluation according to the changes of students. This is a meaningful attempt, for it has not been tried in Japan by now. Shimizu (2005) suggested that the tools should...

Validity of the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool (SNEAT), a Newly Developed Scale for Children with Disabilities

“…They aim to help children with disabilities live an independent life by enabling them to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits required to overcome difficulties in learning and living, and have played an important role in A. Kohara et al 242 the education of children with disabilities (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology 2009). Kohara et al (2014a) first verified the content validity of SNEAT by conducting an expert survey among researchers on special needs education and QOL and in-service teachers. The follow-up survey that they conducted on the content validity of SNEAT among 89 in-service teachers in Okinawa Prefecture in Japan also showed that over 90% of the respondent teachers agreed that the contents of SNEAT are valid.…”