Students with Severe Disabilities - Dissertation Example

 Historically, severe deficits in have not been considered, under any case or circumstances to be as a matter of social competence, and the main reason behind such assumption is not that much strange because people often think about such disable students as a matter of ‘sympathy’ and often such ‘sympathetic’ concerns of social gatherings not let the students to move ahead. But when it comes to the academic aspect, these sympathies are converted somehow towards the competitive attitude. Disability in children and adults, no matter how severe or minor they are, is an issue, which needs proper consideration. The main reason for selecting such a dynamic topic refers to the skills that I think are essential to learn for the disabled students as such students are a way to courage and a hope of survival for the future generations to come. Such students are often underestimated and under evaluated by most of their educators, scholars, disability practitioners, and administrators. They make a common assumption about deficit students that most first-time students experience difficulty making the transition from one level to the next. It is also apparent from umpteen experiences that students with disabilities experience even greater degrees of difficulty during that transition process than do their counterparts without disabilities. One of the factors that we must consider is the severity of disability in this regard. Students with severe difficulties such as mental retardation should not be considered in this respect, as such severity needs much attention in order to be a part and parcel of the social groups and peers competence. As far as the moderate or low disable students are concerned, it is difficult for such students to move from one level to the next, as compared to the normal students. But it is also observed that at times such students proved to be much more efficient than normal students or those having no disability. Because of the numerous variables involved in the transition for students with disabilities, there are few models or paradigms for students and other individuals involved in this process to follow. Social Competence The importance of social competence in the overall growth and development of disable students can be evaluated from the following facts: Social competence grooms the students’ inner ability to interact successfully with peers and significant adults, which is one of the most important aspects of students’ development. It defines the boundaries of the extent to which students are able to establish and maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships, gain peer acceptance, establish and maintain friendships. Such competence is important in students with moderate disabilities as it helps in the alleviation of negative or pessimistic thoughts and ideas, thereby enabling the students to creatively confront with their social or personal circumstances. This helps them in building up their personalities with adequate long-term psychological and social adjustments. The attribute of social competence helps in the classification between moderate disability groups and severe disability groups. Limitations: The limitations of the ‘social competence’ also cannot be ignored particularly in those circumstances where there are emotional or cognitional deficits: In case of disability of students along with some mental disorder such as ‘schizophrenia’, the social competence becomes the main contention of the increase in deficit which not only disturb their emotional cognitions but also in some situations move the disabled student towards negative or optimistic approach. When ‘social competence’ starts influencing the student in negative sense, he likely avoids social groups and peer groups, which instead of grooming him, starts rupturing his/her personality. The limitations of the ‘social competence’ is the main factor which makes us to think about whether students should work on functional levels or they should adopt working and learning of academic levels. Students with severe disabilities should only work on functional skills Functional Skills: Skills, which are beneficial for students facing severe disability, are important in the aspect, as they are the true guiding tools, which are beneficial for a student throughout his/her life and should be learned at the utmost, as they are the indicators of future life. Functional skills can be referred to as those skills, which are essential in maintaining a true personality devoid of personal complexities. According to Ysseldyke and Olsen (1999): “The assessment should include not only an assessment of the student’s skills, but an assessment of the extent to which schools provide adequate support in terms of assistive devices, people, and other supports that allow students to function as independently as possible”. (p. 175-185) Learning functional skills not only makes a student feel independent and like other normal students, but it also create a need in students with mild and sometimes moderate disability to go for learning academic skills. To learn personal skills for a disordered student is to know himself. Self-Esteem: Students with severe disabilities must know the meaning of self-esteem. They should be taught despite all the disabilities how to obtain self-esteem? And must possess a generalized attitude towards oneself. They should be taught in such a way that they hold full confidence within them. They must be leaded towards an optimistic approach, to think bigger and better so that they never underestimate them. Self-Conscious: They must be taught the skill of