The purpose of this study was to inspect structural relationships among creative capability or specialized learning environment of child care centers for disabled children, play support competence of special education teachers and executive functioning of the young disabled. The study is hopefully expected to determine things necessary to support disabled children and provide basic information for the realization of inclusive education.
For achieving its goal, the study set up the following research questions based on prior research.
1. How are structural relationships among the creative capability or specialized learning environment of child care centers for disabled children, play support competence of special education teachers and executive functioning of the young disabled?
2. How is a mediating effect that special education teachers' play support competence has on relationships between the creative capability or specialized learning environment of child care centers for disabled children and executive functioning of those children?
In order to get answers to those questions, this study carried out a questionnaire survey of special education teachers working for child care centers for disabled children located in B city and of disabled children attending at the institutes. The survey used some scales to measure creative capability, specialized learning environment, play support competence and executive functioning. When it comes to procedure, the study started with literature review, followed by setting up a research model, preparation of a questionnaire form, conducting a preliminary survey and implementation of a main survey. Of the copies of the form that were distributed and then collected, some that were deemed unfaithfully filled in were excluded, and th remaining 577 were finally analyzed here, especially in terms of structural relationship and mediating effect. For the final investigation, this study applied the research model as mentioned above in accordance with SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 25.0 programs.
The findings of the study can be summarized as follows.
First, creative capability was discovered to have a positive effect on play support competence. In addition, specialized learning environment was found positively influencing play support competence. Moreover, it was turned out that such competence was having a positive effect on executive functioning. Furthermore, it became apparent that creative capability was not influencing executive functioning, but specialized learning environment was having a positive effect on that functioning.
And second, relationships between creative capability of child care centers for disabled children and executive functioning of those children turned out to be wholly mediated by play support competence of special education teachers. In addition, such support competence was found having a partially mediating effect on relationships between specialized learning environment of the care facilities for the young disabled and executive functioning of disabled children.