STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES AND ONLINE LEARNING: CHALLENGES AND DIFFICULTIES FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THEIR PARENTS.

The given study focuses on the challenges and difficulties of children with disabilities from the point of view of their parents. The roles of parents, cooperation and support of the school as well as the use of suggestions by parents are topics which are going to be discussed and elaborated in this paper. The methodology used to conduct this study is related to the literature review as well as in conducting the semi-structured interviews. With regard to the review of literature, laws, decisions, normative acts for the time period from March 2020 - February 2021 were actually analyzed. Participants are 26 parents who have at least one child with disabilities that has participated in online lessons, during the period of isolation due to Pandemic or this academic year. The cities where the interviews were conducted are Tirana and Durrës, two cities with the largest population in the country. The results of the study related to parenting roles showed that half of the parents do not provide active support for children due to long working hours, lack of trust in the online learning process, lack of motivation, etc.Regarding the time they spent each day supporting the children, most of them answered that they spent 15-30 minutes a day. The results regarding communication and support from the school showed that most parents and children were instructed on how to conduct online learning, but most of them had no assistant teachers other than the class teacher and no specific therapies were offered as well. Some children have experienced a low academic achievement during the period they have been learning online. Actually, all parents agree that if they were offered a choice between online teaching, classroom teaching or alternating teaching they would undoubtedly choose classroom teaching. The challenges and difficulties listed by the parents relate to; lack of concentration, difficulty in understanding the tasks assigned, difficulty in learning, lack of socialization, lack of internet access, lack of computer, etc.Recommendations listed by parents based on their experience with their children are as follows; the online learning schedule should be discussed and agreed with the parents as some of them are at work, assistant teachers shall be present, use of more efficient teaching tools, to divide the students into smaller groups to enable the concentration of students with different abilities, etc. We must keep in mind that the situation created due to the Pandemic requires immediate decisions, but on the other hand it is necessary that these decisions shall be taken in compliance with the physical conditions of Albanian Education. The education of children with disabilities needs support from relevant institutions to maximize their inclusion in education and allow them to reach their own potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]