maintaining private self-consciousness so that they find themselves in a situation in which they are able to attend to their own feelings and personal inner states. Self-Monitoring: Students with disabilities should be taught the conditions and situations in which they have to react positively. Also they should learn how to operate in their environmental settings. They should learn various etiquettes for how to behave in certain conditions, for those having high-incidence problems, they should know the etiquettes for everyday life like the way to behave while eating, way to express their emotions etc. They should be taught how to distinguish between good and bad, how to express their concerns, their moods. Therefore we can say that students with severe disabilities should only concentrate on learning functional skills so that they might find the rest of their lives easy to survive. Student’s functioning in peers and groups: Students with severe mental disorder or impairment if not taught how to move and coordinate with family, friends and relatives would lead them towards other functional disabilities. Functional literacy is useful in maintaining the positivity of their behavior. Participation in literacy instruction and activities: According to various researchers we should explore the ways in which the students with severe disabilities behave. In case of mild/moderate disability participation in certain learning activities that increase their interest encourages them to get into literacy-oriented activities, while in case of students having severe disabilities such participation is of no use as their IQ does not permit them to involve into such activities, as their basic need is to learn functional attitudes. Students with severe disabilities should only work on academic skills Academic Skills: There are four pre requisites to follow while providing academic instructions: The learning potential of individuals should never be underestimated. Since there are different levels of academic instructions, it is not right to stick to a particular level. If a student is not able to understand one level, it is better to teach him while adopting another level. It is not wise in dealing with students having disability to teach them knowing low probability of success, in case of any learning difficulty, some modifications in instructional procedures might lead to success. Although some students may not be able to verbally express what they know, understand, and appreciate, it may well be that some students with severe disabilities may nevertheless enjoy literacy experiences presented to them in different formats. Learning to Read: Teachers should emphasize to learn those words that tend to be helpful for students in natural environment. Students with moderate mental disabilities should learn such words that are of high‑frequency so that the student can learn to identify by sight and read in various important contexts. Browder and Xin suggests learning by sight in which word instruction has been used to teach students as to how to make use of words in achieving various day to day shopping and every day readings. Children: For young children, Feinberg suggested that words appropriate for reading instruction could be those that are naturally spoken and heard by children, that is, an extension of their natural language. (Feinberg, 1975, p. 246-251) Adults: Feinberg recommended words that would best allow them to operate successfully in community settings, such as men, woman, ladies, exit, entrance, enter, in, out, stop, push, pull, emergency, danger, walk, don’t walk, wait, up, down, bus stop, keep out, keep off, and no smoking. He also highlighted the importance of learning sight words in various contexts in order for the concepts to be learned. (Feinberg, 1975, p. 246-251) Learning to Write: The writing activities should be learned in coordination with reading activities. The best practice is to consider those words to write which are already learned or read by the student. To learn writing activities, the teacher should concern about selecting only those, which are both functional and recreational at the same time. Functional Activities: Functional activities tend to require specific writing targets with specific focus on skills that are required in natural environments. For example, at a relatively young age, children must learn to write their name. Activities for fun: Besides learning academic skills, fun activities like drawing; writing in different ways and origami plays a vital role in the academic development of students with moderate mental disabilities. They should be encouraged every time they participate in such fun and leisure activities. The main benefit a student gain is the confidence he feel while participating along other students. The recreational activity helps him develop social contacts, and it would ultimately result in the improvement of his reading and writing skills. Methods for Improving Reading, Writing and language skills Language Experience Approach by Ford et al. 1989 Shared Writing Approach by Mather & Lachowicz, 1992 Verbal clue Method for letter formation by Vacc and Vacc, 1979 Learning to Spell: Learning to spell is a single task, which involves two different skills, reading words and spelling them. Reading requires that one provide a single response to a cluster of abstract symbols whereas spelling requires just the opposite. Anagram spelling (Stromer, MacKay, Howell, and McVay, 1996) Analysis of Students with disabilities One important aspect that is often ignored in schools as given by Kliewer and Landis refers to the condition of teacher’s awareness towards the student’s