Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation

5-14

Authors: Daniela DIMITROVA-RADOJICHIKJ, Natasha CHICHEVSKA-JOVANOVA

This paper presents the changes of the studies in special education and rehabilitation at the Faculty of Philosophy due to the Bologna process. The aim is to give a comparative review of the old and the new study program. Key words:the Bologna process, Institute of Spe­cial Education and Rehabilitation, European Credit Transfer System.

25-32

Authors: Irena DUMA VASOVSKA, Marina DAVCHEVA-CHAKAR, Gabriela KOPACHEVA-BARZOVA

Otitis media with effusion (OME) is the leading cause of hearing loss in children and it is associ­ated with delayed language and speech develop­ment. The aim of the study was to improve the diagnostic accuracy, understanding the difference between the OME and other forms of middle ear infections.

41-48

Authors: Zora JACHOVA, Aleksandra KAROVSKA

All researches point to the fact that the early de­tection and diagnosis are still performed late (after the third year of life), so in the first three years of life there is no establishment of the developmental changes in a way that they include the interrelation aspects of the human development and its natural sequences. With the start of early rehabilitation procedures we encourage the positive manner of communication in the small deaf child, so that it manufactures and processes information that can lead to positive quality changes in the develop­mental process. The hearing technology has dramatically changed over the last decades. With the contribution of audiometers in the 40-ties of the last century we started to learn how to precisely estimate the de­gree and type of the hearing impairment, which has an enormous meaning for the optimal fitting of the powerful hearing aids and the cochlear im­plants. In the same period hearing aids for small children are developed which enabled children with a sig­nificant hearing loss a better opportunity to de­velop speech and their spoken language. Key words: hearing impairment, early diagnosis, neonatal screening, cochlear implantation

59-66

Authors: Natasha CHICHEVSKA-JOVANOVA, Daniela DIMITROVA-RADOJICHIKJ

This article presents the results acquired from the assessment of the visual perception in students with special educational needs. The research cov­ered in total 85 students, out of which 20 with vis­ual impairment, 45 with mild mental retardation and 20 with cerebral palsy. To assess the visual perception we have used the MVPT-R (Motor-free visual perception test-revised). The research data shows that the students have statistically lower visual perceptive age than their chronological age indicates. Key words: students with special educational needs, visual perception.

71-79

Authors: Branimir JOVANOVSKI

This paper points out that people with disabilities in their everyday life face different barriers which make their life difficult and are limiting factors that enter all segments of their life. Besides the presented existing barriers, suggestions for their successful removal are given.

89-97

Authors: Boge CHADINOVSKI

The paper globally presents the commitments of the National Strategy for equal rights of people with disabilities in the Republic of Macedonia, the obligations that come out of it and comments on its appropriate realization. The Government of the Republic of Macedonia adopted the National Strategy on the basis of the Article 8 of the Law on Government of the Re­public of Macedonia (“Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia” No. 59/2000), starting from comprehensive contents of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, Conventions of UN, Convention of Europe and other interna­tional documents related to all citizens and espe­cially for invalid people. In establishing certain contents, the role of all subjects in the system of care, education, reha­bilitation, and employment were taken into con­sideration in relation to the issue of invalid peo­ple through a differentiated approach.

