Puppets in additional expert pedagogical support for pupils with learning difficulties

Artistic teaching tools included in the process of education increase the efficiency of traditional learning methods. They help pupils to be more open, relaxed and motivated. They enable presenting information easier, which is especially important for pupils with learning difficulties. Puppets present one such tool. By including them in the educational process, puppets can affect different areas of a child's development and can play an important role in additional expert pedagogical support. They help achieve general and specific objectives in the process of education set out individually for each pupil with learning difficulties, since they offer a more creative, more interesting and less stressful style of learning. Puppets can affect the emotional, cognitive and social development of pupils and enable their integrated development as well. In the empirical part of the thesis, the frequency and the aim of the use of puppets in additional expert pedagogical support were researched as well as teachers' opinions on the use of puppets, their acquaintance with their use, factors affecting their use and reasons for not using them very often. An internet survey was conducted and analysed with the help of a programme for statistical analysis SPSS. The results are presented in tabular form, in graphs and descriptively. The sample of persons participating comprises special education teachers in Slovenian primary schools. Besides the results of the research, the thesis also presents the activities that included puppets as well as the objectives of the curriculum and of individualised programmes achieved by them on the basis of personal experiences in additional expert pedagogical support. Research findings show that special education teachers generally welcome the use of puppets in additional expert pedagogical support but do not use them frequently, usually because of lack of knowledge and ideas on the one hand and work overload and time shortage on the other. The puppets they mostly use at their work are hand puppets and puppets as toys, and as a learning method, they mostly use storytelling and communication through the puppet as the media. They mostly use them with children with specific learning difficulties in the first and second triad (age of pupils: from 6 to 11 years), and the frequency of their use is closely connected to various activities, methods and forms of work. They assess puppets as especially useful tool at helping pupils express their thoughts and feelings, at encouraging their imagination, and speech and communication development. Special education teachers are willing to participate at training courses on the use of puppets since they suggest seminars, workshops and trainings on various possibilities of the use of puppets, presentations of best practices in schools and study groups, publishing of the manual and opening of the Internet site on the use of puppets in the educational process, and professional help to special education teachers at their work. They also suggest introducing puppets as a compulsory university subject, and creating of didactic suitcase with various puppets. The presentation of the use of puppets in the programme of additional expert pedagogical support highlights the factors that affect the frequency of the use of puppets and at the same time suggests the guidelines for more frequent use by special education teachers. The fundamental contribution of this thesis relates to enrichment of the working methods in additional expert pedagogical support for children with specific learning difficulties and consequently the enrichment of the curriculum in primary schools