Investigation of experiences teaching students with intellectual disabilities

The article contains a survey of some aspects of experiences teaching students with intellectual disabilities. It emphasizes the learning problems, discusses the issues of planning and individualization of teaching/learning substance, points out the most popular methods of teaching geography and nuances of communication and cooperation with other interested persons. Generalization of investigation data showed that almost all interrogated persons work with children with special needs. The majority of respondents seek solutions of the mentioned problems individually. They mainly communicate with their colleagues and students’ parents and individualize the teaching substance and tasks on their own. Their solutions usually are based on teaching aids designed for implementation of the general teaching programs. For complementary information, they usually address the internet sources or attend special courses, seminars and conferences. Most of geography teachers working with children with intellectual disabilities use both classic and active teaching/learning techniques and formal and informal evaluation applying oral and written interrogation methods. According to the obtained data, the teachers of geography, who participated in the interrogation, give priority to teaching skills of geography and all general competencies. It should be noted that generalization of the survey data highlighted some negative aspects of the work with students with intellectual disabilities. It was determined that during the lessons most of the interrogated teachers do not apply evaluation/self-evaluation method and use written quizzes alone. They scored own experience of working with children with special needs to 2–3 points and pointed out lack of competence. Unfortunately, few geography teachers think that students with intellectual disabilities should not be trained at comprehensive schools