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EDST2000 - Week 3 (Understanding Learning Difficulties and
Disabilities) Exam
Define General Learning Difficulties (GLD) - ANSWER Learning Difficulties that are associated with a student's context. (e.g. a student is distracted because their parent is upset with them)
Define Specific Learning Difficulties (SLD) - ANSWER Diagnosable issues that impede a student's ability to perform academically. They can be short or long term. (Eg. Student with ADHD suffering from time blindness in a test)
What are some characteristics of SLDs? (6) - ANSWER - they are intrinsic to the student
- they are related to neurological functioning
- they often do not disappear over time
- they create a discrepancy between a child's aptitude and achievement level
- not associated with sopcio-economic, or other identity differences or disadvantages
- results in persistently low achievement
What can SLDs impact? (10) - ANSWER - Literacy
- Numeracy
- Language Processing
- Writing
- Maths
- Cognitive Skills
- Motor Skills
- Organisation
- Social Skills
What is the difference between a learning disability and a learning difficulty? - ANSWER Difficulty: Student can learn through conventional teaching methods Disability: Student requires specialised intervention
What is the contention between SLDs and GLDs? - ANSWER Some argue that SLDs are different from GLDs, while others see them as within the same continuum.
Describe the downward spiral that students with learning difficulties and disabilities may face. (7) - ANSWER 1) Students experience persistent difficulty in learning a task
- they lose confidence and motivation
- they avoid the task associated with failure
- cumulative avoidance leads to lack of practice
- lack of practice leads to lack of knowledge and skills
- Student falls behind
- Negative attitude to learning / negative self-talk
What is failure syndrome (Yeager & Dweck, 2012)? - ANSWER - long-term lack of success leads to students believing they would never succeed
- alternative methods of status preservation (risk-taking and inappropriate behaviour)
What is attribution theory in education? - ANSWER Attribution theory refers to a student's reflection of causal effects in their performance. It can negatively or positively affect academic performance.
what is learned helplessness? - ANSWER a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of low performance in school and high inappropriate / risk-taking behaviour.
What is motivation? - ANSWER the direction and intensity of effort
Why do students with learning difficulties often lack motivation? - ANSWER they are reluctant to take risks or commit to new learning situations due to past persistent failures
What do teachers often attribute a student's lack of performance to and why is this potentially harmful? - ANSWER 1) a lack of motivation to achieve
- they do not try to understand the reason behind a lack of motivation
What can emotional toll can learning difficulties have on students? (6) - ANSWER - anxiety
- stress
- depression
- low self-esteem
- low self-efficacy
- low motivation
How can identifying factors that make students with learning disabilities resilient be beneficial? - ANSWER it can help foster similar traits in other students.
What do we need to foster in students with chronic learning difficulties? (3) - ANSWER - effective stress management
- remaining active learners
- healthy coping mechanisms for problems that may be persistent
What causes learning difficulties (Cortiella & Horowitz, 2014)? (2) - ANSWER - Neurobiological imbalance in the brain's ecosystem
What is the most common type of learning difficulty? - ANSWER Language-based struggles
How can dyslexia be an asset? (6) - ANSWER - bigger picture processing
- holistic approach to understanding, thinking and reasoning
- may be above grade level in their ability to think about concepts and generate knowledge and reasons with information
- enhanced peripheral vision
- enhanced spatial learning abilities
- talent in 3D spatial reasoning
Why don't phonics work to teach students with dyslexia? (6) - ANSWER - some students cannot hear the difference in similar phonemes
- putting sounds together can be difficult
- some words are not spelled like how they are read, so students cannot apply phonemic principles because of inconsistent perception of sequence directions of sounds, letters and words.
- student may not think in the sounds of words
- Over-reliance on phonetic strategies can impede progress and reading fluency
- relies on repetition and overlearning, which is difficult and slow
What is whole word recognition? - ANSWER reading strategy that involves identifying common words based on their appearance without having to sound them out
Why do students with dyslexia struggle with whole-word recognition? - ANSWER they identify words by shape and not sounding out letters, which leads to guessing, mistakes, and confusion.
Why do students with dyslexia struggle with phonics? - ANSWER A hallmark characteristic of dyslexia is a difficulty in phonetic decoding. They simply are not able to categorise the sounds of language or connect sound to meaning in the same way as
