Course Project: Final Paper Assignment Instructions Paper Components: The body of your Final Paper must be 3,000–3,500 words; include title, abstract, and reference pages; use current APA format; a

SLOW LEARNERS IN EDUCATION 1

Slow Learners in Education

Kelly-Ann Riddell

Liberty University

Abstract

Children with slow learning problems are an important topic that needs the intervention of not only teachers but everyone else in society. This is because today, slow learner children keep making the majority of underachievers in education. It is also important for teachers to be equipped with skills of dealing with such children because if they do not have adequate experience, they will find it difficult to deal within the classroom. So, the goal of this research was to find appropriate learning strategies for slow learners in schools and also find out where the society is lacking when it comes to the academic achievement of slow learners.

Introduction

A very big problem that every school face is the difficulty to deal with the slow learners. One of the educators’ challenges is tackling slow learners to make them learn academic subjects. Handling them in homework and class work, making them understand the topic, dealing with them patiently and understanding their psychology are the areas concerned with the slow learners. Slow learners require special attention from teachers and currently, teachers are overworked and overburdened and cannot provide adequate teaching aid to these students (Vasudevan, 2017). In the past, this problem has been addressed by transferring slow learners into special education systems where they can gain learning momentum and then transfer back to normal schools' systems.

These problems take a significant amount of time to be properly understood, researched, and resolved. However, real change in education will occur once the problems are reformed and there is significant progress made (Brennan, 2018). This paper seeks to discuss the problem of slow learners in schools who are often left behind in terms of learning and how this integrates to teaching and elaborate more on the need for researching this problem. This problem is significant to teaching and learning because it highlights the loopholes in the current education system and also invites the education department to the need to properly address the needs of slow learners.

Research Question: What are the challenges that slow learners face and how can they be addressed?

Literature Review

According to Shah (2015), many reviews have been done to find out the academic performance of the student at various levels. The performance of a student is purely based on the social care of the students, the care of the students at the younger age group have increased level of performance and parental support. Also, the academic performance of students is contributed by many factors including gender, age, the medium of instructions, the role of teaching faculty, socio-economic status, and many more factors like adjustability with the peer groups and understanding the language.

Slow learning generally means that the individual or the child takes more time to grasp concepts than the average person. They go through the development stages at the same rate as others but just at a much slower rate (Brennan, 2018). In children, slow learning can be identified by poor speech patterns, socially being more comfortable with younger children, personal frustration, and difficulty building academic information and connecting concepts together. In schools, these slow learners are often left behind and there learning needs are often unmet. Teachers are often unaware or lack the knowledge and tools, and patience that will accommodate these students.

Slow learners are significantly behind in year level expectations and this carries on throughout their years of schooling. These students then associate school with difficulty, frustration, and label themselves as underperformers. Slow learners in environments where the teacher neglects them or makes negative remarks about their performance record a large percentage of school dropouts (Chauhan, 2011). Slow learning has been identified as a problem because they make up a majority of underperforming students in schools and continuously fall short of the minimum education standards of success. Besides, 45% of teachers complain of being overworked and therefore do not have enough time to pay special attention to students that may require this time (Chauhan, 2011).

However, the problem has not been fully researched to precisely figure out ways to identify slow learners from an early age and the solutions and steps they require to follow in order to live a more wholesome life. The student’s achievements are also placed side by side to those with other students because they are not special students. Students are sometimes labelled as slow learners because they do not understand English and all the lessons are in English. Indigenous students make up 25% of underperforming students who are unable to pass the national minimum standard of education (Choi, 2019). Slow learners are bonded into a path of low achievement and demotivation for learning.

According to Vasudevan (2017), slow learners are individuals who acquire knowledge at a sluggish pace, which is often lower than the average rate. The potential causes of slow learning may include low intellectual capabilities and individual factors, such as illnesses and high absenteeism rates. Additionally, environmental factors play a major role in slowing down their process of understanding instructional content. Other contributing factors include cultural issues, poverty, familial inadequacies, as well as parental; disharmony in many instances. While most of such pupils often receive education, they eventually move to regular schooling environments when the backwardness is removed. These children may also display inabilities in areas such as thinking, determining solutions, embracing social relationships, as well as poor development.