105-107

Authors: Risto LJAPCHEV

Writing a professional textbook provokes many dilemmas. One of them is either to seize studious elaboration of a separate issue extracted from a bigger unit in order to highlight a particular item, an entity or to elaborate everything that can pro­duce a broader unit and give information on the basic introduction into a certain professional area. The author of this textbook, Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski, has no dilemmas of the kind. He ac­cepted the second variant, having in mind the aim and the purpose of this book, i.e. the students of the Institute for Special Education and Rehabilita­tion at the Faculty of Philoso­phy in Skopje to per­ceive the complexity of the disability issue from a medical point of view. Courage, energy, positive motivation and knowledge are needed to accom­plish this, primarily a noble aim. The aim is to help stu­dents to acquire information and surmount the required material, consequently to reach the final goal, i.e. to help those who really need assistance, not any but successful and profes­sional assistance. The textbook Medical Bases on Disability by Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski impresses with the con­tent of elaborated topics. Thus, the au­thor divides it into five main parts, and each of them is didacti­cally branched, most frequently starting with the definition of the item. Then it indicates the physiological-anatomic bases, clinical manifesta­tions and classification of the symptoms into syn­dromes, the possibility for their differentiation and diagnosis, and at the end is the information that serves as therapeu­tic arsenal. Achieving knowledge of a certain part of these five parts from the book, and finally from all parts of the book, I hope that the users of this textbook will have the feeling they have sur­mounted a coherent unit, that they have be­come richer by getting wide-ranging profes­sional information. The first and the second part of the textbook Medi­cal Bases on Disability by Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski refers to the neuro-psy­chiatric issues. Thus, starting from the anat­omic characteristics, through serious elabora­tion of the part related to mental retardation, it continuous with pointing out certain psychiat­ric entities (children’s schizophre­nia, autism, epilepsy…) as well as neurological diseases (miopathy, neuropathy, cerebral-vascular dis­eases…) which, in many cases, are the reason for the disability. The third part of the book refers to the issues of impairments of hearing. The author, in this part, through presenting the anatomic and physiological bases, methods for examining the hearing and the balance, points out all etiological and clinical manifestations related to the disability problem from the beginning of this specific organ impair­ment, necessary for socio-communicative status of each individual. In the fourth part which refers to the medical bases of speech impairments, the author, with his didac­tical approach, starts with description of the anat­omic and physiological speech bases, and finishes with the basis of phoniatrics. The medical bases of the vision impairments are presented in the fifth part of the book. Information presented in this part of the book enables the reader to get acquainted with bases of the vision impairments, this important human sense that bears essential information on the existing of the complex everyday reality. Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski, the author of the textbook Medical Bases on Disability, additionally gives the references for this book, a very useful medical glossary and index of words that together with the other elements-the aesthetic cover page make the textbook successful from a technical point of view. Writing a book, especially a textbook for students is a difficult assignment, but at the same time it is a privilege too, because it is a possibility to help someone, and that is a special feeling when behind you stands one’s acknowledgement. I honestly hope that the author of this textbook will feel the students’ gratitude for helping them to surmount the material, the readers and people with disabili­ties’ gratitude as well.

113-127

Authors: Dobrinka GEORGIEVA, Ana STEFANOVSKA

It is a fact that voice pathology has an expressed frequent appearance in the last decades and the problem of voice disorders and their speech ther­apy assessment is not elaborated enough in the logopedical literature in Bulgaria and Macedonia. One of the basic factors on which treatment effec­tiveness depends is the correct diagnosis from logopedics point of view on which treatment pro­gram could be established. The purpose of the present article is to present a new instrument for a secondary voice assessment-an acoustic analysis of the voice as a part of Com­puterized Speech Lab (CSL) named Multi-Dimen­sional Voice Program (MDVP). There is no developed PhD on voice pathology the last 3 decades in Republic of Bulgaria. In compari­son with language, fluency and articulation disor­ders, voice disorders are considerably ignored and neglected. The speech-language pathologists do not feel very well prepared to work with this kind of pathology.

131-133

Authors: Tanja MISHOVSKA-STOJKOVSKA

Tanja Mishovska Stojkovska defended her master thisis on 5 June 2007 godina at Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation at Faculty of Philosophy “Ss Cyril and Methodius” University-Skopje, before the commission consisted of mentor-Prof. Dr. Risto Petrov, Prof Dr. Dragoslav Kopachev and Prof. Dr. Goran Ajdinski.

5-14

Authors: Goran AJDINSKI

The responsibilities and obligations of the special educators and the professional team that have to perform the process of inclusion is of a great im­portance, due to the fact that the education of chil­dren with special education needs is a serious issue which requires comprahensive approach, constant professional assistance, team work, contionuous in-service team training, as well as teacher and special educator training. Special educators should be trained for working in the regular schools. The training has to be carried out through direct sup­port in practice, workshops and seminars, ex­change of attitudes and development of further strategies for improvement of the process of inclu­sion. The special teacher, while teaching children with special education needs, has to realize a lot of ac­tivities such as: students’ preparation, assessment of the psychomotor development, evaluation of the students’ achieved results, adaptation of the cur­ricula, individual work, assistance to the main­stream teachers etc. Thus, the cooperation between the professional team and the parents is very im­portant in the process of inclusion.

