Education of Students with Learning Difficulties - Literature review Example

Education of students with learning difficulties Your name Institution Education of students with learning difficulties Teacher student relationship is important for the success of student in learning activities. Educators have argued that teachers association with students is central to their academic achievement. Academic achievement on the part of student motivates him or her to continue working hard. Teacher’s relationship with students affects development of their self-esteem and self worth. Every teacher in school aims at making students reach at the highest point of academic success therefore, they have to establish a positive relationship with students in order to instill feeling of courage rather than fear and anxiety in learners. If teachers want students to excel in their academics, they should work towards developing strong self-concept and self-esteem in students. Self-esteem is a term used to refer to the feelings one has about him or herself. For instance, students will perceive themselves as good learners. Students treasure their self-esteem so much, because it is like a mirror where they base opinions about themselves on views of others. Student’s level of achievement in school is directly related to the views students have upon themselves as learners (Greaney, 2001). For instance, students who have high self-esteem are likely to perform well than those with low self-esteem. Therefore, when teachers are making comments about students, they have to be keen in their utterances because what they say affect students either positively or negatively. Teachers act as disciplinarians and knowledge givers who should treat students in a manner that is acceptable and most effective. Teachers should be wary that students respond differently to shaping their self-esteem. For instance, when dealing with students, it is important to establish which things pleases them and which ones annoy them. Using a classroom example, some students may be happy if a teacher loudly announce their grades in class while others will be embarrassed and discouraged and this lowers their effort to the next task. After the family, teachers are seen as secondary caregivers of students thereby their interaction with students have great influence on learners self esteem. They should try to build a good relationship with students based on best practices. Negative teacher student relationship leads to poor performance and low self-esteem. According to Greaney (2001), teachers should work towards building a positive relationship with students to influence them in a positive manner. Relationship between teacher and student is manifested in the latent curriculum. In this case, the latent curriculum is what the student is expected to learn in school such as writing, reading, or sociology. Latent curriculum is how the student perceives himself in the process of learning in relation to other students. If most learning activities are accompanied by appraisals that are negative, most students will not enjoy learning thus developing a deep sense of inadequacy and negative feeling towards school activities. Academic achievement and self-concept are related. This relationship is very interactive since each variable affect each other. Teachers should be sensitive when dealing with students self esteem and how they view their academic ability. If these variables are interacting in a positive manner then there is success in academics but if the self-esteem is low, definitely the students’ performance goes down. This means that when self-esteem is low, a student will record a drop in academic achievement and if academic achievements were low, self-esteem will be lowered. For instance, if a teacher makes a negative comment that degrades the dignity of the student, he or she feels bad and worthless this can lead to depression, which affects learning negatively. Some students may fear to fail thus they avoid taking part in learning activities while others who have high self esteem and courageous will be willing to take part in any activity that may be taught or is challenging to them. For those who fear to fail, they develop feeling of incompetence, which tend to be demoralizing and discouraging thus, they do not see the need to try a certain task. Interaction between students and teachers in class matters a lot towards the success of a student in academics (Greaney, 2001). Classrooms should provide better and conducive environment for learning where students can independently express their thoughts and opinions. If students have confidence in themselves, they will be more than willing to be risk takers this will make them curious to know how to learn. Teachers have the role of developing courage and self-esteem in students in order for them to achieve their goal as facilitators and giver of knowledge. Teachers should develop one on one relationship with students this makes them know if a student is troubled or not. During learning evaluation process, teachers should concentrate on the positive things rather than negative ones. They should outline their expectation about students’ behavior in school. In addition, they should do everything possible to increase students self esteem since learners know if they have done well or bad. If a teacher is too harsh and restrictive, students may tend to dislike that teacher and in long run, they will not concentrate if such teacher is teaching this directly affects their level of content acquisition. As a teacher, expect students to do what they can and assist them to do it. Give them praises when they excellently solve a problem but this is only done if they are taught basics of that subject. More importantly, give them time to do practice. Give them constructive criticism by stating out their weaknesses and strength. It should be noted that students cannot improve in their academics if they are not given immediate feedback both negative and positive. Students feel confident when they are aware of the teacher expects of them. When this confidence is build, they will work hard to achieve high grades. Self-esteem, self-concept, and academic achievement are related and it is up to the teacher to work on all of them. Social constructivism is the development of social phenomena that is related to social settings. It is where an individual interprets and makes meaning of the social contexts. It is a psychological idea through which people in society perceive the world and themselves. Disability is the situation whereby the society does not treat each individual with psychological or physical impairments equally. Learning disability is the where those people who are physically and psychological impaired are not given equal chances to participate in learning process. Social constructivism recognizes that some people in society have psychological and physical differences, which influence their ability to learn and function in society. This model argues that it is the society that causes individual difference. This means that there exist barriers in society, which causes these physical, and psychological impairment that make some people unable to take into account their desires. These barriers include; cultural, environmental, and economic. The environment in which the student with disability is learning from does not give them a chance to freely move, communicate and function effectively like those students with no impairment. For instance, a student who is physically impaired will be given wheel chair to use if only the environment is not made for people with wheel chairs. Some buildings have been designed to accommodate those people on wheel chairs but the modifications on such buildings benefit people who are not disabled. Society does not provide the same chances to people who are impaired. At schools, lessons are prepared to suit those people who are not impaired using all means possible that are unfriendly to people who are impaired. For instance, suffering from dyslexia has a