Teachers Meeting The Challenges of Student Disabilities

In this chapter, we discussed the numerous challenges that teachers face while teaching students with different disabilities. It was found that barring a few teachers who had knowledge of the exact needs of these students, majority of the teachers deployed methods that they felt would assist learning for them. Modifications in teaching methods were undertaken based on the nature of the students’ disability and the demands of subject taught. In case of some government colleges, parents were reportedly assisting in the laboratory due the absence of support staff.

In the case of students with visual impairments and/or learning disabilities, repetition was found to be the most favoured method to explain everything, from diagrams in economics to sociological concepts. However, implementation of this method was time-consuming. While, in general, students with disabilities were encouraged to seek help from the teachers beyond the class timing, it was observed that students with learning disabilities rarely did so, possibly due to the social stigma attached to their disability.

With regard to teaching students with learning disabilities, it was found that a majority of teachers did not take any particular efforts towards addressing the needs of these students may be because their disabilities were hidden or invisible in nature. Contrast to the lack of information on how to cater to students with learning disabilities, a majority of the teachers were able to adjudge some measures as facilitating learning among students with visual impairments such as encourage students to sit in the front row, read aloud any text that was presented in visual format or making the study material available in soft copy. The onus, however, was on the stude...

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