Managing Learners with Learning Disabilities

Have you ever wanted to understand more fully how special education teachers handle learners with Learning Disabilities? Educators have struggled over the years to formulate a clearer and comprehensive definition of the term learning disability, which generally describes children of seemingly normal intelligence who, nevertheless, have learning problems.

It's interesting to note that learning disabilities are so real even though they have not been clearly understood and well defined by scholars. I am reminded of the numerous children I have come across here in Nigeria who displayed behaviours that could be attributed to learning disabilities, but were clearly misunderstood. Of course, many learners with learning disabilities may have apparently normal intelligence but still experience learning problems and this can be frustrating for them, as well as their teachers and parents. For this reason, some of these students have been even tagged as ‘block heads’ or ‘dull students,’ and taken through horrifying experiences. Now it keeps becoming clearer to me, that special educators have a huge responsibility in seeking out the best ways to identify and educate students with learning disabilities.   

Over time, I have also realised that, first, teachers would have to come to terms with the definition of, and how to identify learning disabilities in order to find the best educational approaches/interventions.

Out of the many acceptable definitions of learning disabilities, the most influential definition so far is the definition by the U.S. National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD).

"Learning disabilities is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders intrinsic to the individual, presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction, and may occur across the lifespan. Problems in self-regulatory behaviours, social perception and social interaction may exist with learning disabilities but do not by themselves constitute a learning disability.

Although learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment, mental retardation, serious emotional disturbance) or with extrinsic influences (e.g., cultural differences, insufficient or inappropriate instruction), they are not the result of those conditions or influence."

Although the definition sheds more light on the issue, it's still not very clear to many folks, how an individual having apparently normal intelligence could cope with learning disabilities. It's however, encouraging that “identification procedures for learning disabilities are currently in a state of transition” (Hallahan, 2012), in my opinion this gives room for further research into the subject.

Currently, Response to Intervention (RTI), a multi-tiered approach practised in the U.S. is favored as the more acceptable way of identifying students with learning disabilities. Statistics indicate that just under 5% of children between the ages of 6 and 7 years in the U.S. have been identified as learning disabled by the U.S. public schools. This highlights the fact that learning disability is by far the largest category of special education in the U.S. An important question one could ask, is, does this statistic include learners with exceptionalities as well? What about those who physical challenges have caused to become learners with disabilities, such as those who are blind or deaf, are they also a part of this category?

In any case, the exact causes of learning disability have not yet been fully discovered, however results from various studies have shown that “Central Nervous System (CNS) dysfunction could be the cause of many, if not most cases of learning disabilities.”  Some sources of problems for learners with learning disabilities include:

          a.       Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

          b.       Memory and metacognitive problems

          c.       Social – emotional problems

          d.       Motivational problems

          e.       Inactive learner with strategy deficits

In addition, the following are some of the psychological and behavioural characteristics of learners with learning disabilities:

a.    Persons with learning disability exhibit interindividual and intraindividual variability.

b.  Reading disabilities in the form of decoding, fluency, and comprehension problems.

c.   Phonological and phonemic awareness.

d.   Writing disabilities in form of handwriting, spelling and composition.

e.  Spoken language disabilities in form of syntax, semantics, phonology and pragmatics.

f.     Math disabilities including computation and word problems.

You may not be aware that even though students with learning disabilities struggle in one area of learning, they may also excel in another. Thus, paying attention to the student’s interests and passions would help them develop their passions and strengths, and probably help them with their areas of difficulty as well.

Some important considerations with respect to early intervention for learners with learning disabilities are as follows:

a.       Little preschool programming exists for children with learning disabilities because it's so hard to predict at that age which children will later develop academic problems.

b.      Even though prediction is not perfect, several developmental milestones are related to comprehension or expression of spoken language, emergent literacy skills, and perceptual skills that indicate the possibility of having learning disabilities.

As a special educator, one of the most important lessons I have learned is that every individual, (learning disability or not) has their own unique learning style. Some students learn best by seeing or reading, others by listening, and still others by doing. Parents can help their learning disabled child by identifying his or her primary learning style. For example, is the child a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a kinesthetic learner? Once the child’s best learning style is known, steps may easily be taken to make sure that type of learning is reinforced in the classroom and during home study.