Which of the following is consistent with the idea definition of learning disability?

Our nation’s special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) defines specific learning disability as…

(10) Specific learning disability —(i) General.  Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.

(ii) Disorders not included. Specific learning disability does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of intellectual disability, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.  [34 CFR §300.8(c)(10)]

From: Center for Parent Information and Resources, (2017), Categories of Disability Under IDEA. Newark, NJ, Author. Retrieved 3.28.19 from https://www.parentcenterhub.org/categories/  (public domain)

Table of Contents

• Go to Chapter on Dyslexia
• Go to Chapter on Dyscalculia
• Go to Chapter on Dysgraphia
• General SLD
  • DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria
  • Etiology
  • General Overview of Specific Learning Disability/Case Study
  • Evaluation Procedures for LD
  • Tips for Teachers
  • Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities- Video

Dyslexia

Dyslexia, sometimes called reading disorder, is the most common learning disability; of all students with specific learning disabilities, 70%–80% have deficits in reading. The term “developmental dyslexia” is often used as a catch-all term, but researchers assert that dyslexia is just one of several types of reading disabilities. A reading disability can affect any part of the reading process, including word recognition, word decoding, reading speed, prosody (oral reading with expression), and reading comprehension.

Go to Chapter on Dyslexia

Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia is a form of math-related disability that involves difficulties with learning math-related concepts (such as quantity, place value, and time), memorizing math-related facts, organizing numbers, and understanding how problems are organized on the page. People with dyscalculia are often referred to as having poor “number sense.”

Go to Chapter on Dyscalculia

Dysgraphia

The term “dysgraphia” is often used as an overarching term for all disorders of written expression. Individuals with dysgraphia typically show multiple writing-related deficiencies, such as grammatical and punctuation errors within sentences, poor paragraph organization, multiple spelling errors, and excessively poor penmanship.

Go to Chapter on Dysgraphia

The following text is an adapted from: Boundless.com (n.d.) Textbooks/ Boundless Psychology/Neurodevelopmental Disorders/Specific Learning Disorder. CC-BY-SA 4.0

Specific learning disorder includes difficulties in general academic skills, specifically in the areas of reading, mathematics, or written expression.

Specific learning disorder is a classification of disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner within one of several domains. Often referred to as learning disabilities, learning disorders are characterized by inadequate development of specific academic, language, and speech skills. Types of learning disorders include difficulties in reading (dyslexia), mathematics (dyscalculia), and writing (dysgraphia)

DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria

The diagnosis of specific learning disorder was added to the DSM-5 in 2013. The DSM does not require that a single domain of difficulty (such as reading, mathematics, or written expression) be identified—instead, it is a single diagnosis that describes a collection of potential difficulties with general academic skills, simply including detailed specifiers for the areas of reading, mathematics, and writing. Academic performance must be below average in at least one of these fields, and the symptoms may also interfere with daily life or work. In addition, the learning difficulties cannot be attributed to other sensory, motor, developmental, or neurological disorders.

Etiology

The causes of learning disabilities are not well understood. However, some potential causes or contributing factors are:

• Heredity. Learning disabilities often run in the family—children with learning disabilities are likely to have parents or other relatives with similar difficulties.
• Problems during pregnancy and birth. Learning disabilities can result from anomalies in the developing brain, illness or injury, fetal exposure to alcohol or drugs, low birth weight, oxygen deprivation, or premature or prolonged labor.
• Accidents after birth. Learning disabilities can also be caused by head injuries, malnutrition, or toxic exposure (such as to heavy metals or pesticides).

(Boundless,n.d)

General Overview of SLD/ Case Study

The following text is an excerpt from: Educational Psychology. Chapter 5  Authored by: Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton. . License: CC BY: Attribution From  https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/153 

LDs are by far the most common form of special educational need, accounting for half of all students with special needs in the United States and anywhere from 5 to 20 per cent of all students, depending on how the numbers are estimated (United States Department of Education, 2005; Ysseldyke & Bielinski, 2002). Students with LDs are so common, in fact, that most teachers regularly encounter at least one per class in any given school year, regardless of the grade level they teach.

