Browsing by Author "AISHA FAWAD"

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    Assessing the multicultural sensitivity of pre-service special educators studying at universities in pakistan
    (UMT.Lahore, 2020) AISHA FAWAD
    With the growing trend of accommodating diverse learners within the general education classrooms, there is an increase demand in changing the roles of special educators that moves beyond the confined lines of disability-focused pedagogy. The special educators are required to explore the intersectionality of ability and cultural identities to completely comprehend the foul play of refer-test-place exclusionary model that is being nourished on the skewed boundaries of normalcy by the dominant cultural group. The current study intended to assess the response efficiency of the teacher educators towards the global dilemma of preparing prospective special educators with the unique blend of multicultural sensitivity. For such purposes, the researcher examined the multicultural sensitivity of pre-service special educators, enrolled in teacher training programs at the universities of Pakistan, by gauging their level of knowledge, consideration, understanding, respect and tailoring, in terms of enrollment level in bachelors’ program, teaching experience, multidialectal fluency, frequency of multicultural interactions and perceived level of proficiency. The causal-comparative research design was deployed and the data was collected from entry-level (enrollees in first or second semester of bachelor’s degree program) and seniorlevel (enrollees in fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth semester of bachelor’s degree program) students of special education training programs, enrolled in higher education institutes located in Lahore. After obtaining the consent, the Measure of Multicultural Sensitivity (MMS), along a demographic form, was administered on 330 participants i.e. 54 males (36 entry-level and 18 senior-level) and 276 females (129 entry-level and 147 senior-level). The study findings indicated that the teacher training programs of special education are not only ineffective in enhancing the multicultural sensitivity of the pre-service special educators, but also regrettably diminish it overtime as the candidates’ progress through the degree program. Moreover, the pre-service special educators with more teaching experience, more multicultural interactions, more multidialectal fluency and more perceived multicultural proficiency are highly likely to be more insensitive towards diversity. The infusion of multicultural reforms into the teacher training programs is recommended for both internal and external stakeholders of the education system and the confirmation of required acquisition of multicultural competencies by the prospective educators can be targeted for future researches.
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    Identification of broad autism phenotype in pakistani parents of children with autism spectrum disorder
    (UMT, Lahore, 2015) AISHA FAWAD
    The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) is self-report questionnaire which is developed to assess the presence of autistic symptomology in general populace with average intelligence. Genetic origin for the deficits in ASD has been established and relatives of autistic individual tend to have milder forms of traits that are clinically related with ASD, such as communication skills deficits, behavioral routines, and distaste for change and this is termed as ‘broader autism phenotype’. The present study aimed to measure BAP traits in Pakistani parents of autistic children using AQ-Urdu version and to identify the difference between the parents of autistic and neurotypical developing children on the total AQ and its five subdomain scores. The AQ total and five subdomains scores of the 54 parents (27 fathers, 27 mothers) of children with autistic disorder were compared with the 54 parents (27 fathers, 27 mothers) of neurotypical developing children. Parents of ASD probands obtained significant higher score on total AQ, socialization subdomain and communicative capability subdomain than the TD parents, and demonstrated larger proportions of broad, medium and narrow autistic phenotype. Considering the findings it is comprehended that cross-culturally AQ Urdu is a reliable measure and it fully supports the conceptual, semantic and content validity of AQ English. The socialization and communication subdomains of AQ significantly differentiated ASD parents from TD and thus they seem more sensitive in identifying BAP symptomology.