INTEGRATION OF CHILDREN WITH CHRONIC LIFE THREATENING ILLNESS IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM FROM THE TEACHER'S POINT OF VIEW

摘要

This study examined the process that teachers undergo in coping with the placement of a chronically, life threatening, ill child in their classes and investigated the factors that affect the process from the teachers' point of view. The qualitative-phenomenology approach was chosen for this study. The data were gathered by means of open-ended in-depth interviews. The research population was composed of twenty homeroom teachers who had ill children in their classes for at least one year after they became ill or during the school year from its beginning. Data were analyzed by means of qualitative analytical induction, in which data are organized according to primary categories, and these categories are corrected, improved and processed as the study progresses. At the theoretical level, the findings reveal an authentic body of research knowledge that the teachers structured and that illicit information about the unique physical, scholastic, and socio-affective indicators of the ill child. The findings explain differences between the “reintegration” of a child who becomes ill suddenly and the “integration” of a child who arrives ill. At the applied level, the study presents a behavioral profile of teachers that pertains to different ecological environments of a child that promote or impede effective integration from the teachers' perspective. Teachers, psychologists and consultants can examine themselves in light of these profiles, and expand their professional identity in regard to ill children who go through the integration process.