Awareness of Stuttering among Prospective Teachers of Mysore

Abstract

The study is an attempt to explore the awareness and attitude of prospective teachers towards stuttering in Mysore city, conducted as a part of International Stuttering Awareness Day. As stuttering exists worldwide, among different cultures it is essential to pay considerable attention in identifying and comparing attitudes, knowledge and beliefs of different cultural groups. Attitudes of 64 educators toward stuttering were studied using the questionnaire developed with few statements adapted from POSHA (consisting of eight domains such as nature, concern, attitude, causes, treatment, awareness, characteristics and occurrence of stuttering). Results indicated that their awareness on stuttering is less on some domains but also reflected positive attitude on some domains. Some of the results of this study are similar to those of other comparable studies conducted in other countries and cultures including Belgium, Brazil, Shanghai and China suggesting that most of the community has poor knowledge on stuttering. Public ignorance may be one of the factors of the mental and emotional complexities of stuttering (Blood, 1999). The results of the present study indicate that there is a need for SLPs to provide teachers with more information about stuttering. Hence, this study also helps SLP to understand the environment of PWS which play a significant role in the onset and maintenance of stuttering.