Adolescents with learning disabilities: A comparative lifestream interpretation

The subjective experiences of adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) were compared to those of their low-achieving and normally achieving peers. Three groups of juniors and seniors from one suburban high school district, 18 students with learning disabilities (15 males, 3 females), 17 low-achieving students (12 males, 5 females), and 20 average-achieving students (12 males, 8 females), were given electronic pagers and booklets for 1 week. They were signaled every 40 minutes during school hours, and every 2 hours after school. As soon as possible after receiving a signal, they responded to questions in their booklets. The questions provided subjective mea-sures on levels of affect, activation, cognitive efficiency, self-esteem, motivation, and feedback from others. The students with learning disabilities reported feeling more positive and active than either of the other groups during school hours, while after school there were no differences on any of the subjective measures for the three groups. Specific LD school practices are high-lighted for their probable impact on the heightened affect and activation of the students with learning disabilities. What must be admitted is that the definite images of traditional psychology form but the very smallest part of our minds as they actually live. The tradition-al psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pails-ful, spoonsful, quartsful, barrelsful and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and pots all actually stand-ing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of conscious-ness that psychologists resolutely over-look. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawn-ing sense of whither it is to lead. (James, 1985, p. 32) A dolescence is a phase in the life span when critical develop-ment occurs relative to iden-tity, autonomous social relations, and occupational choices. Psychologists have mapped this period via an assort-ment of research methodologies, suc