PROBLEMS OF LEARNING

Mary Daisy T.G

ABSTRACT
Learning disabilities are lifelong. The way in which they are expressed
may vary over an individual’s life time, depending on the interaction between the demands of
the environment and the individual’s strengths and needs. Learning disabilities are suggested
by unexpected academic under- achievement or achievement which is maintained only by
unusually high levels of effort and support. Over expectations and pressure from teachers and
parents make the students more stressed. Studies have shown that more people suffer from
learning disabilities than previously thought, and unfortunately those learning disabilities
cause more than simply troubles in school - they can lead to developmental issues, and
possibly anxiety.

INTRODUCTION
Learning disabilities refer to a number of disorders which may affect the acquisition,
organization, retention, understanding or use of verbal or non-verbal information. These
disorders affect learning in individuals who otherwise demonstrate at least average abilities
essential for thinking or reasoning. As such, learning disabilities are distinct from global
intellectual deficiency.

Learning disabilities result from impairments in one or more processes related to perceiving,
thinking, remembering or learning. These include, but are not limited to: language
processing; phonological processing; visual spatial processing; processing speed; memory
and attention; executive functions (e.g. Planning and decision making). Some people simply
have learning problems, like dyslexia, but otherwise no separate trouble functioning.

Learning problems happen because of the way the brain takes in and processes information.
As a result, some people learn differently. The trick will be figuring out how you learn best.
There are people who know how to do just that .Your parents and teachers can help you and
they can find you a learning specialist or school psychologist. These professionals can help
figure out what is a kid’s learning problem is – and come up with ideas for how to make it
better.
Learning disabilities may co-exist with various conditions including intentional, behavioural
and emotional disorder, sensory impairments or other medical conditions. For success,
individuals with learning disabilities require early identification and timely specialized
assessments and interventions involving home, school, community and workplace settings.
The interventions need to be appropriate for each individual’s learning disability subtype and,
at a minimum, include the provision of: specific skill instruction; accommodations;
compensatory strategies; and self advocacy skills.
PHYSCOLOGICAL VARIABLES
(a) STRESS
Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand or threat. When you feel
threatened, your nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including
adrenaline and cortical, which rouse the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster,
muscles tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens, and your senses become sharper.
These physical changes increase your strength and stamina, speed your reaction time, and
enhance your focus - preparing you to either fight or flee from the danger at hand. When you
sense danger – whether it’s real or imagined – body’s defences kick into high gear in a rapid,
automatic process known as the “fight- or – flight” reaction, or the stress response.
The stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. When working properly, it helps
you stay focussed, energised and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life -
giving you an extra strength to defend yourself, for example, or spurring you to slam on the
brakes to avoid an accident.
Causes of Stress

“Situations, circumstances or any stimulus that is perceived to be a threat is referred to as a

stressor or that which causes or promotes stress”. A fight or flight reaction may be useful in
some situations, but it is highly detrimental in the classroom. Whether anxiety stems from test
taking or from an unstable home environment, the brains of students experiencing high levels
of stress look different than those who are not — and those brains behave differently, too. In
this article, we’ll take a look at the neural and hormonal responses that underpin a student’s
stress response, and make a few suggestions for continuing to teach through the challenges it
presents.

Brain during a Stress Response

The body and the brain respond to stress with a complex cascade of hormones and
neurotransmitters. When a child’s senses perceive danger, their hypothalamic-pituitary-
adrenal (HPA) system releases steroid hormones. This includes the primary stress hormone,
cortical, which has a direct effect on the heart, lungs, circulation, metabolism, immune
system and skin. The HPA also stimulates the release of catecholamine neurotransmitters like
dopamine, nor epinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline), which activates the amygdale,
which in turn triggers a fearful response. The brain then releases neuron peptide S, which
increases alertness and feelings of anxiety.

How Stress Inhibits a Brain’s Ability to Learn

Together, the HPA system will keep a child’s stimulated and ready to run. But while this may
be good for truly life or death situations, this stress response makes learning difficult, as the
stimulated senses are not those associated with deep learning. Think about it this way: would
you be able to memorize the times tables when you were being chased by a dog? Of course
not. But while this may be obvious, the reasons why this is the case is more complex than you
might expect.

Common external causes of stress

 Major life events
 Work or school
 Relationship difficulties
 Being too busy
 Dysfunctional family
Common internal causes of stress
 Chronic worry
 Pessimism
 Rigid thinking, lack of flexibility
 Negative self talk
 Unrealistic expectation

(b) ANXIETY

Anxiety is very common for children and adults with learning disabilities, and unfortunately
these anxieties may make it even harder to overcome the learning issues. It's easy to see why
learning disabilities can lead to the development of anxiety. In some cases, the disability itself
may be the cause of anxiety. However, most of the time that anxiety develops as a result of
how much of a struggle it is to live with a learning disability. Social anxiety is perhaps one of
the biggest problems. Social anxiety often develops because those with trouble learning feel
out of place. All learning disabilities are different. Others have developmental problems that
contribute to trouble learning. Even though these conditions are very different, they share the
same feeling of being unable to fit in with others. Feeling like an outsider and feeling self-
conscious over your abilities can cause similar development of social anxiety.