25-32

Authors: Ljupcho AJDINSKI

The paper was presented at the Round table dis­cussions on conditions in education and employ­ment of people with disabilities in the Republic of Macedonia, held in September 2007. The condi­tions of the institutions, which provide early reha­bilitation, preschool, primary, secondary and higher education, as well as day and stationary care of people with disabilities were presented. The innovations in this field and the deinstitution­alized treatment of people with disabilities were discussed, too. The existing problems in the insti­tutions and proposed solutions for their improve­ment were also discussed.

43-46

Authors: Ljupcho EFREMOV

The employment of people with disabilities has shown positive results for the last few years, not only in the shelter commercial companies but as individual entrepreneurs or disabled people employed in individual commercial companies. The people with disabilities also, depending on the kind and degree of disability and the professional education are to be employed in the public administration and open commerce. Nowadays, in the Republic of Macedonia, there are about 650 registered shelter commercial companies that employ 3,550 people with disabilities and 4,350 people without disabilities, or the total of 7,900 employees in shelter commercial companies. There are 190 registered individual entrepreneurs, disabled people working on their own, and about 460 disabled people working as employees in individual commercial companies which makes a total of 4,200 employed disabled people. According to the Law on Employment being in effect from 02.06.2000, the number of the registered unemployed people in the Agency for employment in the Republic of Macedonia on 31.12.2001 was 3.300 people (this number includes registered disabled at work looking for a job), and in July 2007 the number was 2.200, which means that 1.100 people with disabilities have been employed since adopting the Law, and there is a tendency of increasing employment of disabled people.

53-57

Authors: Zoran KITKANJ

The Republic of Macedonia as one of the suc­cessors of former Yugoslavia, took over the pre­vious signed international conventions, dec­lara­tions, resolutions related to education, social and health care, social integration of children with developmental problems and special edu­cation needs. Thus, it was morally obliged to undertake activities for their successful and effi­cient inte­gration. On the other hand, the Article 35 of the Constitution of the Republic of Mace­donia le­gally obliges our state to develop a Na­tional Strategy for better life of this category of citi­zens, as well as their inclusion in all spheres of social life. Due to the mentioned above, it is necessary to change and amend the legal regulations in order to achieve more efficient integration of children and youth with disabilities. In other words, the contemporary European tendencies indicate on up-dating the legal regulations that directly or indirectly are related to these people and their more successful social integration.

61-62

Authors: Dragoslav KOPACHEV

The textbook titled “People with disabilities: professional orientation, qualification and employment” by Prof. Dr. Risto Petrov, was published in March 2007. The textbook is presented on 214 pages, computer processed. Topics included in the textbook are contemporary, current, clearly and documentarily worked out. They form a unit which presents the people with disabilities, reflects the professional orientation, qualification and employment of these people. The topics are fully adjusted to the subject, that according to ECTS, students of the Institute for Special Education and Rehabilitation study during the sixth semester. The material is structured in two parts: a general and a specific one, each consisting of several chapters. In the first, the General part, two units are worked out. In the first group of issues, the author considers the People with disabilities, especially those with impaired vision, impaired hearing, physically disabled people and people with mental retardation, as well as people with combined developmental disabilities. The author indicates on the definition, classification, especially points out the characteristics of these people from the aspect of their possibilities and abilities for work qualification and employment, In the second group of issues, the author talks about the Protection and rehabilitation of people with disabilities. He presents awareness about these issues since the first known documents. Furthermore, he defines the term rehabilitation and points out the conditions, principles, methods and tasks in rehabilitation of people with disabilities

