Week 1: Introduction

Learning Disability

• Neurological condition that interferes with a person’s ability to store, process, or produce information

  • Affects the person’s ability to read, write, speak, spell, or compute mathematics

  • Can interfere with attention, memory, coordination, and social skills.

• Experienced by children from all culture, nations, language groups, and social economic status

• If provided with the right support and interventions, students with learning disabilities can succeed in school and have a successful career

• Learning: Storing, processing & providing information

Different Types of Definitions for Learning Disability

• Federal

• National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD)

• Interagency Committee on Learning Disabilities (ICLD)

• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5)

• Most definitions of learning disability include the following components:

  • Neurological factors

  • Cognitive processing factors

  • Difficulty in academic and learning tasks

  • Discrepancy between a student’s potential for learning and academic achievement

  • Exclusions of other causes

Brain: Structures and Functions

• The process of learning is an important activity carried out by the brain

  • Learning difficulty reflects brain malfunction

• Left hemisphere (LH): Reacts to and controls language-related activities

  • LH is where language function originates

  • LH reacts to linguistic stimuli, e.g., words, symbols and verbal thought

• Right hemisphere (RH): Deals with nonverbal stimuli – spatial perception, mathematics, music, directional orientation, time sequences, and body awareness

3 Areas of the Left Hemisphere of the brain that are used for reading

Broca’s Area

• Located in the left frontal lobe

• Links letters to sounds

• Associated with the ability to say words aloud

Wernicke’s Area

• Located in the left parietal lobe

• Involved in analyzing words

Left Occipitotemporal Area

• Involved in integrating learned words

• Involved in storing and retrieving words

Week 2: Assessment and the Individualized Education Program Process

Assessment for Special Education Services

• The process of collecting information about a student that will be used to form judgments and make decisions concerning that student

  • Used to identify the nature of the student’s challenges and to plan instruction

• Objective of assessment: To obtain information that can be used to plan ways to help the student learn

• Serves multiple purposes

Purposes of Assessment

• Screening

  • Cursory evaluation used to identify students who may need a more comprehensive evaluation

  • Initial evaluation (first step)

• Referral

  • Seeks additional assistance from other school personnel An evaluation of the student is requested based on observations of the student and their classroom performance

• Classification

  • Student are assessed:

    • For their need for special education services

    • To identify their category of disability

    • To identify whether the disability has an adverse impact on education performance

• Instructional planning

  • Develops an educational program for an individual student

  • Information from the assessment (classification) is used to develop instructional goals and specific plans for teaching

• Monitoring pupil progress

  • Several approaches can be used to monitor a student’s progress

    • Formal standardized tests

    • Informal measures

    • A continuous monitoring procedure

Determining Eligibility for Special Education Services

Two ways that schools can determine eligibility for special education services:

1. Response-to-intervention (RTI) approach

2. Comprehensive Evaluation

Response-to-intervention (RTI) Approach

• 2 Approaches

  • Standard Protocol Model

  • Problem Solving Model

• Intended to identify students who are having academic difficulties when the problems first become apparent

• A practice to be used with all students who are considered at-risk for school failure, and students with suspected disabilities (including learning disabilities)

• Goal: to prevent academic failure for all students who are at-risk of school failure

• 3 tiers of intervention are commonly used- higher tier, more attention

  • Tier 1: High-quality instruction in general education and monitoring of student progress

  • Tier 2: More intensive evidence-based instruction while progress monitoring continues

  • Tier 3: Highly intense, evidence-based interventions taught in small groups or individually, while progress monitoring continues

• Students who respond well to the instruction in Tiers 1, 2, or 3 of the RTI procedure are NOT considered eligible for special education services

• Students who are not learning with the RTI interventions are considered to be “non-responders” and may be referred for a special education evaluation

The Standard Protocol Model

• Involves prescribed procedures for academic and behavioural problems that are developed and implemented at each stage of instruction

• Instruction is standardized at each level of intervention

  • The same instructional methods are implemented across all students

  • The same teaching and assessment procedures are used for all students

The Problem-Solving Model

• A case-by-case approach to addressing individual students’ unique needs

• Each student’s failure to respond to intervention is given an individually tailored plan for the next level of instruction or support

Comprehensive Evaluation

• Intended to identify students who are having academic difficulties

• Involves collecting information about an individual student that can be used to:

  • Form judgments

  • Make critical decisions about the students

  • Plan appropriate instructions

• Used by schools in the process of preparing an individualized education program (IEP) for a student

• Information Obtained

  • Observational data the describes the student’s behaviour

  • Educationally relevant medical findings

  • Data to exclude visual, hearing, or motor disability; limited English proficiency; cultural factors; emotional disturbance; etc.