However, some studies have been conducted to address the problem of slow learning. Slow learner students can be found in almost every educational institution. Slow learner children can almost be found in every school inclusion. Approximately 14.1% of children, including children slow learner. This amount is more than the total number of children learning disabilities, retarded children, and children with autism (Hartini et. al., 2017). Therefore, this is a problem that cannot go away hence the need for ways to help slow learners reach their potential. One of the studies conducted came up with the idea of inclusion of all children with slow learning problems in special education programs. These programs will help them with facing some of the learning problems such as difficulty in understanding abstract concepts, have a limited vocabulary, having a low learning motivation, require more time to understand a material than a normal child of his age and requires repetition in the explanation of the material.

Learning Theory Association

Student centred Learning Approach

The student-centred learning approach is an interactive technique to teaching which focuses on group work, cooperative and collaborative work, flexible learning, and activity-based teaching to achieve learning objectives (Qutoshi & Poudel, 2014). By using these instructional strategies, teachers provide slow learners with a variety of learning opportunities by focusing on them such as service-based learning, problem-based learning and team-based learning. Student-centred learning helps slow learners during activities in cooperative and active learning situations where teachers can use different tools of assessment for learning by providing constructive feedback to improve learning. This approach is considered effective in helping slow learners by providing them with quality education. Especially in a community school system where slow learners are mostly socially conscious about the importance of social interactions and teamwork in their daily life activities.

There are several ways on how the use of centred approach teaching method impacts slow learners. First, when teaching slow learners, the power shifts from teacher to a more student-centred. This allows the makes the slow learner students to be active which creates enjoyment in their learning through exploration and construction of knowledge where the teacher encourages and engages them in the critical thinking process to achieve the desired objectives of learning. In this whole process of teaching and learning, if a child does not come up to the mark or to the set standard the child is not dismissed as a failure; rather the teacher considers what can be done to enable this child to learn and this concept is somehow linked to the perceptions of providing quality education (Qutoshi & Poudel, 2014). Secondly, the use of content is just for students to think critically which challenges slow learners to be able to think outside the box and come up with ideas of their own, and thirdly, this approach utilizes assessment measures not just to assign grades, but to promote learning.

However, there are challenges to this approach when teaching slow learners. Things such as lack of time on tasks, smaller rooms with fixed furniture, less access to the computer lab and misuse of classroom resources due to sharing of the school building and lack of support from school administration to take initiatives make it difficult to practice this approach. As a result, it offers some teachers a chance and justification to switch from a student-centred approach to a teacher-centred approach which does not ease slow learners. Besides, centred a teaching approach in classes with a huge number of students within a short period can be very tedious and students may not enjoy learning.

Constructivism Teaching Model

Constructivist teaching theory is all about accepting students in terms of their thinking and assessing student learning is in the context of teaching. It helps teachers to draw on new ideas as they make decisions about which teaching techniques are most appropriate for all students to learn, including slow learners. Every student receives and processes information in different ways. Some learn by listening and sharing ideas, some learn by thinking through ideas, some learn by testing theories, some learn by synthesizing content and context, and some learn by reasoning. Constructivism is a teaching model, not a theory. Essentially, it is a model or metaphor of how people learn or how learning takes place (Akpan & Beard, 2016). Teachers are expected to help slow learners by leading them through exploratory activities that enable them to investigate on their own and come to their own conclusions.

Besides, this approach allows slow learners to control their own thinking through the teachers interacting with them in positive ways, for example, asking questions, building appropriate challenges and experiences, and offering new ways of thinking. In this teaching model, teaching is student-centred therefore making it another approach in helping slow learner students in the class. Approaching instruction from the constructivist continuum reaches a broader range of students and increases comprehension and self-confidence in all students, teaching students to think for themselves, ask questions and seek answers (Akpan & Beard, 2016). It helps slow learners be able to answer standard procedural questions conceptual questions and critical questions just like other students.

