What is the Status of Omani Parents on their Children’s Healthy Lifestyle?

The purpose of this study was to document the significance of the practices employed by parents that contribute to children’s healthy lifestyle in Oman. Those practices encompassed the physical activity and inactivity, sedentary behaviour, nutritional knowledge, and its reflection on their children at early childhood class. Subjects consisted of 237 male and female parents of kindergarten children in the Sultanate of Oman. The researchers developed a twenty-three and a twenty-item questionnaire intended to measure the degree of parent involvement in their children's impact at acceptable levels of validity and reliability. (Amazingly, it was found that parents’ healthy lifestyle were low in their habit practices (low in engagement to physical activity, sports and daily life activity) which showed a trend of sedentary lifestyle. Meanwhile, they did not encourage their children to participate in physical activity nor control them from staying away from being in front of TV screen and video games, too. In addition, their nutritional knowledge also scored low which affected their children’s health negatively. It is, therefore, suggested that lifestyle concept should be inculcated in the learning process for children, and further analysis be made as to what extent the demographic category may influence parents’ involvement towards their children’s healthy lifestyle.

Inclusion of an Autistic Child in Kindergarten Facility: A Case Study

This study aimed to investigate the effects of inclusion of an autistic child, at entrance age of four years and seven months, into the Child Care Center of the Sultan Qaboos University. The study was designed to specifically answer: (1) Which domains of the ASDA scale did „Ahmad‟ show notable improvement? (2) Which areas of the academic program did „Ahmad‟ show notable improvement? The program at the Center is a bilingual mainstream program in Arabic and English. It is a highly structured and individualized program which covers all of the developmental domains. It caters for two groups of mixed age children from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The study used the Arabic Scale for Detecting Autism – ASDA (Al Qaryouti & Ababneh, 2006) along with an entrance test and parent interview. The result of this assessment indicated that the subject of this study had autism. After six months, a further application of the scale showed that significant improvement had occurred, particularly in the communication and social interaction domains. Concurrently, the subject made marked progress in his academic studies, notably in the areas of math and language. A further application of the scale a year after the second indicated that the lack of severity of symptoms no longer warranted the autistic label. Inclusion of autistic children in a normal setting can have a positive impact on both social behavior and academic skills, if a well-structured program and a controlled learning environment in the setting of adequately training teachersis applied

Factors Affecting Attitudes of Undergraduate Students

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors affecting attitude of undergraduate students toward students with disabilities. To achieve this purpose, Attitude Toward Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP) was administered on a sample consisted of 493 undergraduate students which were randomly selected from three Omani universities. The results of the study revealed that the general overall attitude of the participants were negative. Gender differences were detected. Female students scored significantly higher on the attitudes scale compared to their male counterparts. In addition, senior students attained higher scores compared to freshman, sophomore, and junior students

What is the Status of Omani Parents on their Children’s Healthy Lifestyle?

The purpose of this study was to document the significance of the practices employed by parents that contribute to children’s healthy lifestyle in Oman. Those practices encompassed the physical activity and inactivity, sedentary behaviour, nutritional knowledge, and its reflection on their children at early childhood class. Subjects consisted of 237 male and female parents of kindergarten children in the Sultanate of Oman. The researchers developed a twenty-three and a twenty-item questionnaire intended to measure the degree of parent involvement in their children's impact at acceptable levels of validity and reliability. (Amazingly, it was found that parents’ healthy lifestyle were low in their habit practices (low in engagement to physical activity, sports and daily life activity) which showed a trend of sedentary lifestyle. Meanwhile, they did not encourage their children to participate in physical activity nor control them from staying away from being in front of TV screen and video games, too. In addition, their nutritional knowledge also scored low which affected their children’s health negatively. It is, therefore, suggested that lifestyle concept should be inculcated in the learning process for children, and further analysis be made as to what extent the demographic category may influence parents’ involvement towards their children’s healthy lifestyle

Omani Stakeholders’ Preferences for Educational Placement of Students with Disabilities

The purpose of the current study was to survey the stakeholders’ opinions of the best educational placement setting for students with disabilities in the Sultanate of Oman. Two thou- sand four hundred and thirty stakeholders participated in this study. The findings provided ev- idence that the majority of the Omani stakeholders prefer educating students with disabilities in regular schools over separate facilities. In addition, the stakeholders’ preference on the continu-um of placement options varied significantly. The results also suggested that the stakeholders’ preference for educating students in the regular school setting versus a separate facility varied according to the type of disability. Moreover, a significant association between the stakeholders’ role and their preference of educational placement setting for students with disabilities was found. However, the findings revealed that there was no significant relationship between the stakeholders’ gender and their educational settings preference. Finally, educational services for children with disabilities in Oman were discussed and suggestions were provided to improve these services

Sultan Qaboos University Students’ Attitudes towards Inclusion of Their Peers with Disabilities

