Educating nonhandicapped children about children with handicaps : an experimental analysis of a preschool curriculum

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects curriculum for nonhandicapped preschool children designed to educate preschool children about handicapped children. The population of The Child Day Care Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, served as subjects. Six children between the ages of 32 months and 54 months served as experimental children. Twelve additional children served as control children. One autistic female was selected as the target child.

The curriculum consisted of 20 activities which were presented to the experimental children for two weeks prior to the enrollment of the handicapped child, in two 15minute activities per day These activities included stories about handicapped children and simulated handicaps for the "educated" children. Commonalities and differences between the nonhandicapped children and the handicapped children were stressed.

Three measures were used to assess the children's behaviors. Several measures were used because it was not known what type of changes the curriculum would produce or when it would occur during the day. Sociometric testing was conducted two weeks after the enrollment of the handicapped child to assess her social standing with the e nonhandicapped children. . Additionally, incidental comments of the children were recorded by teachers at the center.

A post-test only control design was used to examine the differences between the experimental and control children on the sociometric and incidental measures. The behavioral data were cast into a frequency table because of the low frequency of the targeted behaviors.

The Mann-Whitney U-test revealed that the experimental children selected the handicapped child as a playmate more often than the control children did. In addition, a t-test comparison revealed several d differences in the behavior of the experimental and control children as recorded in the incidental data. The hypothesis was suppported by the results of these two measures.

A future study should incorporate several differences. First, the number of children in the experimental and control groups should be equal. A longitudinal study would take into account the "newness" factor of the handicapped child and the possibility of generalization to the control children. Additionally, several handicapped children with varied physical and hehavioral handicaps would result in stronger support of the hypothesis. Another study of this type with similar results would certainly add support to the recommendation that all preschool teachers use a similar curriculum to facilitate the integration process.