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A comparison of the issues in special education in Victoria, Australia and Nebraska, United States of America
Abstract
Special education, educational provisions for exceptional children and youth, is based on the premise that some students have physical, mental, or behavioral characteristics that so separate them from their peers it is necessary to provide special services or to adapt or modify general education programs in order to meet their needs. Most nations have developed policies and practices concerning the education and needs of students who require special education. The primary purpose of this study was to identify those special education issues of most concern to special educators in Victoria, Australia and Nebraska, U.S.A. and to compare those issues to determine if there is a significant difference in the issues as determined by educators in Nebraska and Victoria. A modified Delphi survey was administered to special educators in Victoria and Nebraska to determine the important issues in special education as reported by selected experts. The issues were generated by the respondents themselves in the first round. Respondents were asked to respond to those issues in the second and third rounds of research. An independent-measures t-test was conducted to compare the final results from both states. With 40 degrees of freedom and alpha =.05 for a two-tailed test, the critical value was 2.021. The data in this study produced a t statistic of 3.595. Thus, it can be interpreted that there was a significant difference in the final opinion of Nebraska educators as compared to those of Victorian educators. Although there was a significant difference between the overall opinions of special education experts in both countries, there also were many similarities in the issues common to both states.
Subject Area
Special education|School administration
Recommended Citation
Mann, Diane Kay Mitchell, "A comparison of the issues in special education in Victoria, Australia and Nebraska, United States of America" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9805514.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9805514