Improving Basic Thai Reading Literacy of Children with Special Needs Through Multimedia

Abstract

This research consists purposes were 1. to develop the ability of children with special needs to read basic Thai words through the use of multimedia instruction and 2. to compare learning achievement before and after the implementation of the instructional intervention. The research instruments consisted of ten lesson plans designed to enhance basic Thai vocabulary reading skills, with a total instructional duration of 10 hours and an achievement test administered as a pre-test and post-test. The target group comprised 14 children with special needs from the Special Education Center of Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University, selected through purposive sampling. Data collected from the research instruments were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including percentage, mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics using a t-test for comparing pre-test and post-test scores. The results indicated that 1) the development of basic Thai word reading activities for children with special needs using multimedia revealed that the students’ mean percentage scores before learning with multimedia were lower than those after learning, with the post-instruction mean percentage score increasing by 54.38 percent and 2) the comparison of learning achievement before and after participating in multimedia-based learning activities showed that post-test learning achievement was significantly higher than pre-test achievement at the .05 level of statistical significance.