This study aimed at investigating the impact of parents counseling program on improving the developmental skills of early childhood children in the United Arab Emirates. This goal was achieved by including 15 children with developmental delayed (9 males & 6 females) in different areas from an early intervention center in Dubai. The children ages ranged from 16 to 47 months (mean = 31.46; SD= 9.47). The observation form, which was generated from the Assessment, Evaluation and Programing System (AEPS) has been used in this study. Children were initially observed using the observation form, then observed again after their parents completed a three months counseling training program, which was based on AEPS during the academic year 2016/2017. After testing the hypothesis using Wilcoxon and Z score, findings revealed that there were significant differences among the scores of the children’s in pre- and post-observation in the following domains: fine and motor skills, adaptive and cognitive and social and communication. The study recommends the importance and the need of implementing the AEPS program in evaluating and developing various skills of children with developmental delay. Additionally, parents and professionals should be trained to use AEPS program.
Abedalaziz Mostafa Sartawi , United Arab Emirates Universty, asartawi@uaeu.ac.ae
This article is available in International Journal for Research in Education: https://scholarworks.uaeu.ac.ae/ijre/vol43/iss1/4