Effective strategies for preventing and overcoming learned helplesness among children with special needs in primary school education

Children with special needs are commonly faced with faliure due to their special needs. Therefore they gradually develop a belief that thay can not influence their academic success, which leads to passivity. Learned helplessness influences academic, emotional and motivational aspect of their lives. Children who are facing learned helplessness tend to generalize their belief that they do not have an influence on their success on different areas of their lives. In our diploma thesis we wanted to explore/study how the phenomenon of learned helplessness affects children with special needs. Beside that we wanted to explore the efficient strategies for overcoming learned helplessness and their role in the education of children with special needs. Moreover we wanted to search for some indications for specific strategies for overcoming learned helplessness in Slovenian educational system. By study of literature we discovered, that most of the strategies for overcoming learned helplessness for the population of children with special needs originates form cognitive behavioral therapy. We came across a study that shows better achievements in children with special needs that were tought the strategies for overcoming learned helplessness oposed to those who were not. Therefore it is essential to include strategies for overcoming learned helplessness to education of children with special needs, especially because learning helplessness is know for its lifelong effect on different areas of our lives