level of disability. In this case teachers are often confronted with situations in which they assume that the students IQ level is the same and the student is getting along with them. The question arises here as to do they really know whether the student is getting their point or not? So, the most important thing before grading a student in the category of “mild”, “moderate” or “severe”, it is essential that the teacher must analyze the students’ mental skills and capabilities individually. Functional skills vs. Academic skills for students of moderate/mild disability A student having mild disability should concentrate on learning academic skills as functional skills are not very much useful to him. The reason to focus more upon academic skills is the mental condition, mild disability means just a little below normal that means such student if taught a little with respect to basic skills can contribute in social gatherings, he is in a state of social competition, he is aware of his mental and inner state of mind and can easily express his emotions through gestures. In such circumstances it is evident that he is aware of possessing functional attitude, and if not so, he can improve his functional skills easily by a little training and practice. So, academic learning is more vital for grooming his personality towards literacy. There are certain concepts that tend to be developed by persons with moderate mental disabilities in about the same way as they are developed by non-disabled or normal children, although generally at a later chronological age. Learning these skills to the extent possible in the elementary‑school years would help them in improving their academic skills more effectively. It is clear from the research that students with moderate mental disabilities can learn to read whole words, sometimes use word analysis skills, and comprehend the meaning of what they have read in different ways however they may find difficulty in learning to spell words because of the required memorization, since they are below average normal. However, they may be able to learn to spell some words and learning to spell by presenting letters in an array (anagram spelling) might be helpful. Academic instruction for students with moderate mental disabilities should focus on at least three areas of learning: Acquiring basic concepts and skills of every subject. Applying skills to handling money Applying skills to time management Baroody (1996) investigated the effects of instruction followed by practice on self‑invented addition strategies by individuals with mild to moderate mental disabilities. He pointed out that it is generally assumed that these individuals are passive learners that can learn by rote but that they cannot engage in their own active learning processes. (Baroody, 1996, p. 72-89) Functional skills vs. Academic skills for students of severe disability Students with severe disabilities should concentrate more on functional skills rather than academic skills, however depending upon the IQ level and what mental capabilities they possess, their teachers analyze them better as to in which category they should keep such students. But if a student’s mental approach is much below than moderate, they should only concentrate on functional skills as the way to live a normal life is more important than anything else in the world and above all most of the students having severe disabilities do not possess such academic skills to be a part of special education. Such an example is mental retardation. Although Ysseldyke and Olson (1999) indicated that alternate assessments should focus primarily on functional skills, so teachers should assess different states with respect to different types of skills. (Ysseldyke, 1999, 175-185) Assessment of academic skills: This can be assessed and later included in a skills curriculum. Assessment of functional skills: This can be achieved using testing function as “critical functions”. Combination of academic critical functions and functional skills From the above discussion the most evident finding is the importance of skills, whether it be functional skills or academic skills, both go along with each other. If a student who is confronting to severe disability learns only functional skills, he would know various ways to lead life easily, but would ultimately face difficulty in the long run due to lack of academic skills, as he would not be able to read, write or maintain social gatherings. Similarly to learn academic skills and not functional skills would be of no use. Therefore, the conclusion is to learn both functional as well as academic skills as both have their own importance in leading a balanced life for a student facing severe disability. References Baroody, A. J. (1996). Self‑invented addition strategies by children with mental retardation. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 101, 72–89. Feinberg, P. (1975). Sight vocabulary for the TMR child and adult: Rationale, development, and application. Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded, 10(4), 246–251. Mather, N., & Lachowicz, B. L. (1992). Shared writing: An instructional approach for reluctant writers. Teaching Exceptional Children, 25(1), 26–30. Stromer, R., Mackay, H. A., Howell, S. R., & McVay, A. A. (1996). Teaching computer‑assisted spelling to individuals with developmental and hearing disabilities: Transfer of stimulus control to writing tasks. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 29, 25–42. Ysseldyke, J. & Olsen, K. (1999). Putting alternate assessments into practice: What to measure and possible sources of data. Exceptional Children, 65, 175-185. Read More