  • Data from standardized measures and qualitative analysis of the student’s ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell and do mathematics

  • Summary of the student’s strengths and weaknesses and the basis for determination of a specific learning disability if found

  • Recommendations based on the data that inform individualized instruction, state necessary accommodations or modifications, and identify behavioural and learning supports needed

  • Review of RTI information (if RTI was implemented)

  • Comparison of a student’s intellectual ability (potential for learning) and the student’s actual achievement

Individualized Education Program (IEP)

• A written statement for each child with a disability

• Each IEP is designed for one student and should be a truly individualized document

• Creates an opportunity for teachers, parents, school administrators, related services personnel, and students (when appropriate) to work together to improve educational results for children with disabilities

• Consists of 3 broad stages: referral, assessment, instruction

Week 3: Specialized Instruction

Specialized Instruction

• Instruction based on the individualized needs of the student

• Unique to a particular child

• Instruction is planned based on the individualized needs of the student

• provides the instruction needed by the child.

  • Ex: Student may need a specific multi-sensory approach to teach him reading because he has poor auditory and visual memory skills

Kirk’s Diagnostic-Prescriptive Approach (Special Education)

1. Assessment of a child’s special physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and educational needs.

2. Determination of the focus of the instruction through the development of the annual goals and short-term objectives of the IEP.

3. Decisions about how instruction should be delivered through task analysis and specialized instructional techniques.

4. Measurement of the child’s progress

Differentiated Instruction

• Take place in the general education classroom

• Involves the teacher using techniques that are designed to meet the range of diversity within the classroom

• Reflects the philosophy of teaching that enables teachers to reach the unique needs of each student, capitalizing on the student’s strengths and weaknesses

• Applies an approach to teaching and learning that gives students multiple options for taking in information and making sense of ideas

Accommodations

• Tools provided to students, such as extended timelines or large print materials

• No change to the content being learned

Modifications

• The content of material being learned is changed

Direct Instruction

• A method of teaching the academic skills of the curriculum in a structured and controlled manner

• The curriculum and the tasks that the student is to learn are first analyzed, then the desired academic curriculum skill is carefully sequenced so that the teacher teaches each step in sequence

• The student practices and repeats each step of the sequence until the skill is mastered

Characteristics of Direct Instruction

• Academic skills taught directly

• Teacher directed and controlled

• Involves carefully sequenced and structured materials

• Provides student mastery of basic skills

• Set goals that are clear to students

• Allocates sufficient time for instruction

• Uses continuous monitoring of student performance

• Provides immediate feedback to students

• Teaches a skill until mastery of that skill is achieved

Mastery learning

• An outcome of direct instruction

• The student must learn each of a sequence of skills to learn a task (learning each skill of a task is related to climbing the rungs of a ladder – each rung must be touched to make it to the top)

Controlling Instructional Variables

• Many factors related to learning disabilities cannot be controlled by a teacher or a school

• However, the following variables can be adjusted by teachers to enhance student learning:

  • Difficulty level

  • Space

  • Time

  • Language

Difficulty Level

• Can be modified to meet a student’s present performance and tolerance levels

• Relate concepts:

  • Readiness: The state of maturational development that is necessary before a skill can be learned

  • Zone of proximal development (Vygotsky): An appropriate level of

  • difficulty for the student’s learning

Space

• The physical setting where the learning occurs

• Should enhance learning

• Space can be modified using partitions, screens, removing distracting stimuli, etc.

• Involves the student’s work areas (Ex: size of the paper, desk surface)

Time

• Many ways to control time in the teaching setting:

  • Lessons can be completed in short periods of time (e.g., one row of math questions vs. an entire sheet)

  • For timed activities and exercises, the allotted time can be increased

  • Time can be broken up into shorter units by varying the types of activities

Language

• Aim is for language to clarify vs. confuse

• Language should be matched with the student’s level of understanding

  • Ex: For students whose first language is not English, it is even more important that the language used for instruction is clear, precise, and unambiguous

Accommodations for Students with Learning Disabilities and Related Disabilities

• Supporting attention

• Supporting student’s ability to listen

• Adapting the curriculum

• Helping students manage time

Effective Instructional Strategies for General Education

• Peer tutoring

• Explicit teaching

• Promoting active learning

• Scaffolded instruction

• Supporting executive functions

• Learning strategies instruction

Week 4: Educational Settings and the Role of the Family

Educational Settings

• The educational environment (or setting) where students with learning disabilities and related mild disabilities will receive instruction is determined by the IEP

• The IEP team should consider the following factors when selecting an educational setting for a particular student:

  • The severity of the disability

  • The student’s need for related services

  • The student’s ability to fit into the routine of the selected setting

  • The student’s social and academic skills

  • The student’s level of schooling (primary, intermediate, or secondary)

• A placement that combines elements of several types of educational settings recommended.

