The way teachers and parents often treat children with learning disabilities and emotional handicaps may be undermining their school achievement and adjustment, suggests a study published by a University of Rochester motivational psychologist in the current issue of the Journal of Learning Disabilities [Aug./Sept. 1992].
Because adults often respond to children who seem difficult to manage by "clamping down," they set up a vicious cycle that can subvert such children's desire to learn, their creativity, and their adjustment and sense of well-being, according to Edward Deci, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.
Deci and three colleagues studied more than 450 children from elementary school to high school who were assigned to special education programs. Motivationally speaking, special education students are very much like their peers in regular classrooms, these investigators found. Handicapped children also tend to do better in math and reading if they don't feel overly controlled by teachers or parents, and if they believe they know what it takes to do their schoolwork well and that they are free to work toward goals in their own way.
"The frustration adults feel in trying to direct the behavior of handicapped children tempts them to impose more stringent controls," says Deci. "In the short run, tighter controls may reduce confusion or increase on-task behavior in the classroom, but it's a dangerous approach. These extra controls can interfere with the students' developing greater self- regulation, and that can lead to poorer achievement and adjustment."
Numerous studies in regular education settings have shown a connection between helping children understand what it takes to do well in their school assignments, and then encouraging them in a way that doesn't lead them to feel overly pressured or controlled in their behavior, according to Deci. Under these conditions, children understand concepts better, they have higher self-esteem and lower anxiety, and they show greater creativity.
Though there is a growing acceptance of these principles in regular education circles, they have largely gone untested among special education students, Deci says. What's more, the main thrust of professional thinking about special education students has emphasized controlling them through behavior modification techniques. Also, in one recent study, teachers reported that they are more controlling with mainstreamed, learning disabled students that with their peers.
"Our study provides initial evidence that internal motivation is just as important a predictor of successful performance and adjustment for handicapped children as it is for regular education students. When you consider this in conjunction with all the literature that documents the negative effects of external controls on regular education students, it raises important questions about whether special-needs students are really getting what they need most of all."
Deci and colleagues found that at the elementary school level, how the child felt about the mother's behavior was a key variable in predicting adjustment and achievement. If, in the child's eyes, she was warmly supportive, encouraged the child's initiative and wasn't authoritarian, then that child tended to do better on standardized reading and math tests, and was relatively better adjusted. The teacher's being supportive also helped.
At the junior high and high school level, the same general pattern held true, except that the teacher's behavior became more important than the mother's.
The study uncovered at least one difference between the learning-disabled and the emotionally handicapped, from a motivational perspective. Among learning-disabled children, the issue of how competent the students felt was salient in predicting achievement and adjustment. Learning-disabled children who felt more competent did better in math and reading than those who rated themselves less competent -- regardless of the students' actual abilities.
Among the emotionally handicapped, however, the issue of autonomy was a more important predictor of success; students who scored higher on scales measuring their sense of personal autonomy and initiative also tended to do better in math and reading.
"The apparent difference between the two groups has a certain logic," Deci said. "Learning-disabled students have typically faced many academic failures, so the whole issue of their 'competence' to learn becomes salient. These students very much need the right kind of encouragement from adults. But emotionally handicapped students are not so likely to have had failures at academic work as they are to have had failures of self-regulation. They run into continual conflicts with adults about their behavior. So the critical issue for them, in a sense, is who's in charge? Am I doing things my way, or am I feeling stepped on, like I have to do things your way? We found that students who didn't feel so controlled or pressured, but instead felt as if they had relatively more personal autonomy in doing their school work, did better than the ones who felt more controlled."
In dealing with handicapped children, Deci suggests, teachers and parents can help them develop a stronger sense of self-regulation, competence, and autonomy if they
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