A Phenomenological Study of Academic Challenges Faced By Children With Specific Learning Disablity (Sld)

Specific Learning Disability (SLD) is a neurological problem which creates lots of challenges in the life of children. Academic challenges are the most significant one when it comes to SLD. Aims: To realize the academic challenges that children experienced with Specific Learning Disability. Setting and Design: Phenomenological method with purposive sampling technique was used to understand the perspective of children. Materials and Methods: Semi-structured Interview Schedule was administered on 10 SLD children who are already diagnosed by clinical psychologist studying in elementary grade i.e. 6th grade to 8th grade of private inclusive schools of Delhi. Analysis Used: Content Analysis was used to elicit the data from open-ended questions. Results: (i) Children with learning disability are not lazy & dumb, they perceive and process information in a different manner. (ii) They encounter difficulty in comprehending what they have read, experience making mistakes while reading, repeating the sentences, taking pause, trouble in remembering & mispronouncing same sounding words. (iii)Children doesn’t want to write because of the fright behind committing spelling mistakes. (iv) Many children experience problem of illegible writing, pain in hand, extra efforts & longer time for writing and trouble in expressing their own ideas & feelings in writing. (v)They struggle while comprehending & solving the word problems, issues of learning formulas, making things in order of operations, basic calculations, understanding time, directions, money related work and difficulty in keeping scores of games & matches. (vi) Have trouble in adjusting to new situations, take time to adapt new changes in their life, demand lots of coordination & organization, face problem in rote learning & remembering, comprehending meaning from text and thinking out of box (vii) Complained about inability to perform activities that require sequential order, meeting deadlines, following schedules, arranging things, setting priorities and managing time for themselves. (viii) Experience inability to interpret their own environment as a consequence react inappropriately, misunderstood situation and comprehend different meaning with incorrect interpretation. (ix) Trouble in understanding what they hear and making differences in sound, difficulty in comprehending meaning from sounds, require frequent repetition and struggle in remembering what they heard. (x) The foremost problem of misunderstanding in analyzing and synthesizing visually presented information. (xi)They experience inability to differentiate between same sounding words, struggle while copying from writing board, mispronouncing the words while reading, difficulty in comprehending meaning out of what they read and figuring out what is there in pictures & graphs. Conclusions: The present study has identified various challenges faced by children academically. Proper support & motivation of parents & teachers can help children in developing positive attitude towards learning