The term barriers to learning are used interchangeably with the word learning difficulty. Although the barriers to learning can be related to issues relating to learning difficulties, the difficulties cover more than that. The barriers can be considered as a situation or any difficulty that will hinder a child from learning (Georgeson et al. 2014). Along with the other common barriers in relation to learning, almost 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom experience learning disabilities. It is important to note that learning disability affects the way people communicate and understand information and also learn new skills. This also includes the difficulty with certain subjects like mathematics, difficulty in writing, difficulty in reading. However, the highlighting fact is that the severity of learning disability varies from one person to another. Studies have highlighted that the certain learning disabilities are independent of the conditions like dyslexia. The other condition like Down’s syndrome is always found to be associated with the learning disability. Whereas, other conditions like autism is only sometimes associated with learning disability. The other conditions like, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) does not always associate with a learning disability, ADHD can still hamper learning (Unionlearn.org.uk 2018). The most common barriers in relation to learning are: health and emotional barriers, financial issues, social and cultural issues, barriers present within the academic system, education and language, lack of the parental involvement, lack of access to the basic amenities or services, underdevelopment and poverty, communication and language, inadequate and inappropriate provision of the support services. While there are strategies and strategies that will effectively reduce the learning difficulty: building relationships, usage of a balanced data approach, being intentional with the lesson plan, having a consistent and high expectation, teaching of vocabulary explicitly, getting the students excited and engaged, providing multiple opportunities and striving to embed learning (Helpguide.org 2018). The main objective of this study is to identify the barriers pertaining to the learning of a child, and the potential implication in the educational context and the relevant strategies used to reduce the barrier.
As per the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Learning disability can be defined as a neurological disorder and simply this can be described as a learning disability resulting from the way a person’s brain is functioning. However, considering the Mental Health Act, special educational institute and appropriate infrastructure can treat children with the disability in learning. However, it is important to note that such children may find difficulty in organizing, recalling information, reasoning, spelling, writing, and reading (Shamir, Korat and Fellah 2012). The various types of learning disability are as follows:
Problems with writing and reading:
Under the Children and Families Act 2014, Learning disability associated with the difficulties in interpreting the visual information, distinguishing between sounds, understanding spoken language, difficulties in motor skills.
Considering the Health and Education Act, Other disorder like the ADHD and autism also makes learning difficult
Under the Care Act, the Mental Capacity Act, Inclusive teaching is a teaching procedure that takes into account the students and enables the student to properly access the course content and helping the students to fully participate in the learning activities. The benefits that arise from the inclusive education are: children are able to develop a positive understanding of others and themselves; children by being together are able to learn effectively, children are able to develop a friendship, children are able to learn the vital academic skills (Dallas et al. 2014).
The case study focuses on a child of 6 years of age and is experiencing the learning disability since the 3 years of age. The name of the child is child X who is currently experiencing disability in learning. In order to collect the data and formulate the findings this study focused on case study based analysis while considering the appropriate literature about learning disabilities and constrains the findings The strategic methodology has been used to gather data using two methods namely observation and interview. Observation is chosen for this study because the child needs to be observed to find out the changes in the attitude, behaviour, characteristics when the child tries to learn, communicate and interact. The other methods selected for this study are interviews with the teachers of the school, child’s parents and the child itself. It will help to collect primary data on the regular activities and experiences of the Child X. Apart from that some secondary data has been collected to analyse the case study and formulate the findings in the discussion part of the study. The observation procedure has been focused on the activities in the school and in home as well. The communication pattern, social interaction, relationship with surroundings and the difficulties in verbal communication and expression have been observed.
The case study is about a 6 years old girl named X and attends a public primary school. She is a introvert child with lack of interest social communication and verbal interaction. She likes to create things in spite of learning through reading or writing for educational purpose. She likes various types of artistic activities such as drawing, handcrafting, colouring, painting, origami and others. She also suffers from occasional depression due to her educational practice in school. She often finds charm and psychological resurrection through these artistic activities. When she came to live UK with her parents she was only 5 years old. Her parents work in a private company, however they tried to give adequate time and attention. On week end she and her parents spends the whole day together and her parents often take her out in nearby children park. As mentioned earlier, due to her lack of communication and ability of social interaction she is unable to make friends easily. However, other children usually try to avoid her because of her different behaviour and irrelevant attachment style.
Child X lives a moderately flexible daily schedule. In morning, she goes school with her father, who drops her to the primary school on the way of his office. After reaching her school, child X entered in her classroom through the corridor door and placed her schools bags on the coat hook like her other classmates. She walked to her chair that is in the corner of the classroom and seat with dull and emotionless face. She avoided the eye contact and never said any of her classmates ‘Hi’, ‘Hello’ or ‘Good Morning’. The first class was English and the class teacher entered and smiled at the students and started to register everyone name in the registration number. When her name came, she did not replay at the first time (Richards and Rodgersm 2014). After calling by her name second time she replied, “Present please ma’am”.
