Free Essay Sample on Learning Disorders

Introduction

There are many descriptions of learning disorders. The most common one is; impairment of a person’s intellectual functioning. An individual with a learning disorder or learning disability might find it difficult to learn or understand things as most people do. That is because such people's brains do not receive and process information in similar ways to other people. People with learning disorders find it problematic to perform some tasks or may not effectively display some skills (Mays, 2018). Moreover, they might find it difficult to adopt some social skills and hence to leave them in dangerous situations.

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To work effectively with individuals having learning disabilities, counselors outside the school systems need to keep up to date with the most commonly used tests. Such counselors ought to understand and be familiar with how learning disorders influence a person's well-being and functioning. Keeping up to date with the most commonly used tests may also help counselors outside the school system understand their concepts, attitude, and reaction to disability. Moreover, counselors outside the school system would also be able to learn how best they interact with individuals with disabilities without any barriers (Brookhart, 2015). A counselor would be able to provide reasonable accommodation of disorderly related issues.

Achievement

The first scientists who attempted to measure human intelligence were Francis Galton and Paul Broca. They believed the size of the skull could indicate how intelligent a person was. Their assumption was, the bigger the skull, the more intelligent an individual was. Around that same time, another scientist known as Wilhelm Wundt measured people's intelligence using introspection. Although the methods applied by these three scientists are no longer used, they played a crucial role in the history of intellectual assessment. In 1904, Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet developed the first modern intelligence test (Brookhart, 2015). These two were trying to distinguish children who were normally intelligent but lazy from retarded children.

Today, K-12 students take several intellectual assessment tests. In most cases, these tests measure the progress a student makes in certain areas or when the course comes to an end. The test may as well measure if a person is more successful in one area than the other. The two most common tests are achievement tests and intelligence tests. Achievement tests are used to measure acquired knowledge and skills. These tests are different from aptitude tests used to measure a person’s natural ability and talents (Mays, 2018). These achievement tests also measure a student's learning. Intelligence tests, on the other hand, do not measure people’s progress but rather their potential. They can as well measure verbal and nonverbal intelligence.

Comparing

Intelligence assessment is used to estimate a person's intellectual functioning through the performance of different tasks designed to assess various types of reasoning. Intelligence includes analyzing situations, solving problems, and understanding of social norms, values, and customs. It is crucial to perform an intellectual assessment for students whose learning disabled. It helps provide information on how a person approaches problem-solving. Some of the most commonly used intellectual assessments are; spatial intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

Spatial Intelligence

This type of intelligence assessment helps determine how easy a person can grasp the way things lay in space. Sea captains and airplane pilots would often have high spatial intelligence as it plays a major role if finding the way around large space and territory (Root et al., 2016). Spatial intelligence determines a person’s ability to generate, transform, retain, and retrieve well-structured visual images. It is what people do when they visualize shapes in their “mind’s eye."

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence refers to an individual’s ability to process physical information through their body and hand movement, expression, and control. Students with a bodily-kinesthetic learning style learn best when allowed to use tactile senses and gross and fine motor movement as a learning process. In most cases, such individuals prefer involvement with the materials that they are learning instead of worksheets and/or reading from books (Brookhart, 2015). They are also able to understand things longer when they are using it actively.

Teacher Made Tests

Teachers use different terms as methods of evaluation in a classroom situation. The teacher made tests happens to be one of the most valuable instruments that teachers use. This technique is designed in a way that it can solve requirements or problems in class. The technique is meant to measure both the content and outcomes of the curriculum. The teacher made test is also made flexible for it to be adopted to any material and procedure (Root et al., 2016). There are no sophisticated techniques used in preparation for these types of achievement assessments. The time limit, procedures of scoring, and instructions are all assessed by the teacher-made test.

Conclusion

Testing bias refers to the systematic error of a person’s thinking, which happens when an individual interprets and processes information in the world around him/her. When such bias creeps in, it can significantly influence the people to think about their surroundings. The effect of these testing biases is that it can distort the thinking process (Mays, 2018). Psychologists have a belief that biases can result in adaptive purposes. Biases are said to allow people to reach decisions very fast. That can hence be important when facing threatening or dangerous situation. Many things cause these biases. They include; an individual’s motivation, social pressures, and emotions. Biases tend to increase as people grow older.

Reference

Brookhart, S. (2015). Graded Achievement, Tested Achievement, and Validity. Educational Assessment, 20(4), 268-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2015.1093928

Mays, D. (2018). Can serious reading disorders be investigated and diagnosed by secondary school SEN staff?. Learning Support, 33(2), 190-203.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9604.12203

Root, M., Marchis, L., White, E., Courville, T., Choi, D., & Bray, M. et al. (2016). How Achievement Error Patterns of Students With Mild Intellectual Disability Differ From Low IQ and Low Achievement Students Without Diagnoses. Journal Of Psychoeducational Assessment, 35(1-2), 94-110.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282916669208.