• Different types of environmental settings for learning:

  • General Education Classroom

  • Resource Room

  • Separate Class

  • Separate School

  • Residential Facility

  • Homebound or Hospital Setting

  • One-to-One Instruction

General Education Classroom

• The regular class in which most students in school receive instruction

• Considered the least restrictive environment in terms of being with students who do not have disabilities

  • Simply placing students with disabilities in this context is not enough to ensure academic success or social acceptance

  • Targeted and specialized instruction and attention is required to support the needs of the student

  • The special educator may work with the general education classroom teacher, provide materials for the student, or teach the student within the general education classroom

Resource Room

• A special instructional setting, usually a room within a school

• In this context, small groups of students meet with a special education teacher for special instruction for a portion of the day

• Students spend the remainder of the day in the general education classrooms

• This context offers flexibility in terms of the curriculum offered, the time students spend in the program, the number of students served, and the teacher’s time

Separate Class

• A special class for children with disabilities taught by a teacher with special training

• Children in a separate class usually spend most of the say in this setting

• Typically small, containing 6 to 15 students at a time

• Offers the opportunity for highly individualized and closely supervised intensive instruction

• Can offer more intensive individualized instruction in which students spend more time learning

• May provide the most appropriate setting for the kind of intensive and comprehensive intervention needed by students with the most severe learning difficulties

• Some separate classes are categorical, consisting of student with one category of disability (e.g., learning disability), other are cross-categorical, consisting of students with mild or moderate disabilities

Separate School

● Schools for students with learning disabilities that students attend during the day; students return to their homes at the end of the day

● Often a private institution but sometimes publicly supported

● Some students attend the separate school full time, other students attend the separate school for half a day and spend the remainder of the day in the public school.

● Advantage: Often serve students with learning disabilities and related mild disabilities well, and sometimes provide the only feasible option for certain students

● Disadvantage: High expense to parents, traveling distance, lack of opportunity to be with students in the general education population

Residential Facility

• Educational institutions in which students live away from home and receive their education

• May be privately managed or sponsored by a government agency

• Relatively few students have disabilities that are severe enough to warrant this type of placement

• May be the best solution if the community lacks adequate facilities, behavioural manifestations are extremely severed, or emotional reaction among other members of the family is debilitating

• Disadvantage: Student is removed from their home and neighborhood, and have fewer opportunities for social experiences in the large community

Homebound or Hospital Setting

• In these contexts, students have a medical condition requiring these placements

• Typically, teachers are sent to the home or hospital setting to provide instruction

One to one Instruction

• Instruction involved on adult working with one student

• Can lead to substantial improvement in student achievement

• Teaching is highly individualized, and the student receives intensive instruction over a period of time by a skilled teacher who can tailor the instruction to the specific student needs

• The cost of providing a teacher for each student is impractical for schools, so parents must seek out private institutions for this highly individualized form of instruction

The Role of the Family

• Parents, older siblings, extended family members can play a critical role for children who are navigating learning disabilities.

• Parents/guardians are advised to do the following to support their child advance in their education with their disability:

  • Be informed and continually learn about learning disabilities

  • Advocate for their child, and seek the right program for them at home, school, and in the community

  • Work to ensure that their child’s legal rights are being met

  • Help to manage their child’s behaviour while at the same time being empathetic of their child’s feelings, failures, fears, and hardships
    

Week 6: Learning Theories Developmental Psychology

Why Study Learning Theories?

• Help us understand different aspects of learning

• Theories are practical as they helps someone understand the following:

  • A guide of action

  • Clarifies and structures thoughts

  • Creates a catalyst for further research

• The purpose of theory is to bring form, coherence, and meaning to what we observe in the real world.

%%Learning Theories in Specialized and General Education %%

• Theory helps with different forms of assessment and instructional practices

• Theories that are made for understanding learning disabilities are applied in many ways in specialized education and general education

  • Specialized Education: Is a range of services that aid students that have disabilities to learn. It's not a “one size fits all” approach — special education is tailored to meet the needs of individual kids.

  • General Education: This is the standard curriculum that is taught in public schools for majority of students

%%Developmental Psychology %%

• The maturation of cognitive skills follows a sequential progression.

• Learning ability is dependent on the child’s current maturational status.

• Any attempts to speed up the developmental process will cause issues.

• The maturation of cognitive skills follows a sequential progression.

  • Each theory has their own concept of the sequential progression but they all agree:

    • Stages cannot be skipped (can be accelerated).

    • Each stage marks new intellectual ability.

    • Stages occur at different ages or time-periods of development.

• Learning ability is dependent on the child’s current maturational status.

  • Environment: home, neighbourhood, school.

  • Socio-economic: income, parental assets.

  • Biology: nutrition, health conditions, genetics.

• Any attempts to speed up the developmental process will cause issues.

Developmental Variations

• The term developmental variations refers to differences in the rates of specific components of development.