It was an English class and the teacher asked every student in the classroom to get a book from the shelf and set back in her place. The teacher asked them to read a particular passage from the book and present to the class. She was lost in the pictures printed in the pages. It was second time in her class when she missed the time whet she had to start the reading. The class teachers called her name and told her to read the passage and she started to read with some difficulties in pronunciation. Her reading is significantly slow and scattered compared to her classmates. She had difficulties to pronounce some words specifically which were consist of multiple joined consonants. It was not clear, if she had difficulties to identify the pronunciation of the spellings or if she was unable to pronounce because of her difficulties in verbal communication.
6 year following her traumatic birth, Child X presented with a variety of learning challenges. She had already undergone through various tests to identify and examine her problem from the core. The most noticeable factor within her school activities is, she displayed lack of willingness or the spirit of playfulness and competition. In the physical activity class she performed very poor than the other classmates. Her eyes tended to jump while tracking an object, and she needed a fair amount of help to estimate the size and speed of the objects. Though she has a little difficulty in visualising, her parents always maintain a monthly appointment to her doctor to keep updated about her visual impairment. As per the report of her visual impairment, she has myopia (Swanson, Harris and Graham 2013). However, she is very strong in visual identification of colours and shades.
As conveyed by her math teacher, child X “has some difficulties in rational thinking and reasoning, which always hinder the learning process. She often does not understand some simple calculation process that is even understandable for a student of 2 years younger than her age.” Her mother said, “Often she loses her temper while learning the complex mathematical concept suitable for her age. Sometimes, she also becomes nervous and anxious”. Her class teacher said, “She neither displays any curiosity about the context nor shows up with questions about her lesson”. Her father said “the first signs of her disability appeared when she was 4 years old and the teacher at the nursery school noticed that she had difficulty in counting, making simple analogies and differentiating between object. Her parents also conveyed that in spite of having learning, visual and communication difficulties they chose to admit their daughter in a regular school. Her class teacher said, “Child X needs special help, otherwise it is difficult for her to take part in the conventional education and learning procedure”.
From the above case study, it has been found that the Child X has several difficulties in several learning attributes including problems in reading, writing, speaking, pronunciation and others. Most of these disabilities are linked with communication barriers and disabilities in interpretation. The most noticeable factor in Child X is her lack of interest in social factor and other verbal and non-verbal communication. At the same time, the data collected from the interview showed that she usually spent most of the time alone while being engage in a creative activities, such as drawing, painting, handcrafting and others (Gaddes 2013). This behaviour certainly shows that Child X has a considerable amount of attraction on creative activities. As a student of 6 years old child X has significant issues to accept traditional learning process. On the other hand, from the observation on the school-based activities of Child X it has been found that her sociological psychological attachment style is different from the other classmates of her age group. The problem was identified at her 4 years of age while the situation was completely ignored by her parents. This negligence had a huge impact on her present conditions or disabilities.
As per the information collected from interviews, she usually faces high anxiety and aggression in the reasoning lesson to understand a mathematical concept. This type of conditions can be aroused due to lack of confidence, fear about the learning components and experiencing a wrong teaching process (Geary 2013). The reasoning or mathematical lesson is considered to be an input, processing and output activity because this requires the organization of thoughts in the brain while gathering the external information, interpreting the concept and finding cause and effect relationship with the attributes; then representing the solution with appropriate way. These procedures require simultaneous brain functions with appropriate concentration and adoptability. Therefore it is clear that Child X does not has all these capabilities. At the same time, all these disabilities are causing frustration that eventually stimulates her issues with agitations and anxiety in the learning procedure (Compton et al., 2012).
The reading difficulties are the main constrain in her learning practice. The basic problems arise when Child X faces difficulty in understanding the relationship between the words, letters and sounds, which is also called dyslexia. Learning disability associated with the difficulties in interpreting the visual information, distinguishing between sounds, understanding spoken language, difficulties in motor skills including sports activities. The various problems that arise with such difficulty are word and letter recognition, understanding the ideas and words, reading fluency and speed, general skills in vocabulary (Cortiella and Horowitz 2014). Child X also has some issues with her motor skills especially in physical activities as well. She is unable to estimate the speed and size of an object, which is moving towards her. In Dyslexia, these issues are very common. Thus, it is also expected that Child X would have difficulties to perform the physical activities like cut, writing, jumping and running involves the brain to communicate properly with the limbs in order to compete for an action. These types of motor disability can also be described as the disability relating to the output of information from the brain associated with muscle organisation and movement orientation (Solis et al., 2012).
The major factor of the learning disabilities of child X is, she has creativity skill, which can allow her to concentrate and learn something new through self-analysis and trial and error method. These types of activities also allow her to repeat same kind of motor function, which can eventually result a sustainable development of motor skills. From the case study, it can be also noticed that the child X has expressive writing, which indicates the issues of a child in organizing the thoughts on to paper. On the other hand, issues with reading comprehension arise when a child faces difficulty in grasping the meaning of the paragraphs, phrases and words. Under the Children and Families Act 2014, this type of problem is highly related to the lack of understanding of the formulation of word and its interpretation and should be resolved by the parents or immediate gardians. Therefore, this disability is also hindering hear reading and event pronunciation capability. She does not have any stutter issue that indicates that she does not have any problem related to vocal or facial nerves.