Defining learning disabilities clearly

With so many students defined as having learning disabilities, it is not surprising that the term itself becomes ambiguous in the truest sense of “having many meanings”. Specific features of LDs vary considerably. Any of the following students, for example, qualify as having a learning disability, assuming that they have no other disease, condition, or circumstance to account for their behavior:

• Albert, an eighth-grader, has trouble solving word problems that he reads, but can solve them easily if he hears them orally.
• Bill, also in eighth grade, has the reverse problem: he can solve word problems only when he can read them, not when he hears them.
• Carole, a fifth-grader, constantly makes errors when she reads textual material aloud, either leaving out words, adding words, or substituting her own words for the printed text.
• Emily, in seventh grade, has terrible handwriting; her letters vary in size and wobble all over the page, much like a first- or second-grader.
• Denny reads very slowly, even though he is in fourth grade. His comprehension suffers as a result, because he sometimes forgets what he read at the beginning of a sentence by the time he reaches the end.
• Garnet’s spelling would have to be called “inventive”, even though he has practiced conventionally correct spelling more than other students. Garnet is in sixth grade.
• Harmin, a ninth-grader has particular trouble decoding individual words and letters if they are unfamiliar; he reads conceal as “concol” and alternate as “alfoonite”.
• Irma, a tenth-grader, adds multiple-digit numbers as if they were single-digit numbers stuck together: 42 + 59 equals 911 rather than 101, though 23 + 54 correctly equals 77.

With so many expressions of LDs, it is not surprising that educators sometimes disagree about their nature and about the kind of help students need as a consequence. Such controversy may be inevitable because LDs by definition are learning problems with no obvious origin. There is good news, however, from this state of affairs, in that it opens the way to try a variety of solutions for helping students with learning disabilities.

Assisting students with learning disabilities

There are various ways to assist students with learning disabilities, depending not only on the nature of the disability, of course, but also on the concepts or theory of learning guiding you. Take Irma, the girl mentioned above who adds two-digit numbers as if they were one digit numbers. Stated more formally, Irma adds two-digit numbers without carrying digits forward from the ones column to the tens column, or from the tens to the hundreds column. Exhibit 4 shows the effect that her strategy has on one of her homework papers. What is going on here and how could a teacher help Irma?

Directions: Add the following numbers.

Three out of the six problems are done correctly, even though Irma seems to use an incorrect strategy systematically on all six problems.

Exhibit 4: Irma’s math homework about two-digit addition

Behaviorism: reinforcement for wrong strategies

One possible approach comes from the behaviorist theory. Irma may persist with the single-digit strategy because it has been reinforced a lot in the past. Maybe she was rewarded so much for adding single-digit numbers (3+5, 7+8 etc.) correctly that she generalized this skill to two-digit problems—in fact over generalized it. This explanation is plausible because she would still get many two-digit problems right, as you can confirm by looking at it. In behaviorist terms, her incorrect strategy would still be reinforced, but now only on a “partial schedule of reinforcement”.  Partial reinforcement schedules are especially slow to extinguish, so Irma persists seemingly indefinitely with treating two-digit problems as if they were single-digit problems.

From the point of view of behaviorism, changing Irma’s behavior is tricky since the desired behavior (borrowing correctly) rarely happens and therefore cannot be reinforced very often. It might therefore help for the teacher to reward behaviors that compete directly with Irma’s inappropriate strategy. The teacher might reduce credit for simply finding the correct answer, for example, and increase credit for a student showing her work—including the work of carrying digits forward correctly. Or the teacher might make a point of discussing Irma’s math work with Irma frequently, so as to create more occasions when she can praise Irma for working problems correctly.

Metacognition and responding reflectively

Part of Irma’s problem may be that she is thoughtless about doing her math: the minute she sees numbers on a worksheet, she stuffs them into the first arithmetic procedure that comes to mind. Her learning style, that is, seems too impulsive and not reflective enough. Her style also suggests a failure of metacognition, which is her self-monitoring of her own thinking and its effectiveness. As a solution, the teacher could encourage Irma to think out loud when she completes two-digit problems—literally get her to “talk her way through” each problem. If participating in these conversations was sometimes impractical, the teacher might also arrange for a skilled classmate to take her place some of the time. Cooperation between Irma and the classmate might help the classmate as well, or even improve overall social relationships in the classroom.

Constructivism, mentoring, and the zone of proximal development

Perhaps Irma has in fact learned how to carry digits forward, but not learned the procedure well enough to use it reliably on her own; so she constantly falls back on the earlier, better-learned strategy of single-digit addition. In that case her problem can be seen in the constructivist terms. In essence, Irma has lacked appropriate mentoring from someone more expert than herself, someone who can create a “zone of proximal development” in which she can display and consolidate her skills more successfully. She still needs mentoring or “assisted coaching” more than independent practice. The teacher can arrange some of this in much the way she encourages to be more reflective, either by working with Irma herself or by arranging for a classmate or even a parent volunteer to do so. In this case, however, whoever serves as mentor should not only listen, but also actively offer Irma help. The help has to be just enough to insure that Irma completes two-digit problems correctly —neither more nor less. Too much help may prevent Irma from taking responsibility for learning the new strategy, but too little may cause her to take the responsibility prematurely.

