Abstract
M.A. (Social Impact Assessment)
The history of sports and physical education in South African schools and LSEN (learners with special educational needs) schools has significantly been under the radar in South Africa for the past few years. The process involving sports development and participation in MID (mildly intellectual disabled) LSEN schools hasn’t received the necessary attention that it deserves, thus, undermining the effectivity of sport as an intervention for behavioural problems within a school.
The special education environment is a domain often constrained by various behavioural problems as well as ecological system challenges which can have a significant impact on a learner, thus influencing their behaviour either positively or negatively. Learners with behavioural problems in special schools often have multiple disabilities that are co-morbid in nature. This in itself creates an array of problems for learners as well putting strain on the learner’s emotional, physical, and cognitive resources. The challenges experienced by learners with special needs often affects the surrounding systems: microsystem (family), mesosystem (school and peers), exosystem (community), macrosystem (broader ideologies, cultural norms and social structures) and chronosystem (the changes within each system that can alter development of a learner) in their lives. These systems form part of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory, which suggests that any disturbance within one layer of this system will have a ripple effect on the entire system, as they work collaboratively together in order to ensure that the learner functions optimally within these systems.
The effects of having a mild intellectual disability within a special school often results in the manifestation of challenging behaviour. This behaviour could significantly impact the learner and permeate through the walls of society. For that reason the discussion of a mild intellectual disability and challenging behaviour has led to the premise that being a learner with MID, currently displaying challenging behaviour, requires that the learner receives support from a holistic perspective in an attempt to mitigate the behaviour being displayed.
Therefore, for the purpose of this research the use of sport as an intervention in one particular special school was investigated, as well as the role of various stakeholders...