  • Each individual has a preset rate of growth for various human functions, including cognitive abilities. Discrepancies among the various abilities indicate that various abilities are maturing at different rates, with some abilities lagging in their development.

  • Bender (1957) called these variations “maturational lags.” This maturational perspective implies that many children with learning problems are not so different from other children; rather, their developmental differences are more a matter of timing.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

• Vygotsky, recognized the importance of teaching at the appropriate difficulty level for the student. He reasoned that children can learn when instruction is directed toward what Vygotsky called their zone of proximal development (ZPD), Vygotsky envisioned a range of difficulty levels of tasks for a student:

  • A level that is very easy for a student to do independently

  • A middle level that a student can accomplish with assistance

  • A level that is much too difficult for successful student learning, or a frustration level.

• Vygotsky recommends that instruction should be geared to the middle level, which he called the ZPD.

• He recommended this because it is neither too easy nor too hard; rather, it is just right. If a child’s abilities do not mesh with the instructional level, learning cannot occur.

Piaget’s Maturational Stages of Development

• Sensorimotor

• Preoperational

• Concrete Operational

• Formal Operational

Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to Age 2

• Children begin to interact with their environment

• They learn through their senses and movement

  • Ex: Touching, hitting biting, listening

• They learn about the properties of:

  • Space

  • Time

  • Location

  • Permanence

  • Casualty

• They develop object permanence- the understanding an object exists even though it cannot be seen or heard

• Children with disabilities need more opportunities for motor exploration

Preoperational Stage: Age 2-7

• Children make intuitive judgements about relationships

  • Begin to think with symbols

• Language becomes important

  • Use of symbols (words and images) to represent the concrete world

• Thinking dominated largely by the world perception

• Young children can attach only one attribute or function to an object e.g., color, shape, size

Concrete Operations Stage: Age 7-11

• Capable to think through relationships to perceive consequences of actions

• Group entities logically

• Improvements in systemizing and organizing thoughts

• Thoughts largely influenced by previous experiences

  • These are linked to the concrete objects they have understood through their senses

  • Example: Child can visually recognize 4 objects without physically touching it

Formal Operations Stage: Ages 11+

• Reflects a major transition in the thinking process

• Children now have the capacity to work with abstractions, theories, and logical relationships without having to refer to the concrete

• Provides a generalized orientation toward problem-solving activities

• Transition between levels depends on maturity

  • Stages are sequential and hierarchical

• Students need opportunities and experiences to stabilize behaviour

  • School curriculum does not provide sufficient opportunity for students to go through the preliminary levels of understanding

  • May lead to inadequate and insecure learning

Stages of Learning

• The stages a person goes through steps in mastering material such as acquisition, proficiency, maintenance, and generalization.

• Exposure

  • Exposed to the knowledge but does not fully understand

  • Needs teacher support

  • Ex: Jack is shown the 5s multiplication table

• Grasping the Knowledge

  • Student begins to grasp concepts

  • Needs practice

  • Ex: Jack practices the 5s table with games

• Independence

  • Students can do the task independently after direct instruction & reinforcements have been lifted

  • Ex: Jack can multiply by 5s by himself

• Application

  • Students own and internalize knowledge

  • Can apply it to outside situations

  • Ex: Jack can apply the 5s tables to other math  problems

Behavioural Psychology

Introduction

• Helps us to understand how behaviour is learned & influences how we teach

• Behavioural theories provide a foundation for:

  • Research

  • Assessment

  • Instruction

• IEP is result of behavioural approach uses observable and measurable behaviour

Behavioural Learning Theories are Based on:

• Human behaviour is shaped by behavioural principles

• Modifying behaviour requires direct focus on the behaviour of concern

• The objective of the teaching should be clearly specified

• The target behaviour is observable and measurable

• The effectiveness of the intervention requires frequent measurement

Direct Instruction

• Stems from behavioural theory

• Focused towards disadvantaged students

• Repetition, fully scripted lessons, sequence

• Focused towards their academic skills

Qualities

• Teaches academic skills directly

• Is teacher directed and controlled

• Uses carefully sequenced and structured materials

• Provides student mastery of basic skills

• Sets goals that are clear to students

• Allocates sufficient time for instruction

• Uses continuous monitoring of student performance

• Provides immediate feedback to students

• Teaches a skill until mastery of that skill is achieved

Explicit Teaching

• Behavioural instruction

• Teachers are clear about the specific skills that will be taught

• Teach each step/skill precisely

ABC Model

• Antecedent Event (Stimulus)

• Target behaviour (Behaviour response)

• Consequent Event (Reinforcement)

Behavioural Analysis

• Teachers work with students and learn skills of their students

  • Follow them step by step while completing the tasks

• Teaches sub-skill in sequential required for future tasks

  • Ex: Taking notes of students' abilities and helping them master each skill such as reading/math lessons

• Behavioural Analysis used by teachers to create learning goals in a sequence

  • Students must combine their own observed skills while learning.