The present study aimed to identify attitudes of students of Sultan Qaboos University towards the inclusion of disabled peers. To achieve the objective of the study, the researchers used a scale to measure students' attitudes towards inclusion. The final version of the scale consisted of 34 items after verification of validity and reliability. The results showed no significant difference between students of colleges of science and humanities in their attitudes towards the inclusion of their disabled peers. However, there were statistically significant differences in attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in terms of gender; in favor of females domain and the total score. There were differences in attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities among males and females in the college of science, and in favor of females on all domains of the scale. Also, there was significant interaction effect (gender by academic level). Meanwhile, the results of the study did not show statistically significant differences in attitudes between male and female students in the College of Humanities The exception was in behavioral domain, where female students’ attitudes were more positive towards inclusion than male students. In light of these results, the study recommended to study the attitudes of both administration and academic staff towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in Sultan Qaboos University.

Regular Education Teachers’ Attitudes towards Inclusion in Oman

The objectives of the study were to investigate regular education teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion and their educational setting preferences for teaching students with disabilities. In addition, the impact of teachers’ gender and teaching experience on the attitudes towards inclusion were examined. Seven hundred three Omani regular education teachers participated in this study. The findings suggest that the Omani regular education teachers held neutral behavior, cognitive, and affective attitudes towards inclusion; and a small minority of teachers believed that full inclusion in regular education classrooms or resource rooms were the best educational settings for educating the students with disabilities in comparison with other educational settings. Finally, the results indicated that there were significant relationships between teachers’ gender, teaching experience, and educational settings preference for educating students with disabilities and teachers' attitudes towards inclusion.

Attitudes of Principals & Teachers towards the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs in General Education Schools in the Sultanate of Oman

This study aimed to identify the attitudes of principals & teachers towards the inclusion of students with special needs in General Education Schools. A number of 230 principals & teachers participated in the study (42 principals & 183 teachers). The researchers developed a tool of 37 items covering 5 domains. Reliability & validity of the instrument were established. Results of the study indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in the attitudes toward inclusion between principals & teachers. However, the result showed a statistically significant difference between male & female teachers, in the second, third, fourth & fifth domains. Besides, there was no statistically significant difference in the attitude towards inclusion related to teachers' experience. The result showed that there were statistically significant differences in the attitudes towards inclusion between teachers who deal with students of special needs, & those who did not deal with them. Finally, this study came up with a number of recommendations

Psychometric properties of a newly developed learning difficulties scale in the Omani society

Resumen Introducción. El término dificultades de aprendizaje (DA) es una construcción reciente. Se ha acordado que el individuo que sufre de dificultades de aprendizaje tiene un desorden en uno o más de los procesos psicológicos básicos, como la atención , la cognición, la formación de conceptos , memoria, resolución de problemas, entender problemas, leer, hablar,escribir, o aprender informática Método. Este estudio fue diseñado para probar la validez de constructo (convergente y discriminante) de esta concepción deDA con el análisis factorial exploratorio (AFE) y confirmatorio (AFC). Además, las respuestas de los estudiantes normales se compararon con las respuestas de los estudiantes identificados con dificultades de aprendizaje. La muestra estuvo formada por 410 niños esc olares de la zona de Muscat, que fueron calificados por sus profesores (30) maestros, basándose en el cuestionario de nuevo. El cuestionario está compuesto por seis dominios y cada uno mide un componente de dificultades. Estos componentes son : dificultades en la percepción, atención, memoria , escritura, aritmética y lectura. Resultados. Análisis de fiabilidad y análisis factorial revelaron que la medida tiene tanto fiabilidad y validez factorial. Discusión y conclusiones. El AFC confirmó la estructura de la medida. Los ANOVA revelaron diferencias significativas entre niños normales y DA sobre la mayor parte de los componentes, prestando gran mayor apoyo a su validez de constructo

Evidence-based strategies to support children's emergent literacy in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

This study was designed to examine teachers’ reported use of evidence-based strategies to support children’s emergent literacy in Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The study participants comprised 644 kindergarten teachers from four countries, including Saudi Arabia (n = 154), Qatar (n = 105), United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n = 190), and Oman (n = 195). The researchers designed a 29-items questionnaire that addressed five dimensions, examining evidence-based strategies that support emergent literacy: phonological awareness, knowledge and understandings of books and other texts, print awareness, knowledge of letters and words, and early writing. The results showed that teachers reported higher use of strategies concerning knowledge of letters and words, followed by those concerning print awareness. In addition, they reported lower use of strategies concerning early writing. Moreover, teachers in the UAE reported higher use of strategies in support of emergent literacy followed by teachers in Qatar and Oman, whereas teachers in Saudi Arabia reported lower use of evidence-based strategies. Finally, statistically significant differences were found regarding teachers’ use of emergent literacy strategies due to teachers’ demographic background. Implications for future research are discussed, and they include highlighting evidence-based emergent literacy strategies in early years settings in the GCC countries as well as expanding the scope of the study to include samples from different contexts.Scopu