Primary School Teachers’ Attitudes and Knowledge about Stuttering

Abstract

Stuttering is a childhood-onset fluency disorder, also known as stuttering or stammering is a multifactorial speech disorder defined by frequent prolongations, repetitions, or blocks of spoken sounds, syllables, phrases or words. It is one of the most common developmental disorders and affects approximately one to two per cent of the population at a given time (Gilman, 2012). It is most common in children, and usually begins in early childhood between two and five years of age (Howell et al, 2008).

Over the years there have been many theories about the etiology of stuttering, yet none of these theories was satisfactory to explain the exact etiology. These theories are organic theories, psychoneurotic theories, learning theories, psycholinguistic theories and Multifactorial theory (Bloodstein and Ratner, 2008).

Current views on the etiology of stuttering emphasize a multifactorial model, These multifactorial models argue that the cause of stuttering is the result of a combination of a range of innate and environmental factors, possibly different in each person, and that on their own are not sufficient for a child to start stuttering. Children spend a large portion of their formative years with their school teachers. Teachers in return play a vital role in the development of our nation’s youth. Part of this role must include sharing the responsibility for the educational development of students with impairments or disabilities. Although a teacher’s primary role is to educate, they are likely not aware how their beliefs or attitudes about stuttering can significantly impact or influence pupil performance and classroom management (Stewart &Turnbull, 2007). Negative affective, cognitive or behavioral reactions, from both the environment and PWS, can limit the PWS’s ability to participate in daily activities and could negatively affect their quality of life (Betz et al., 2008). The aim of this work is to highlight primary school teacher`s knowledge and attitude towards their stuttering students, in order to modify their negative attitude and emphasize their role in management of stuttering. For this point of view our study used a questionnaire to explore the knowledge, attitudes and reactions of 100 Egyptian public school teachers to students who stutter. The results showed that while some of the teachers demonstrated positive perceptions of certain aspects of stuttering, inadequate knowledge about the disorder and how to deal with still remains.