Steps to Behavioural Analysis

1. State the task you want a student to complete or the task to be learned based on the student's performance

2. Analyze the sub-skills needed to perform that task

3. List out sub-skills that are to be learned

4. Determine which sub-skills that student does not know

5. Teach one subskill in order

6. Evaluate the effectiveness of instruction to see if the student has learned objective.

Implications

• Direct instruction and explicit teaching are effective teaching methods.

  • Teachers should understand how to analyze the different components of the curriculum and how to structure the steps of those behaviours.

• Direct instruction can be combined with many other approaches to teaching

  • Direct instruction can be even more effective when a teacher understands a student's unique learning style and difficulties.

• Functional behavioural assessments and positive behavioural support can help students with behavioural challenges.

  • This gives the means to understand better the undesirable behaviour and a way to meet a student's need.

Functional Behavioural Assessment

• Describes and analyzes a student's challenges with observations conducted and will give their educators an opportunity to implement an intervention strategy that would be helpful for them.

• Focuses specifically on the Antecedent event

• Antecedent event= any event that observably triggers a child's behavior

Positive Behavioural Support

• Positive behavioural support offers the student strategies and interventions to change their challenging behaviour.
  
  

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

• The field of cognitive psychology studies the human processes of learning, thinking, and knowing

• Concepts of cognitive psychology have been broadly elaborated over the years and changes in the field of learning disabilities reflects these elaborations

• We explore a progression of ideas from cognitive psychology that have influenced the teaching of students with learning disabilities:

  • Cognitive processing

  • The information-processing model

  • Cognitive learning theories

  • Automaticity

  • Metacognition

Cognitive Processing

• Psychology processing disorder refers to the difficulties that students with learning disabilities encounter in cognitive processing.

• Many student with disabilities and related minor disabilities have difficulties that students with learning disabilities encounter in cognitive processing such as:

  • Visual perception,

  • Auditory perception

  • Tactical kinesthetic perception in language skills and memory function.

Info-Processing Model

• A process of learning

• Info received through the senses

• If attended to, the info moves across the memory systems

• Multi-store Memory System: deals with information flow to 3 types of memory

  • Sensory Register

  • Short-term Memory

  • Long-term Memory

Other Aspects of the Info-Processing Model

• Sensory Register: First memory system in the model. It interprets + maintains memory info long enough to be perceived and analyzed

  • Perception + Attention used to give stimuli meaning and transfer to next memory system

• Short-term Memory: Temporary storage; individuals become consciously aware of info

• Working Memory: Temporary storage system; an active system used in complex cognitive tasks

  • Can build, take apart or rework ideas for long-term storage

• Long-term Memory: Permanent memory storage; info is retrieved and brought to short-term or working memory. Has 2 parts

  • Episodic: “Image” or sensory memories

  • Semantic: General knowledge, language, concepts and generalizations

Cognitive Learning Theories

• To succeed in the general education classroom, students must learn complex concepts, have good problem- solving skills, and know how to organize information on their own.

• Students often have limited background knowledge for many academic activities and need sufficient feedback and practice to retain abstract information.

• A number of instructional strategies stem from cognitive theories of learning, which help students with learning disabilities grasp the concepts and subject matter of the general education curriculum.

• Some of the effective and validated instructional approaches are:

  • Scaffolded instruction

  • Learning strategies instruction

  • Peer tutoring

• Apprenticeships

  • Refer to the kind of teaching that occurs in a setting in which a knowledgeable adult and learner work jointly on a real life problem

  • Learning in such a setting is geared to solving genuine problems rather than reading about it

  • Are motivating for learnings, and apprentices increase generalization because student apprentices learn through experience

• Graphic Organizer

  • Are visual representations of concepts, knowledge, or information that incorporates both text and pictures.

  • Examples include:

    • Venn diagram

    • Hierarchical (top-down) organizes

    • Word webs

    • Concept maps

    • Mind mapping

• Concept Map

  • A student or teacher can cluster ideas and words that go together.

  • The activity serves to activate the student’s construction of a concept.

• Mind Mapping

  • Is a technique that employs a pictorial method to transfer ideas from a student or from a group of students into a large piece of paper, transparency, or a large class chart.

  • Ideas are produced randomly, and certain words or ideas will trigger other ideas, which will lead to other suggestions or pictures.

Metacognition

• The ability to facilitate learning by taking control and directing one’s own thinking process

• Learning metacognitive strategies can allow for students with learning disabilities apply them to their learning to become efficient

• Classification

  • Technique for for determining the type, status, or mode of a learning activity

    • “What am I doing here?”, “Is this activity important to me?”

