Abstract:

The category of children with disabilities represents a vulnerable group in every community. From this standpoint, we realized that the studies dedicated to them in the specialized literature are much fewer compared to those related to their peers with typical development. The majority of researches analyzing the childhood period are dedicated to the children with typical development enrolled in the traditional education system. The disability represents the state of low functioning of a child in the society due to a series of disorders, injuries or other congenital or contracted health conditions, which is experienced as a depreciation and limitation of the individual in the context of community involvement. Taking this aspect into consideration, the current study starts from two research questions aimed at identifying the disabled children’s perception of their own disability recognition and exemplifying the way in which their own health condition affects their integration in the community. Therefore, we adopted a quantitative methodology, so as, based on a self-administered questionnaire with open and closed questions, we tried to identify several aspects that would shed light on the previously mentioned concerns, targeting the group of students with disabilities enrolled in middle school, who are included in the special education system. After analyzing the questionnaires, we reached the conclusion that the students with disabilities involved in the study do not have a clear perception of their particular health condition. Identifying the causes that led to these apparently surprising results represents future themes of reflection for this field of research.

Keywords:

Children with disabilities, personal children perception, special education system.