The Alagappa University has proposed to establish ‘Centre for Special Education’ to train teachers qualified to teach mentally challenged and other special children and offer counselling to their parents, newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor S. Subbiah has said.
The Centre would offer a two-month course to those who had completed Special Education courses offered in the university, he told The Hindu after assuming office recently.
“We plan to invite special education experts from the US and Germany to train the teachers to teach and take care of the special children using latest technologies,” he said adding the experts would be asked to stay here for a couple of months.
Parents of the special children who struggled to look after them would also be trained and counselled at the centre, he said.
“The centre will be started very soon mainly to cater to special children in Sivaganga and Ramanathapuram districts,” he said.
Dr. Subbiah, a recipient of the NCERT award for innovative research in teacher education, said that language labs for English, French and German in the university would be utilised to train teachers of affiliated colleges in those foreign languages.
To begin with, the teachers would be offered one-week programme in English communication to help them train their students. Besides, resource persons in the university would guide them to start language labs for English in their colleges, he said.
The Language labs in the University offered six-month Certificate and Diploma courses in French and German, Dr. Subbiah, who was heading the Department of English and Foreign Languages before appointed as VC, said.