On the other hand, the constructivism teaching model has been criticized to be a failure when it comes to teaching slow learners because it requires a great deal of expertise. Besides it has not always been implemented well in the actual classroom. Some called it propaganda, disastrous fad, teaching strategies with low intellectualism, colourful and jazzy drill and practice ways of instruction (Akpan & Beard, 2016). This makes it difficult to focus on the slow learners during classroom sessions by teachers and administrators rebelling against it. However, teachers dealing with slow learning students must comply with them by making directions clear, provide concrete, and consistent feedback, for example, physically showing directions, and asking those students to repeat the directions and show the teacher what they are required to do.

Definition of Terms

1. Slow learning; Children with slow learning problem or a slow learner are those who have low learning achievement or slightly below average of children in general. Today, the children slowly learn many encountered not only in school inclusion, but in regular schools too (Hartini et. al., 2017).

2. Instructional Strategies to address slow learning; These are the effective ways to help slow learners to learn to achieve certain learning objectives through the teacher planning and organizing slow learners’ activities (Hartini et. al., 2017).

3. Educators’ challenges; Difficulties that individual teachers to face that hinder them to apply effective techniques, to support the slow learners and those who need additional help (Sundaram & Salomi, 2018).

Gaps in the Research

These gaps in the research include one, the gap between the student and the text in terms of readability issues, background knowledge, interest, motivation and tolerance for the challenge. Secondly, the gap between the teacher and the student, in terms of cultural and socioeconomic differences, language variables, perceptions, and expectations and thirdly, the gap between the student and his peers, including expectations, language, book access, learning rates, and literacy levels. For some students, learning comes easy but it’s not the same case with slow learners. Also, the gap between the teacher and student widens when teachers are not sensitive to their own perceptions and expectations of student performance and status between student and teacher.

These areas need mitigation strategies so as to enable slow learner students to achieve academically. One way to deal with these issues is that teacher training models should be modified to include a deeper understanding of individual differences and how these play out in classroom dynamics by understanding these gaps that hinder student learning.

Another way is by the implementation of project-based learning. This requires teachers or learners to develop guiding questions. Given that each of these learners have different learning styles, then Project Based Learning provides an opportunity for students to explore the content using a variety of ways that are meaningful to them, and conduct collaborative experiments (Hartini,et.al., 2017). This allows slow learners, in the end, to be able to answer questions. Nevertheless, appropriate learning strategies can be implemented to help slow learners. For example, in contemporary society, educational rights should be extended to all student groups, including those who cannot easily understand concepts. Education for all can be attained by organizing and putting in place inclusive learning in early childhood education, primary schools, and high school levels. Slow learners are among students with special needs who need special education services in school inclusion (Hartini et. al. (2017).

However, the areas that still need to research include, what makes academically slow learners have significant educational and behavioural difficulties in the schools and what exactly makes them differ from average students in the rate of learning that makes them need so much external stimulation and encouragement to do simple work. Also, teachers in developing countries having mixed perceptions of slow learners yet they are the key factors in a child’s learning is another area that is yet to be understood. The teacher attitudes towards educating pupils with special education needs have been proposed to be a decisive factor in making schools more inclusive (Kyasanku et. al., 2019).

Methodology

Research Design and Method

The study adopted an experimental research design, where data were collected from interviews and lesson observations. Interviews asked questions regarding teachers' perceptions of slow learners, essential practices for ensuring inclusive classrooms, and challenges of implementation. The teachers' lessons were observed and analyzed using a structured lesson template. Observations were made on how slow learners conducted themselves during class sessions.

