Intellectal Disabilities
What is Intellectual Disability?
Intellectual disability involves problems with general mental abilities that affect functioning in two areas:
- intellectual functioning (such as learning, problem solving, judgement)
- adaptive functioning (activities of daily life such as communication and independent living)
IDEA's Definition of "Intellectual Disability"
Our nation's special education law, the IDEA, defines Intellectual Disability as . . .". . . significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child's educational performance." [34 Code of Federal Regulations §300.7(c)(6)] Retrieved from: https://www.naset.org/index.php?id=2296
Characteristics of Intellectual DisabilitiesThe common characteristics of intellectual disabilities: difficulty learning and processing information; problems with abstract thought; and problems with social interactions occur at varying levels unique to each individual. (Learn about the differences between mild, moderate and severe intellectual disability) Intellectual impairment involves problems with mental abilities that affect day-to-day functioning in three areas:
- Conceptual – includes problems with skill in language, reading, writing, mathematics, reasoning, memory, knowledge retention
- Social - refers to issues with empathy, judgment, communication, making and keeping friends, and other social functions
- Practical – focuses on problems with self-care, such as personal hygiene, job duties, personal finance, organization
Accommodations and Modifications:
Teaching Strategies
It is important to know that despite difficulties in a learning environment students with intellectual disability can and do have the capacity to acquire and use new information. There is a range of inclusive teaching strategies that can assist all students to learn but there are some specific strategies that are useful in teaching a group which includes students with intellectual disability:
- Provide an outline of what will be taught - highlight key concepts and provide opportunities to practise new skills and concepts.
- Provide reading lists well before the start of a course so that reading can begin early.
- Consider tailoring reading lists and provide guidance to key texts. Allow work to be completed on an in-depth study of a few texts rather than a broad study of many.
- Whenever you are introducing procedures or processes or giving directions, for example in a laboratory or computing exercise, ensure that stages or sequences are made clear and are explained in verbal as well as written form.
- Students may benefit from using assistive technology.
- Use as many verbal descriptions as possible to supplement material presented on blackboard or overhead
- Use clear, succinct, straightforward language.
- Reinforce learning by using real-life examples and environments.
- Present information in a range of formats – handouts, worksheets, overheads, videos – to meet a diversity of learning styles.
- Use a variety of teaching methods so that students are not constrained by needing to acquire information by reading only. Where possible, present material diagrammatically - in lists, flow charts, concept maps etc.
- Keep diagrams uncluttered and use colour wherever appropriate to distinguish and highlight.
- Ensure that lists of technical/professional jargon which students will need to learn are available early in the course.
- Recording lectures will assist those students who have handwriting or coordination problems and those who write slowly as well as those who have a tendency to mishear or misquote.
- Students will be more likely to follow correctly the sequence of material in a lecture if they are able to listen to the material more than once.
- Wherever possible, ensure that key statements and instructions are repeated or highlighted in some way.
- One-to-one tutoring in subjects may be important; this can include peer tutoring.
- Students may benefit from having oral rather than written feedback on their written assignments.
- It may be helpful for students with intellectual disability to have an individual orientation to laboratory equipment or computers to minimise anxiety.
Assessment Strategies
Students with intellectual disability may need particular adjustments to assessment tasks. Once you have a clear picture of how the disability impacts on learning, you can consider alternative assessment strategies. In considering alternative forms of assessment, equal opportunity is not a guaranteed outcome, it is the objective. You are not expected to lower standards to accommodate students with disability but rather are required to give them a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned:
- Allow extensions to assignment deadlines
- Use technology to record students work, e.g. digital photography, tape and video.
- Students may take longer to organise thoughts and sequence material. They will benefit from discussing their outlines, with particular attention being paid to appropriate relationships and connections between points.
- Encourage the student to submit an early draft of assignments to allow the opportunity for feedback to the student as a formative process.
- Students with an intellectual disability will need extra time in an examination for reading and analysing questions and for planning their answers. Some students will request that examination questions be read to them. Some students may prefer to dictate their answers to a scribe. They will need a venue which is quiet and distraction-free.
- Keep short your written examination instructions and sentences within examination questions. Questions using bullet points, lists or distinct parts are more likely to be correctly interpreted.
- Because students with intellectual disability find it difficult to read multiple choice questions in a way that allows them to appreciate subtle changes in the arrangement of words, short answer questions will be a better test of their knowledge.
- Students may benefit from an exam timetable that features a number of days between exams to assist in exam preparation.
- Many students with intellectual disability are chronic misspellers and use dictionaries only with great difficulty.
Resources:
The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET) is a national membership organization dedicated to rendering all possible support and assistance to those preparing for or teaching in the field of special education. NASET was founded to promote the profession of special education teachers and to provide a national forum for their ideas. Article: Comprehensive Overview of Intellectual Disability https://www.naset.org/index.php?id=2296
Project IDEAL (Informing and Designing Education for All Learners) is a project of the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities. This site includes teaching modules, videos, articles, and activities as part of a teacher preparation program intended to better prepare teachers to work with students with disabilities.
Webpage: Intellectual Disability http://www.projectidealonline.org/
SpecialEducationGuide.com is a resource for parents and educators with articles explaining terminology, procedures and best practices in special education. Topics covered include early intervention to ISFPs; IEPs and RTI, inclusion, classroom and behavior management; disability profiles for each category under IDEA and a Special Education Dictionary to master “SPED” jargon. Article: Intellectual Disability https://www.specialeducationguide.com/disability-profiles/intellectual-disability/
Center for Parent Information and Resources
What you will find on the Parent Center Hub:
- Family-friendly information and research-based materials on key topics for Parent Centers
- Private workspaces for Parent Centers to exchange resources, discuss high-priority topics, and solve mutual challenges
- Coordination of parent training efforts throughout the network
- A twice-monthly e-newsletter with key topics, new resources, upcoming events, and materials to share with families
- Materials from Parent Centers themselves
Additional Resources
Articles:
- IDEA Individuals with Disabilities Education Act https://sites.ed.gov/idea/
- Intellectual Disability http://aaidd.org/
- Intellectual Disabilities https://www.adcet.edu.au/inclusive-teaching/specific-disabilities/intellectual-disability/
- Intellectual Disability https://www.thearc.org/search?q=intellectual%20disability
- What is an Intellectual Disability? https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/intellectual-disability/what-is-intellectual-disability
Videos:
- How much do you know about intellectual disabilities? | Matthew Williams | TEDxVancouver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BURbLmQL1BE
- Let's Talk About Intellectual Disabilities: Loretta Claiborne at TEDxMidAtlantic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XXqr_ZSsMg
- Intellectual Disabilities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPB5l67gpKk
- 3 things I learned from my intellectually disabled son | Emilie Weight | TED Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C1-8cXbwrU