• Checking

  • Taking steps during the process of problem solving to determine one’s progress, success, and results

    • “I remember most of the lesson.”, “My planning is pretty detailed and careful.”, “There is something I do not understand here.”

• Evaluation

  • Provides information about quality

    • “My plan is not good enough to rule out any risks.” , “I have done a good job.”

• Prediction

  • Provides information about the possible alternative options for problem solving and possible outcomes

    • “If I decide to work on this problem, the technical details will be hard to accomplish. I will have to get someone to help me with them.”, “ I should be able to finish the paper in four days.”

Week 7: Social, Emotional and Behavioural Challenges

Social, Emotional and Behavioural Challenges

• Social challenges

  • Difficulties in interrelating with others, in making and keeping friends, and in meeting the social demands of everyday life

• Behavioural challenges

  • Problems manifested by aggressive, antisocial, and similar behaviour

• Emotional challenges

  • Involves feelings about oneself that interfere with one’s outlook on life and ability to learn

  • Ex: A student may feel so chronically depressed or have a low self-concept that then disrupts their outlook and learning

  • Past studies suggest that students may act out to avoid aversive academic tasks

• Teachers should be sensitive to the stresses that many students with learning problems face

  • Expected to try to do academic tasks that are extremely difficult for them

  • May respond by giving up, acting out, or putting their head down on their desk and trying to rest

  • Doing work that is difficult is tiring and what may appear as work refusal may be exhaustion from demanding tasks

• Important to find strengths that students have while assisting them in the areas in which they struggle

Social Challenges

• Social skills: Skills that are necessary for meeting the basic demands of everyday life

• Children need well-developed social and interactive skills to interact

• positively with peers and adults

• A social disorder affects almost every aspect of life – school, home, and play

• Social challenges involve the student’s ability to interact with others, including making friends

• ⅓ of students with learning disabilities have difficulty with social skills

  • Ex: If they are asked to solve a social problem, they may jump to a solution quickly vs. making use of problem-solving strategies to arrive at the best possible solution.

  • Ex: Tend to engage in antisocial behaviour when pressured

• Not all students with learning disabilities and related mild disabilities encounter difficulties with social skills.

• Educators should help students learn how to improve their ability to respond appropriately in social situations.

Emotional Challenges

• Emotional challenges can interfere with academic learning

• Failed attempts at mastering tasks induce feelings of frustration, rather than feelings of accomplishment

  • Instead of building self-esteem, the thwarted attempts produce an attitude of self-derisions

  • These failed attempts do not stimulate the parents’ normal responses of pride, who may instead become anxious and disheartened, which could then lead to rejection or overprotection

• The learning environment should be a place in which the student can be successful - it is important to restructure tasks to assure success.

  • These students do have many strengths and interests, and teachers and families should find those areas of strengths and capitalize on them.

• It is not unusual for students with serious emotional or behavioural problems to also have a coexisting learning disability.

  • If the problems are so severe that they interfere with further learning and life activities, the student may be referred for psychological or psychiatric counseling.

Characteristics of Emotional Challenges

Depression

• Signs of depression include:

  • Loss of energy

  • Loss of interest in friends

  • Difficulty in concentration

  • Feelings of helplessness

• Depression may be a reaction to the stress and frustration of school demands, lack of friendship and social interactions, or may stem from a biochemical predisposition.

• Depression may be a reaction to:

  • Stress and frustration of school demands

  • Lack of friendship and social interactions

  • A biochemical predisposition

Lack of Resiliency

• Resilience has been described as “a buffering process” – it does not eliminate risks of the adverse conditions that one might face but it helps individuals deal with those conditions effectively

• Students who believe that they have competencies in areas other than academic work are less likely to be devastated by school failure.

• Self-worth is gained through mastery of a skill or task, through perceived respect from peers, and through feelings of competence

• Support systems preserve students’ self-worth by

  • Keeping failure to a minimum

  • Increasing the visibility of nonacademic tasks, skills and competencies

  • Emphasizing learning goals over performance goals

    • Ex: The student can be given credit for performing a task in the correct manner (a learning goal) even though the final answer may not be accurate (the performance goal)

Anxiety

• May cause students to miss class, to tune out, and to become disorganized

• Student with learning disabilities and related mild disabilities display more symptoms of anxiety than their peers

• The demands and pressures of school and high-stakes testing provoke increased anxiety and even panic.

• Students with learning disabilities may feel that they have little to no control over their learning trajectory.

Behavioural Challenges

• When students struggle with learning, they may become so frustrated that they refuse to work or they act out

• If they cannot get attention for strong academic skills, they may seek to get attention for inappropriate behaviours.