problem in learning for classes of dyslexic people. If such a lesson is conducted in manner that benefits people with dyslexia then such learners will have not problem in learning. People who have learning disabilities are looked down upon to their cultural, environmental, and economical barriers in education as people who are physically impaired. Teachers and fellow students mistreat individuals with learning disabilities in school. They are considered as thick headed or people who cannot do without help. Learning environment are designed in a discriminatory manner in that it only suits people who are not impaired and not fit for challenged people. Teachers do not use diagrams and other teaching aids and always teach in linear manner. Most educational institutions do not cater for diversity among students and as a result, those who are impaired are likely to achieve low scores. If students fail to learn well in an environment that contains people with diverse population, then there is learning disability. Underachievement is the situation that occurs when child’s performance in school is below than what is expected depending on Childs ability. For instance, a child with high capability who scores less mark than what is expected is said to be underachieving. Unexpected under-achievement is where students with high potential earn fewer marks than the expectations of his teachers and parents. Such students have shown record of good performance in previous exams but their academic achievements starts to dwindle with time. It is a scenario that happens when a learner’s health, opportunities, and intelligent do not rhyme with what his performance is not expected to be in school. The child is intelligent but is associated with low grades. Expected underachievement is where the child’s health, environment and intelligent do not favor achieving high grades due to individual differences. Teaching students who are underachieving is the most difficult task teacher’s encounter. When students in class underachieve, their ability, potential and talent do not find meaning or expression. They are likely to be affected and they tend to disrupt others. In order to help the unexpected underachievers gain back to feet, teachers should provide enough learning materials for them. They should be helped to recover their average status as high achievers. While for the expected underachievers, the school can introduce remedial sessions for them to attend so that some concepts are repeated, the teacher should also slow the pace of teaching, they should be encouraged to be rehearsing the pre-conditional knowledge and skills. Lastly, the teacher should reframe instruction methods in order to accommodate them. Speech skills and language abilities of a child is directly related to reading skills of the child. Those learners with speech disorder have difficulty in reading ability. This is because there is a complex phonological processing deficit that is responsible to speech sound disorder and reading disability. if the child has deficit in vocabulary development or syntax the child’s chances of developing reading disabilities are high than when the child has complex link between articulation and language ability where literacy outcomes are good. In addition, when the child’s speech delays when the child is beginning to read, these delays may influence reading skills. Broad language abilities are responsible in determining the persistence of speech errors. Those students who have speech sound disorders control their reading abilities. Decoding skills are used to make meaning of the printed words. This implies that being able to analyze and recognize a printed word to link it to the uttered word it represents. These skills comprise the ability to identify the basic sounds that make up a word, recognizing what it means, understand its context to know if it is being used correctly in a sentence. After a child can identify sounds, decode, and blend them, read fluently, proper intonation and expression, it shows that he or she has comprehended the meaning of certain words in the sentence. Decoding helps the student to understand the text. Reading fluency is important because it shows child’s ability to read with certain speed for his level, correct expression, and intonation and with needed accuracy. Phonological awareness comprises combination of print and sound awareness. Children develop phonological awareness when they recognize sounds that have written letter that represents them. When learners are able to recognize the letter and sound relationship, they will be in a position to read and decode. For instance, teaching class two students importance of reading five to six sounds to more intricate ones with prefixes and suffixes. When they have mastered decoding, learners will be able to read sentences in text. On the other hand, phonemic awareness is reading skills that learners utilizes to hear sounds and are able to use this sounds to make words. For instance, teaching class two student’s phonemic awareness via activities like substitution or rhyming. These help students to be able to hear sounds and make words of them that can be written and read. Grapheme-phoneme is defined as the relationship between written symbol (grapheme) and speech sounds (phoneme). Alphabetic principle is the situation whereby individuals’ letter and combined letters that are used to represent sounds that are regular. It is the foundation of written words so that they make meaning. For instance, these patterns helps native speakers of certain language to speak and read other languages that are unfamiliar with him. If students have difficulties in these two principles, they find it hard to read and comprehend words written in other languages. Reading by analogy incorporates combination of onsets with known rimes to read new words. The onset is the consonant that comes first before the vowel in any syllable. For instance, reading words like cry or chair. Reading by best practice usually starts when the child is still in the womb where the parents help the child to create interest in books. In addition, the method of best practice can be enhanced giving books to students this will help to inculcate positive relationship with books. Another example of best practice is teaching young children by pointing to pictures and making comments like this is hen or this is a green umbrella. By time, the child will be able to tell the parents what those pictures are by him or herself. I agree with Greaney (2001) that teachers should use phonological cues to prompt a student in his situation because they help a student to identify and find words in a speech. References De Lemos, M. (2002). Closing the gap between research and practice: Foundations for the acquisition of literacy. Camberwell, Vic: ACER Press. Dudley-Marling, C. (2004). The social construction of learning disabilities. Journal of learning disabilities, 37(6), 482-489. Ehri, L.C. 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Assessment of phonological awareness in low progress readers. Australian journal of learning difficulties, 14(1), 53-66. Pressley, M., Roehrig, A & Bogner, K. (2002). Balanced literacy instruction. Focus on an exceptional children, 34(5), 1-14. Riddick, B. (2002). Researching the social and emotional consequences of dyslexia. In Wearmouth, J., Soler, J & Reid, C. (Eds). Addressing difficulties in literacy development. London: Routlledge Falmer, p. 283-302. Snowling, M.J & Hulme, C. (2006). Language learning skills, learning to read and reading intervention. London review of education, 4(1), 63-76. Stuart, M. (2006). Learning to read: developing processes for recognizing, understanding and pronouncing written words. London Review of Education, 4(1), 19-29. Tunmer, W. & Greaney, K. (2001). Defining dyslexia. Journal of learning disabilities, 43(3), 229-243. Westwood, P. (2008). What teachers need to know about reading and writing difficulties: Chapters2: Reading difficulties at a word level. P 14-29. Victoria: ACER Press. Read More