67-69

Authors: Boge CHADINOVSKI

The round table discussion on “The Conditions, Problems and Development in Education and Employment of People with Disabilities in RM” was held on 26th September 2007. After the intro­ductory presentations and the round table discus­sions the following CONCLUSIONS were brought. 1. The Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs within their authorities to approach to changes and amend­ments of the legal regula­tions in order to provide: · To accept children with developmental problems and special education needs in pre-school, primary and secondary edu­cation; · criteria and standards for inclusion of chil­dren with disabilities in mainstream pre-schools, primary schools and secon­dary schools; · qualified defectologists (spe­cial teachers), to employ defectologists and additional professional assistance weekly: 3 hours in pre-school institutions and 5 hours in schools; · To provide database. 2. The Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Culture should provide publi­cation of textbooks and other books for the blind; should consider the way and timing for integration of these children in the educa­tional process and enable objective and pro­fessional assessment for inclusion; 3. The new Draft Law on Higher Education should provide benefits for people with im­paired hearing, impaired vision and people with severe physical disabilities. Benefits such as the right to an interpreter for the deaf and the sign language should be provided as opportunities for communication. For the people with impaired vision–technical aid and training on Braille’s alphabet, computers with appropriate software, printers and readers to be provided. For people with severe physical disabilities-access to the buildings of educa­tional institutions to be provided; and for all certain benefits at enrollment at the Univer­sity, scholarships, board and lodging and fi­nancial compensation of the state; 4. Further development of the process for esta­blishing daily centers, deinstitutionalization of children from the special institutions, the choice of biological and foster families, the chice of housing with previously accepted strategies, as well as bringing a Law on thises issues ; 5. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs pre­pared Proposals for changes and amend­ments on the Law of Employment of people with disabilities in order to regulate the in­crease of the percentage of the total amount of the ex­isting contribution for employment from 5% to 15%, which is allocated to sub-account in the Agency for Employment in the Republic of Macedonia (Special Fund) and is to be ap­plied from 1st January 2008; 6. The Agency for Employment in the Republic of Macedonia to apply the Rulebook for training disabled people on the requests of enterprises that employ such people; 7. The secondary and Higher education should provide new vocations and jobs depending on the level of person’s disability, which will en­able employment of these people, possible activities related to electronics and informa­tion technology, i.e. prosperous development; 8. The Operative Body of the National Coor­di­na­­tive Body for equal rights of people with disabilities is to appoint a working group con­sisted of 3 members: Boge Chadi­novski–a de­fectologist, Vlado Dodevski–a eng. in pro­tec­t­ion at work and Ljupcho Efremov–a defec­tologist, to prepare the no­menclature of voca­tions meant for people with disabilities and the Coordinative Body should provide prem­ises as well as financial means for this pro­ject; 9. Components of the Conclusions are the pro­posals in the introductory presentations of the round table discussions on education, legal regulations, employment of people with dis­abilities as well as proposals of the discus­sions and working materials; 10. People with disabilities appeal to the relevant institutions in the state and the authorities with the motto: DON’T DO ANYTHING FOR US-WITHOUT US; 11. The Coordinative Body entrusts the Presi­dent and the Secretary of the National Co­ordina­tive Body to point out and appeal to the au­thorized institutions to carry out these con­clu­sions.

91-93

Authors: Daniela DIMITROVA-RADOJCHIKJ

Daniela Dimitrova-Radojcikj defended her doctoral thesis on January 23th, 2007 at the Institute for Special Edu­cation and Rehabilitation at the Faculty of Philoso­phy, University “Ss Cyril and Methodius”-Skopje before the com­mission cosisted of: Prof. Dr. Vladimir Radulov, Prof. Dr. Risto Petrov, Prof. Dr. Ljupcho Ajdinski, Prof. Dr. Goran Ajdinski and Prof. Dr. Zora Jachova.

96-97

Authors: Aneta STEFANOVSKA

Aneta Stefanovska defended her master thesis on October 18th, 2006 at the Institute for Special Edu­cation and Rehabilitation at the Faculty of Philoso­phy, University “Ss Cyril and Methodius”-Skopje before the com­mission cosisted of: Prof. Dr. Risto Petrov, Prof. Dr. Dragoslav Kopachev and Prof. Dr. Goran Ajdinski.