What effect do intellectual disabilities have on a student’s ability to learn in a general education classroom?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Mention of the individual strengths and weaknesses that may be exhibited by persons with intellectual disabilities would be a good introduction or conclusion.
Students should list several more specific effects—for example:

• Delayed cognitive functioning makes learning in school more difficult for persons with intellectual disabilities. This difficulty may be evident in reduced ability to manipulate symbols (read) and to think abstractly (reasoning to a conclusion on a story problem).
• Metacognition, or the ability to spontaneously identify and employ efficient strategies in a range of learning situations, may be more limited.
• Inability to pay attention to important features of problems or texts, and a short attention span, may limit the ability to learn.
• Generalization of a skill (such as recognition of monetary equivalents) to real-life applications is less spontaneous for the student with intellectual disabilities.
• Associated social awareness skills (an adaptive behavior) make learning in a class situation challenging, especially if peers and teachers are unprepared to accommodate these behaviors.
• Language competence (an adaptive behavior) may further complicate the learning process. Not understanding words, grammatical structure, and the pragmatics of language can detract from the learning opportunities of a person with intellectual disabilities.