Abstract:

Several studies have found that pupils with special education needs (SEN) are in elementary school pupils' collectives less popular and have fewer friendship relationships and their peers from the standard population. Even social support is one of the important factors of school success It turns out that not all schools are sufficiently prepared to create a supportive social environment to facilitate their education. Although social support is one of the important factors of pupil's school success, it turns out that only few schools are sufficiently prepared to create a supportive social environment that would facilitate their education. The aim of the paper was to find out how pupils with SEN and pupils of the standard population perceive social support from teachers. The relationship between satisfaction with teachers' social support and motivation for learning in both groups of respondents was investigated as well. The research sample consisted of 114 pupils with SEN (63 boys, 51 girls) and 802 pupils of the standard population (404 boys, 398 girls) of pupils of the fourth grade of elementary schools at the age of 9.7 years (SD = 1.7) in Slovakia. The measuring tools were the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (Malecki, Demaray, Elliot, 2000) and the author's 5-item scale to determine motivation to learn. Pupils with SEN perceived social support of teachers as higher than pupils of the standard population, but the significant difference in this variable was not confirmed. In both groups of pupils, a positive correlation was found between the perception of teacher support and motivation to learn. The degree of motivation to learn was not influenced by the support of classmates in pupils with SEN, but in pupils of standard population support from classmates play a role in higher motivation to learn. The importance of social support in education and its impact on pupil's motivation to learn is not the surprising conclusion of the paper, but the implementation of this knowledge into teaching practice fails on barriers related to the organization of teaching, the number of pupils in the classroom and the and the lack of interinstitutional communication.

Keywords:

Social support, school success, pupil with special education needs, motivation to learn.