Ethical Approval

Briefly describe the rationale and the main aims of the research you wish to undertake, including a statement of the intended benefits of the research. Please use non-technical language wherever possible.

This research aims at understanding the attitudes and opinion of parents and teachers on the inclusion of children with special educational needs in regular schools in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the research will unveil the nature and severity of challenges faced by children with special needs in regular schools as well as finding out ways of addressing these challenges. (House of commons 2008:32)

2. Briefly describe the overall design of the project including dates and/or the proposed period of investigation

The whole research exercise stretches for a period of six months from April to September 2011.The first two months will be used to compile methods of data collection as well as the selection and confirmation of participants' participation. Data will be collected during the month of June. During the month of July, literature review and analyzing the data collected will be done. Collating of the data collected, writing and editing of the data will be finalized in the months of august and September.

3. Briefly describe the methods of data collection and analysis. Please describe all measures to be employed. If questionnaire or interviews are to be used, please provide the questionnaire / interview questions and schedule – if available.

This being a qualitative form of research, open ended questionnaires will be utilized as the main method of data collection. (Ian 2008:106)

 

4. Location of the proposed research (i.e., Departmental labs, schools, etc)

This research will be carried out in the Ar Riyadh region in Saudi Arabia. This region was chosen due to the fact that it's one of the most populated regions thus being useful in drawing out the sample and for generalization purposes of the research. Additionally; it is recommended as the friendliest region to people with disabilities thus being useful in carrying out the study. The sample schools, teachers and parents will be drawn mainly from the capital centre of this region.

5. Describe the participants: give the age range, gender, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and any particular characteristics pertinent to the research project.

The main sample group in this research will comprise of teachers and parents of children with disabilities equally distributed in terms of gender in each group. Parents in the sample will exclusively be only those with children with disabilities and between 30-45 years of age. Teachers will be selected based on their teaching experience-that is eight years and above.

6. How will the participants be selected and recruited?

Simple random form of probability sampling technique will be employed to select the participants forming the sample. Schools from which the teachers and parents to be used in the study will be selected from the entire population of primary schools within Ar Riyad town in Ar Riyadh region in Saudi Arabia. From a total population of one hundred schools from this town, ten groups of ten schools each will be formed from which two schools from each group will be picked to form a sample group of twenty schools. The same procedure will be applied to select teachers and parents to participate in the study. (William 2009:98)