• Behaviour is a form of communication

• By recognizing students’ behaviour, educations can change things that happen before and after the behaviour (antecedents and consequences) to meet the need of the student in question

• Major purposes of behaviour:

  • Access

    • Engaging in behaviour to gain attention, power, and control

    • Ex: Student getting out of their seat without permission; teacher telling the student to sit down (giving attention for the inappropriate behaviour)

    • If the teacher gives the student attention when they are sitting in their seat, the teacher is meeting their need for attention

  • Escape/Avoidance

    • Engaging in a specific behaviour to avoid doing a task because the student fears embarrassment or failure

    • Students may engage in specific behaviours because they think that the task is too difficult for them

  • Sensory Stimulation

    • Some students may engage in behaviour because they are either overly or under stimulated (e.g., too much information on a page, lights that are too bright)

Week 8: ASD & ADHD

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

• Consists of a group of developmental disabilities that are caused by problems in the brain

• Includes several types of conditions with a wide range of symptoms, differences in when symptoms starts, and different levels of severity

  • Overlapping symptoms across conditions

    • Ex: Problems in social interaction

Types of Autism Spectrum Disorders

• Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period but they may not become fully manifested until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life

• The disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability or global developmental delay.

• Previous autism diagnoses have been replaced with the single diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in the DSM-5

  • Autism

  • Asperger’s Syndrome

  • Pervasive Developmental Disorders

Asperger’s Syndrome

• Lack an understanding of the rules of social behaviour

  • Ex: Eye contact, proximity to others

• Emotional vulnerability and stress

  • Often leading to poor self-esteem, self-concept, depression

• Characteristics of difficulty in social competence can include

  • Frequent misunderstanding of social communications from others

  • Lack of empathy or seeing the perspectives of others

  • Poor play skills

  • Frequent conflicts with others

Nonverbal Learning Disorders

• Dysfunction of the brain’s right hemisphere

• Function well academically but often run into problems in social context

  • Difficulty understanding nonverbal communication cues that are important for social interactions

    • Ex: Reading facial expressions)

  • Poor spatial and nonverbal problem-solving abilities, and low arithmetic skills

  • Difficulty adapting to new situations, as they inaccurately read nonverbal signals and cues.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

• Commonly occurs with learning disabilities

• A neurological condition that makes it difficult to control behaviour and focus attention

• Characterized by:

  • Inattention

  • Impulsiveness

  • Hyperactivity

Symptoms of ADHD

• Symptoms must meet the following 3 criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD:

  • Severity:

    • Symptoms must be more severe compared to other children at similar developmental levels

  • Early onset:

    • At least some of the symptoms have been present before the age of 12

  • Duration:

    • Symptoms must have persisted for at least 6 months before diagnosis

Week 10: Language

Language

• Unique to humans

  • Other animals have communication systems, but not to the same extent as human language

• Fulfills several human functions:

  • Socializing

  • Communicating

• Allows for transmission of culture and thought across generation

• Appears in multiple forms:

  • Spoken language (listening and speaking)

  • Reading

  • Writing

Perspectives of how Children Learn Language

• Imitation and reinforcement

  • Behavioural view of language learning

  • Suggests that young children attempt to imitate the sounds they are exposed to in their environment and that the receive positive feedback (reinforcement e.g., praise and attention) for their language attempts

• Innate factors

  • Children are biologically predisposed to learn and use language

  • Some important aspects of language are innate within the brain

  • Implies that a child’s language will develop naturally if that child is exposed to a simulating language environment

• Social factors

  • Children learn language through social interactions with more knowledgeable language users

  • Relationships with others (caregivers and peers) help the child become an active processor of language

  • Adults typically help shape a child’s language learning opportunities (e.g., pointing at and asking the child to name specific items in the environment)

Difficulties with Language Acquisition

• Many children with learning disabilities and related mild disabilities exhibit difficulty acquiring one or several properties of language

• These difficulties could be of the following nature:

  • Differentiating and producing the appropriate sounds (phonology)

  • Remembering words

  • Grammar

  • Formulating sentences

  • Vocabulary development

Language Disorders

• Sometimes referred to as “acquired aphasia” or “developmental aphasia”

• Acquired aphasia

  • Refers to adults who lose the ability to speak due to brain damage resulting from stroke, disease, or accident

• Developmental aphasia

  • Refers to children who have severe difficulty in acquiring oral language

  • Can consists of

    • Receptive language disorder

    • Expressive language disorders

Receptive Language Disorders

• Difficulty in understanding language

  • A child with this disorder may be able to understand the meaning of a single word, but they will have difficulty understanding a sentence using those words

  • A child with this disorder may understand a word in one context, but not another (e.g., ”The girl will run” vs. “There is a run in my stocking”)

• Receptive language is required for the development of expressive language

Expressive Language Disorders

• Difficulty in producing spoken language

  • A child with this disorder may rely on pointing and using gestures to communicate

  • A child with this disorder can understand speech and language produced by others, and they do well on nonverbal tasks

