Remote Special Education During Crisis: COVID-19 as a Case Study

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face teaching was banned, and more than one billion students did not return to school. While both teachers and students found themselves in a very challenging situation as they both need to quickly adapt to remote teaching and learning respectively, students with disabilities found themselves in even more difficult situations. This might be because they lack several assistive technologies at home that facilitate the learning process. The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that special attention should be paid to people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study investigates the applied remote teaching methods of students with disabilities, as well as the faced challenges. In this context, a survey was created and sent out to several stakeholders (pedagogues, teachers, school directors, etc.) that are directly involved in special education to collect their inputs. Finally, based on the collected experiences, this study presents recommendations and best practices to facilitate remote teaching in crisis for students with disabilities.