Therefore, it is clear that the major issue that associated with her difficulties are disputed communication, under developed social interaction, distorted attachment pattern with surroundings, inability to memorise the meaning of words, visual coordination related issues, problems in accurate physical movement and coordination, inability to identify letter, inability to process input and interpret the meaning (Gillespie and Graham 2014). Child X also has slight depression issue that stimulates her agitation and anxiety. Most of these issues are indicating her problems have high resemblance with Dyslexia. Therefore, under the Children and Families Act 2014, it is also clear that for further stage of her education, Child X needs special guidance and trainings.
Conclusion:
As per the secondary studies on learning difficulties, it can be concluded that the barriers to learning can be related to issues relating to learning difficulties while the difficulties cover more than that. It has been also found that along with the other common barriers in relation to learning, a large number of students in the United Kingdom experience various learning disabilities. These difficulties includes the difficulty with certain physical movement, difficulties in conceptual understanding , difficulty in verbal and non verbal communication, difficulty in social interaction, difficulty in pronunciation and writing. As per the above case study, it is clear that the issues that Child X is currently experiencing are indicating that her problems have high resemblance with Dyslexia. Most of these issues are disputed communication, under developed social interaction, distorted attachment pattern with surroundings, inability to memorise the meaning of words, visual coordination related issues, inability to identify letter, depression and anxiety.
From the above case study analysis, it can be concluded that for further stage of her educational development, Child X needs special guidance, learning procedure and trainings. The problems had been found at her nursery level. However, the lack of sincere attention to these issues increased the dilemmas. If these issues are still avoided or neglected it would cause major psychological and physiological impairment for lifetime. After reaching the adult age, sometimes these problems become irreversible which can cause further discrepancies in her lifestyle. In order to support and guide her physical and psychological growth she would definitely some assistance and support.
As per the theoretical analysis and case study based observation, it can be said that many teaching and learning strategies can work effectively to reduce the learning barriers with appropriate interaction among the teachers, parents and other supervisors.
Effective communication with the student:
Among all of the learning strategies, the most effective strategy is to maintain verbal and nonverbal communication on regular basis. Teachers can interact with the parents to have in depth knowledge about the psychological attachment pattern of the student as well as the essential requirements for learning. The teachers should also communicate with the students to discuss about their experience during the lesson and learning activities. This will help to reduce communication barriers between the disable child and the teacher, which would be fatherly helpful for enhance the acceptance capability of the student (Haager and Vaughn 2013). In case of Child X, appropriate communication will help the teacher to gain more information about Child X regarding what they like doing or interested in, their preferred learning method and to what extent does she know how to read, write and speak.
Alternative learning procedure:
Considering the Mental Health Act, Various types of alternative teaching methods are available that would be very helpful for Child X in her education process. These methods comprises the flexibility of learning scheduling and planning where Child X or other special student can learn whatever they want to learn without having a specific time line for each activities. These methods are based on the interactive session and the other charming activities, such as audiovisual learning, singing, storytelling, debate and others. These activities will allow the learner to enjoy the learning procedure while meeting the learning objectives accordingly. These alternative procedures could also be very helpful to increase the willingness of the child x for social attachment and communication level (Fuchs, Fuchs and Capizzi 2017). It will be also very helpful to increase the reasoning capacity of the student. Reducing the tension in the learning method of the reasoning class while increasing the friendly and corporative atmosphere can increase the interest of the student to the reasoning based learning, especially in mathematics.
Inclusive Education:
Inclusive teaching can be also helpful for Child X. Through this teaching procedure, she can properly access the course content and helping the students to participate completely in the learning activities. The additional benefits of this education process are: children will be able to develop a positive understanding of others and themselves; children by being together are able to learn effectively, children will able to develop a healthy and cooperative relationship with each other. Through this inclusive education system, children can be able to learn the vital academic skills it terms of social science, arts, literature, science and mathematics.
Focusing more on strength:
In most of the cases of learning difficulties except the Down syndrome, the special students have other specific abilities. The learning procedure should focus on those special abilities or interests of the student to develop the learning capability and intellect of the student. In case of Child X, the child is very passionate about artistic activities including drawing, painting, handcrafting and other activities. These activities would help to keep her engaged with the lesson with appropriate level of consecration. Plenty of researchers have been conducted to analyse the effectiveness of this learning procedure. Therefore, incorporating the interesting activities in her regular lesson plan for a long period would increase the overall acceptance, intellect, reading, writing, interactive ability gradually.
Reference:
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Cortiella, C. and Horowitz, S.H., 2014. The state of learning disabilities: Facts, trends and emerging issues. New York: National center for learning disabilities, pp.2-45.
Dallas, B.K., Sprong, M.E. and Upton, T.D., 2014. Post-Secondary Faculty Attitudes Toward Inclusive Teaching Strategies. Journal of rehabilitation, 80(2).
Dalsgaard, S., 2013. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). European child & adolescent psychiatry, 22(1), pp.43-48.
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