  • This disorder is not due to muscular paralysis

• Dysnomia is a type of expressive language disorder

  • Word-finding problem or a deficiency in remembering and expressing words

  • A child with this condition may substitute a word (e.g., “thing”) for every word they cannot remember, or attempt to describe or use expressions to communicate

Oral Language Assessments

• Purpose: To determine what language abilities the child has acquired, what language problems the child exhibits, and how well the child uses language functionally

• Should consider listening and speaking (the two sides of oral language)

• Includes informal measures and formal tests

Informal Measures of Oral Language

• Observations are made as the child uses language functionally in a real environment (e.g., in class)

• Can include use of a rating scale to provide information about the child's language development and usage

• Assessment measures are not standardized but still provide valuable information about the child's language ability

• The listening test

  • Often used as part of an informal reading inventory

  • The teacher reads stories aloud that are at different levels of difficulty

  • The child is asked questions to determine how well they understand the material

Formal Measures of Oral Language

• Standardized instruments are used to gather information about oral language development

• Results are often included in the child's IEP

Listening

• Differs from hearing (does not involve interpretation, a physiological process)

• Requires selecting appropriate meaning and calls for interaction with the ideas expressed (e.g., evaluating, accepting, rejecting, etc.)

• Foundational to all language growth

• Deficits in listening is paired with difficulty with all communication skills

• Many students do not acquire functional skills in listening by themselves

• A basic skill that can be improved through practice

• Listening skills include:

  • Phonological awareness of language sounds

  • Understanding words and building a Listening vocabulary

  • Understanding sentences

  • Listening comprehension

  • Critical listening

  • Listening to stories

Week 11: Reading Difficulties

Reading

• Children must learn to read so that they can read to learn

• Reading is not a natural process and requires careful instruction

• Learning to read takes several years and the learner must persevere

  • Recognizing words is a complex tasks and the reader must use a variety of strategies to accomplish this task

• Failure in school can be traced to inadequate reading skills

  • Reading is the basic skill for all academic subjects

  • The development of reading skills serves as the major academic foundation for all school-based learning.

Reading Disabilities

• The opportunities for academic and occupational success are limited when one cannot read.

• Reading difficulties are experienced by over 80% of student with learning disabilities and related disabilities

• Difficulties with reading in adolescents and adults are linked back to reading difficulties that were not resolved during childhood

• The “wait-and-fail” method refers to the policy of not promptly addressing the reading difficulties of young children, and instead waiting until they are older

Reading Disorders

• Reading failure constitutes an educational problem, but also rises to the level of a major public health problem.

• Early identification of young children who are at risk for reading failure and timely intervention to assist them are essential for maximizing treatment success.

• Children who are at most risk for reading failure have the following characteristics:

  • They lack phonemic awareness (or sensitivity to the sounds of language)

  • They are not familiar with the letters of the alphabet

  • They often lack sufficient oral language and verbal skills and have meager vocabularies

• Children may also be at risk for reading because of their limited exposure to the English language

Dyslexia

• A severe type of reading disorder

• Affects children, adolescents, and adults

• Individuals with dyslexia:

  • Find it extremely difficult to recognize letters and words and to interpret information that is presented in print form

  • Are intelligent and may have very strong mathematics or spatial skills

• Although there are different definitions of dyslexia, there is agreement on the following points:

  • Dyslexia has a biological basis

  • Dyslexic problems persist into adolescence and adulthood

  • Dyslexia has perceptual, cognitive, and language dimensions

  • Dyslexia leads to difficulties in many areas of life as the individual matures

  • Many individuals with dyslexia excel in other facts of life

Assessing Reading

Informal Measures

• One of the simplest ways to assess reading is to informally observe a student as they read aloud

• This method allows for detection of the following:

  • General reading level

  • Word-recognition abilities

  • Types of errors

  • Understanding of the material

Informal Reading Inventory

• Examiner chooses selections of approx 100 words from a series of graded reading levels

• Student reads aloud from several graded levels while the

  • Teacher records the errors

• If the student makes more than 5 errors per 100 words, the student is given progressively easier selections until a level is found at which there are no more than 2 errors per 100 words

• Check comprehension- Teacher asks the student 4 to 10 questions about each selection

• Can be used to determine 3 types of reading levels:

  • Independent reading level – The student is able to read library books or do reading work independently

  • Instructional reading level – The students will profit from teacher-directed reading instruction

  • Frustration reading level – Reading becomes too difficult for the student and should not be used for instruction.

Formal Measures

• Survey Tests

  • Group tests that give an overall reading achievement level

  • Generally give scores for (1) word recognition and (2) reading comprehension

• Diagnostic Tests

  • Individual tests that provide more in-depth information about the student’s strengths and weaknesses in reading

• Comprehensive Batteries

  • Measure several academic areas