Sampling Procedure

A random sampling technique was used whereby different schools were visited and slow learners from both genders were selected for this study. Teachers were also selected, and their appraisals based on the consideration of the child's performance in curricular and recreational interests and overall academic performance in the class, designated as dull or below average in comparison to classmates.

Data Collection and Analysis

Once the permission to collect data was granted, I asked permission to attend meetings with teachers for the interviews. This strategy was successful in maximizing the response rate. The analysis method I used was the use of descriptive statistics to get a general picture of teachers’ perceptions, beliefs, and opinions. I also examined how teachers’ perceptions, beliefs, and opinions vary according to slow learner student characteristics.

Biblical Worldview

The student-centred learning approach and constructivism require that slow learners are focused on education in the sense that teachers have to go the extra mile in helping slow learners reach their potential. The issue with the Biblical worldview when it comes to these two theories is that teachers are tasked with helping students understand their responsibility to have an impact on their world, even though that “world” may seem small and their ability to affect others may seem limited. Christian education includes both development and healing. But for many students with a disability, like slow learners, rather than being an arena of healing and reconciliation, the school can be a place of conflict. For example, these two theories involve the inclusion of slow learners with the general student population.

Able-bodied students may hesitate to build a relationship with classmates with unconventional minds or bodies, particularly if sensing scepticism or discomfort on the part of a teacher who tolerates their presence because of legal mandates. The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to the truth of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4). This blindness also includes failure to recognize that all people are created in the image of God which leads to viewing others hierarchically and increases the potential for wrongdoing toward those judged to be of lesser importance. This bias intensifies the difficulties faced by people who are disabled like slow learners in education.

Even though the education system compares children’s learning abilities to each other, it is important to note that not all children are blessed academically, and the world offers a variety of opportunities, not just in academics. Treating slow learners with patience and empathy will ensure that they can pass the minimum educational requirements and not be constantly placed in the category of underachievers. Since God created humans with a desire for communion with others and Him, it makes sense that the slow learner need for social interaction and acceptance should be addressed by the teacher in their curriculum design and discipline practices (Haveman, 2012).

Conclusion

Unfortunately, slow learners still comprise of the majority of underachievers who fail to reach the minimum achievement standard. However, teachers and students need to work together to increase motivation towards learning. Real change in education will occur once the problems are reformed and there is a significant progress made.

References

Akpan, J. P., & Beard, L. A. (2016). Using Constructivist Teaching Strategies to Enhance Academic Outcomes of Students with Special Needs. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 4(2), 392-398.

Brennan, W. K. (2018). Shaping the education of slow learners (Vol. 3). Routledge.

Chauhan, S. (2011). Slow learners: their psychology and educational programmes. International journal of multidisciplinary research, 1(8), 279-289.

Choi, M. (2019). Exploring Slow Learners’ Dream Using Photovoice. 인문논총, 48, 21-41.

Hartini, A., Widyaningtyas, D., & Mashluhah, M. I. (2017). Learning strategies for slow learners using the project-based learning model in primary school. JPI (Jurnal Pendidikan Inklusi), 1(1), 29-39.

Haveman, A. A. (2012). Christian Approach to Secondary Classroom Management.

Kyasanku, C., Ssebbunga-Masembe, C., Kusakabe, T., & Ozawa, H. (2019). Including the Excluded: The Case of Slow Learners at Buloba Primary School, Uganda. CICE Series, (6), 223-233

Qutoshi, S., & Poudel, T. (2014). Student centered approach to teaching: What does it mean for the stakeholders of a community school in Karachi, Pakistan? Journal of Education and Research, 4(1), 24-38.

Sundaram, M., & Salomi, S., (2018). Slow Learning - Causes, Problems and Solutions. International Journal of Management, Technology and Engineering. 2249-7455

Shah, P., (2015). Factors Contributing Decreased Performance of Slow Learners. International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research. 4. 58-61.

The Bible.

Vasudevan, A. (2017). Slow learners-causes, problems and educational programmes. International Journal of Applied Research, 3(12), 308-313