A systematic review of the literature on the benefits for employers of employing people with learning disabilities (original) (raw)
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Caring for People with Learning Disabilities
Learning disability is the term currently used in England to describe people with impaired social functioning due to intellectual deficits. It replaced the term mental handicap. The international term remains mental retardation, which is synonymous with learning disability. It is a medically heterogeneous group. The borderline between learning disability and normality is not sharp. As in most conditions such as dementia, alcoholism or even diabetes, the way in which people are diagnosed as having learning disability depends as much on social events leading them to contact with medical staff as on their intellectual deficits. This is most noticeable at the borderline where few people reach psychiatric services and those who do usually do so because of behavioural or emotional difficulties.
Learning Disability Quarterly, 2018
The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) 1 affirms that the construct of learning disabilities (LD) represents a valid, unique, and heterogeneous group of disorders, and that recognition of this construct is essential for sound policy and practice. An extensive body of scientific research on LD continues to support the validity of the construct. Historically, "specific learning disability" (SLD) has been recognized and defined by the U.S. Office of Education since 1968 (U.S. Office of Education, 1968). However, recent discussion about retaining the LD category has prompted this overview of critical issues in the field of LD and their implications for policies that affect individuals with LD. This paper addresses points of general agreement in the field of LD, common misperceptions regarding LD, and unresolved issues in scholarship and practice, which inform the NJCLD's policy recommendations regarding LD research and practice. The paper presents neither all agreements nor all controversies in the field of LD; the NJCLD's purpose in presenting this document is to establish a basic consensus upon which to build policy for the United States. Understanding LD: Consensus and Controversies Even though a great deal is known about LD, the field has been the subject of controversies for most of its history. This section of the paper addresses points of agreement, common misperceptions, and unresolved issues.
Adults with Learning Disabilities: A Review of the Literature
Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 2002
An emerging theme in professional development for adult literacy program staff over the past decade has been the topic of learning disabilities (LD). As adult educators have come to recognize that the effects of LD can play a significant role in the performance and retention of adult learners, many have sought answers to the following Definition of Learning Disabilities In the years following the 1975 enactment of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, many special educators viewed LD as a developmental delay that would be outgrown as an individual matured. The field was too new at that time to benefit from longitudinal studies that followed students into adulthood. Similarly, the adult literacy field did not readily make connections between clients who seemed to have difficulty learning and existing research on the K-12 special education population. Some early articles (Bowren, 1981; Gold, 1981) questioned the incidence of LD among adult learners and debated appropriate practices for adults with LD. But adult literacy programs were for the most part not yet attending to LD in the design and delivery of services for learners or in staff development. problems that significantly affect their academic achievement and their lives. Prevalence of Learning Disabilities in Adults Literacy providers have questions about the prevalence of LD among adults and whether its prevalence in the general adult population is different from that in the population enrolled in adult literacy education. No one study has as yet determined a generally accepted prevalence rate among adults. Varying estimates for specific segments of the population do exist, but the estimates were obtained not through formal evaluation and documentation but through instructor observation, from administrators' educated guesses, and from client self-reports. For example, the U.S. Employment and Training Administration (1991) estimated the incidence of LD among Job Training and Partnership Act Title IIA recipients to be 15-23 percent. When Ryan and Price (1993) surveyed ABE directors nationwide about the prevalence of adults with LD in ABE classes, estimates ranged from 10 percent to more than 50 percent. Other estimates have been proposed for various subpopulations, but all lack validation data. A reasonable estimate of the prevalence rate among the general adult population can be extrapolated from data on the incidence of LD among school-age children. Data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 1998-99 school year indicates that 4.49 percent of the school population ages six to twenty-one have a primary diagnosis of specific learning disability (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Many believe that this rate is an underrepresentation because operational definitions of LD vary from school system to school system. This may account for the discrepancy in the reported school-age identification rate and estimates derived from other sources. Research based on brain studies supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) indicates that 20 percent of school-age children may be considered reading disabled (Lyon, 1995; Shaywitz, Escobar, Shaywitz, Fletcher, & Makuch, 1992). Although not all children with reading disabilities have LD and not all children with LD have reading disabilities, the percentage of individuals with reading-related disabilities is higher than the standard school-based special education reports would lead us to believe. Given that recent studies point toward LD as a persistent, lifelong impairment, it is reasonable to accept a higher prevalence rate for the general adult population than is reported from special education data. For subsets of the general population, such as persons enrolled in adult literacy programs, we can assume a higher incidence rate (Reder, 1995). Although studies indicate that gender is not a determining factorequal numbers of males and females have learning disabilities-there is a gender bias in the identification of LD in school-age children, with four times as many boys as girls being so identified
Learning disabilities: Current status and future prospects
Journal of Child and Family Studies, 1995
Are children's learning disabilities being remediated effectively?; If not, why not?; and, how can we improve this state of affairs? Unfortunately, the realistic answer to the first question has to be "usually not." Although in some countries, such as the United States, legislation guaranties the allocation of resources for remediation of learning disabilities, research suggests that it is unlikely that these are used uniformly to good effect. In other countries, such as New Zealand, learning disabilities are not recognised by the government's education authorities and consequently no targeted services are provided within the public education system (Chapman, 1992). Parents who have themselves identified the problem must look to the private sector for help, and they will have to pay for that from their own pockets. So different countries have different official policies. But what is remarkable is that, regardless of which country we look at and regardless of the differences in the level of services provided in the public sector, the prevalence of learning disabilities in children halfway through their school careers seems to be much the same, around 5% (Silver & Hagin, 1990). This seems consistent with the idea that, even in those countries that do provide public services, identification is not leading to effective remediation. Worse yet, in those countries, such as New Zealand, where there are no public services for learning disabilities, there is also no control of the quality of the services offered in the