(Seifert & Sutton, 2009)

The following section is an excerpt from:  Center for Parent Information and Resources, (2015), Learning Disabilities (LD). Newark, NJ, Author. Retrieved 3.28.19 from https://www.parentcenterhub.org/ld/  (public domain)

 Evaluation Procedures for LD

Now for the confusing part! The ways in which children are identified as having a learning disability have changed over the years. Until recently, the most common approach was to use a “severe discrepancy” formula. This referred to the gap, or discrepancy, between the child’s intelligence or aptitude and his or her actual performance. However, in the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA, how LD is determined has been expanded. IDEA now requires that states adopt criteria that:

• must not require the use of a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement in determining whether a child has a specific learning disability;
• must permit local educational agencies (LEAs) to use a process based on the child’s response to scientific, research-based intervention; and
• may permit the use of other alternative research-based procedures for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability.

Basically, what this means is that, instead of using a severe discrepancy approach to determining LD, school systems may provide the student with a research-based intervention and keep close track of the student’s performance. Analyzing the student’s response to that intervention (RTI) may then be considered by school districts in the process of identifying that a child has a learning disability.

There are also other aspects required when evaluating children for LD. These include observing the student in his or her learning environment (including the regular education setting) to document academic performance and behavior in the areas of difficulty.

This entire fact sheet could be devoted to what IDEA requires when children are evaluated for a learning disability. Instead, let us refer you to a training module on the subject. It’s quite detailed, but if you would like to know those details, read through Module 11 of the Building the Legacy curriculum on IDEA 2004. Identification of Specific Learning Disabilities is available online at the CPIR,

Tips for Teachers

Learning disabilities (LD) vary from person to person. One person with LD may not have the same kind of learning problems as another person with LD. Sara, in our example above, has trouble with reading and writing. Another person with LD may have problems with understanding math. Still another person may have trouble in both of these areas, as well as with understanding what people are saying.

Researchers think that learning disabilities are caused by differences in how a person’s brain works and how it processes information. Children with learning disabilities are not “dumb” or “lazy.” In fact, they usually have average or above average intelligence. Their brains just process information differently.

There is no “cure” for learning disabilities. They are lifelong. However, children with LD can be high achievers and can be taught ways to get around the learning disability. With the right help, children with LD can and do learn successfully.

Learn as much as you can about the different types of LD. The resources and organizations listed below can help you identify specific techniques and strategies to support the student educationally.

Seize the opportunity to make an enormous difference in this student’s life! Find out and emphasize what the student’s strengths and interests are. Give the student positive feedback and lots of opportunities for practice.

Provide instruction and accommodations to address the student’s special needs. Examples:

• breaking tasks into smaller steps, and giving directions verbally and in writing;
• giving the student more time to finish schoolwork or take tests;
• letting the student with reading problems use instructional materials that are accessible to those with print disabilities;
• letting the student with listening difficulties borrow notes from a classmate or use a tape recorder; and
• letting the student with writing difficulties use a computer with specialized software that spell checks, grammar checks, or recognizes speech.

Learn about the different testing modifications that can really help a student with LD show what he or she has learned.

Teach organizational skills, study skills, and learning strategies. These help all students but are particularly helpful to those with LD.

Work with the student’s parents to create an IEP tailored to meet the student’s needs.

Establish a positive working relationship with the student’s parents. Through regular communication, exchange information about the student’s progress at school.

(CPIR, 2015, LD)

Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities

[TheDOITCenter], (2015, Aug. 20). Working Together: Computers and People with Learning Disabilities. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/-uaEdaD5wJE Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)    (11:24 minutes)

Photo Reference

Boy with notebook- Image by paperelements from Pixabay

References

Center for Parent Information and Resources, (2015), Learning Disabilities (LD). Newark, NJ, Author. Retrieved 3.28.19 from https://www.parentcenterhub.org/ld/  (public domain)

Educational Psychology. Chapter 5  Authored by: Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton. . License: CC BY: Attribution From  https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/153 

[TheDOITCenter], (2015, Aug. 20). Working Together: Computers and People with Learning Disabilities. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/-uaEdaD5wJE Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

Wikipedia, (n.d.) Dyscalculia, From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia#:~:text=on%20the%20topic.-,Etymology,calculation%22%20and%20%22calculus%22. 

updated 5.26.22