Investigation on teacher’s knowledge of Attention –Deficit Hyperactivity disorder

Running head: SPECIAL EDUCATION
SPECIAL EDUCATION
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Name of the university
Author’s note

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Topic- Investigation on teacher’s knowledge of Attention –Deficit Hyperactivity disorder.
Background of the study
Attention deficit Hyperactivity disorder affects almost 5% of children worldwide
(Christiansen, 2016). Children often faces problems with attention, becomes more active,
exuberant less attentive and more impulsive towards the adults. Children who faces problems
with attention, over activity and lack of inhibition reaches a certain level have a developmental
disability called the attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD (Christiansen, 2016). At
the behavioral level, the disorder is generally manifested by excessive and is generally not
justified by a physical activity, impulsivity and fussiness, often exceeding the limits of the age
standards. They often face difficulties to concentrate due to frequent switches of attention.
Children with ADHD faces from various cognitive functions like lack of problem solving skills,
difficulty in orientation in space. Despite of the display of the clinical manifestation of the
disease in the early years it becomes difficult to detect the disease. The frequency of the
syndrome and the disorder is usually revealed late or is not detected at all. Elementary school
teachers are often the first one to suspect the symptoms as they are the one who spends most of
the time with these children and they know how students normally behaves in a classroom.
Therefore, teachers play a vital role in the identification and management of the ADHD
(Honkasilta, Vehkakoski & Vehmas, 2016). However, there are very few studies that have
shown or investigated the perception and knowledge of the teachers regarding the ADHD. The
poor knowledge of the teachers regarding the management of ADHD is in line with similar
studies that has been carried worldwide (Frigerio, Montali & Marzocchi, 2014). All these reasons
provided the rationale for conducting a survey involving the elementary teachers. Furthermore,

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there are no appropriate studies showing knowledge of the kindergarten or the elementary school
teachers about ADHD (Richardson et al., 2016). Hence, this survey aims to evaluate the
understanding of the teacher’s knowledge regarding the symptoms, diagnosis and the
management of ADHD. This report will contain a discussion of the results obtained from a
survey conducted with the elementary teachers.
Materials and Methods
A survey has been conducted to investigate teachers knowledge of Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using a questionnaire adapted from Jerome et al (1994). The
questionnaire was carefully set by the researcher to serve the purpose of the study.
Questionnaires of few similar studies has been reviewed before finalizing the final questionnaire.
The questionnaire and the methodology was tested and modifications were made accordingly.
The questionnaire is divided into two parts where the first part to obtain information regarding
demographic background regarding age, sex and experience. The second part consisted of 20
true/false questions regarding knowledge about ADHD. The questions has been modified to suit
to Malaysian context and distributed by electronic surveys via Google survey form. Some
questions has been included in the questionnaire such as the age group range, age group of
teaching, sector of teaching and training in special education . Out of 57 respondents collected,
26 were omitted due to incomplete data. A convenient sampling has been used as Elementary
teachers has been chosen as the respondents. A pilot study has been conducted in a Kindergarten
school for examining the clarity of the survey form and the time consumed to complete the
survey. The teachers, who were included in the pilot study were not included in the main study.

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Ethical considerations
All the collected data were kept confidential and were not assessed except for the purpose
of this study. Written permissions from the Ministry of Education, Malaysia were taken before
the conduction of the research. Written Permission from all the primary and the Kindergarten
teachers were taken. We have tried not to disturb the students of Kindergarten and primary
schools. Individual consent from the teachers were taken before the collection of the data.
Results
The study included 131 responses. A demonstration of table 1 demonstrates that 87.8% of
the participants were female and 12.2 % of the participants were male. The age of the
respondents ranged between 18- 42 years. Most of the teachers who had responded in the study
were of the age group 24- 29 years (29% of the total responds). 25.2% of the respondents were
above 42 years. 21.4 % of the respondents were between the age group 30-35 years. 13 % of the
respondents were between the age group 36-41 % and 11.5% between the age group 18-23. From
table 2, it can be understood that majority of the teachers who had responded in the survey had
teaching experience of about 5-10 years (41.2 %), others have teaching experience, for more than
10 years (22.1%). About the 36.6% of the respondents had teaching experience of less than the 5
years. As demonstrated in the pie- chart 4, about 41.2 % of the respondents have experience of
teaching special children for less than 5 years (41.2%). 229 % of the respondents do not have any
prior experience of teaching special children and 22.9 % of the teachers had 5-10 years of
experience of teaching children with special needs. Majority of the teachers who participated in
the survey were pre-school teachers (50.4 %). 32.1 % of the respondents were primary school
teachers, having the experience of about 7-12 years.

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17.6 % of the respondents were secondary school teachers having experience of about 13
to 18 years. In table 6, it can be found that 77.1 % of the teachers worked in private schools. 14.5
% of the teachers were employed in public schools and the 8. 4% of the teachers who had
participated in the study were self-employed teachers. Table 7, can give a scenario of the
percentage of responses having training in special education. Almost half of the respondents
(58.8%) did not have any training in special education. 41.2 % of the teachers taking part in the
survey had training in special education.
Pie chart: 1
Pie chart:2

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Pie chart :3
Piechart :4
Pie chart: 5