Causes of Anxiety

Anxiety may be caused by a mental condition, a physical condition, the effects of drugs, or a
combination of these. The doctor’s initial task is to see if your anxiety is caused by a medical
condition.

Common causes of anxiety include these mental conditions

 Panic disorder
 Generalized anxiety disorder
 Phobic disorder
 Stress disorder

These common external factors can cause anxiety

o Stress at work
o Stress from school
o Stress in a personal relationship (Marriage)
o Financial stress

The Ways And Means to Reduce Anxiety in the Class Room

There are numerous actions teachers can take to reduce anxiety in the classroom. These
include:
1. Designating a safe place for at-risk children. Outside of mentoring, tutoring, and
coaching, children should have a designated safe adult in the classroom, whether
that’s the classroom teacher, the school psychologist or the school nurse. This person
should be a calming and empathetic presence, equipped with coping strategies
individualized to the given student.

2. Encourage self-awareness. In addition to discussing grit, it can also be useful to

develop a lesson plan that explores the physical symptoms of stress and anxiety so
that students can recognize the signs in themselves and fellow students and offer a
helping hand.

3. Teach time management. Students will have less stress in their lives when they feel
organized and like they are on top of their assignments.

4. Teach mindfulness and meditation. Today’s schooling system puts a heavy emphasis
on outcome-based learning, but just as important is staying in touch with one’s
emotions. Setting aside time to, for example, have students meditate before starting
an exam, will not only help reduce anxiety in the present, but will also teach coping
strategies for the long term.
ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATIONS

As part of our B.Ed programme we were asked to conduct a project on problems of learning
of the students in our respective teaching practice schools. I had the opportunity to conduct
the project at Baker Memorial GHSS, Kottayam. I conducted it based on selected
psychological variables. The variables which I selected were on Stress, anxiety and fear. I
prepared a questionnaire on the basis of these variables in order to find out the different
problems faced by the students.

By the analysis of the questionnaire, it was clear that most of the students were facing stress,
anxiety and fear in learning. i.e. among the samples selected 90% of students were stressed
while learning. Almost 70% of students were easily annoyed or agitated in their studies. With
regard to the trouble in sleeping or falling to sleep, 25% of students face such difficulties.
Almost 55% of students get upset by unimportant or small items. Among my samples 60% of
students were afraid of their teachers so that they do not approach the assistance of teachers.
The majority of students get pressure from their parents regarding their studies. The students
who over react to the situations were 35% . 65% of samples were scared without any reason.

Almost 85% of students were having tensions in doing activities. Among the samples 75%
students evade programmes because of anxiety. Only 40% of students were concerned about
what others think of them. On the question of their fear of exams majority of students are
having a feel of fear in taking exams. 80% of my samples get panic before and during exams.
/almost 50% of samples face a trouble of sleeping during right before a test. Only 25% of
students made mistakes with easy questions. 70% of students face a difficulty in choosing the
answers. Among the samples 55% feel that they need to cram before the test. Almost 75% of
students feel confusion in taking test. The majority of students are scared of their friend’s
opinion on their low marks. The 60% of students are afraid of being getting a bad mark even
though they are well prepared.

Majority of my samples are getting depress after doing a test regard to their poor performance
in the test and also they were anxious about getting low marks. Almost 80% of students have
a feeling that there is a huge work load. Only 40% of students face some learning disability in
using language, and are having imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write , spell or in
working out Mathematical calculation.

Among the samples 60% of students feel angry towards their parents and friends and also
70% of students experienced situations of angry outburst. Almost 65% of students get
irritated while learning. With regard to the question of difficulty in understanding the content,
only 45% faces such difficulty.

Almost 70% of students feel that teats are too frequent; this causes a great stress in their
learning. Among the samples only 25% of students are having the feeling incompetence and
75% of students have self- expectation about their studies. The students who are pressurised
with the high expectations imposed by others are 70%. Most of my selected samples don’t
have any health problems.
70% of samples of the study are afraid of punishments from their parents and teachers, but
they have a positive opinion regarding their reinforcement from teachers and parents. Among
the samples 55% of students need the assistance of others for their learning.

TOOLS USED

 Survey
 Questionnaire
 Interview
 Personal encounter

THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
As a teacher and counsellor I need to become a healing presence in my classroom thus I can
help the students to grow into wholeness.

FINDINS AND SUGGESTIONS

From the survey it is very clear that most of the students have stress and anxiety in learning.
They have good academic achievements or good scoring in the exams due to this problem,
even though they have enough resources and good learning experiences.

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

The main aim of the study is to find out the students who are experiencing the fear, stress and
anxiety. I understood that the students needed help from the competent authority in order to
face the challenges of life. The data collected were analysed and interpreted for the
identification of various objectives of the study. I personally interviewed few of the students
who were backward in their studies. The statistical study, techniques used in this study were
mean, median and standard deviation

The result is presented in the following tables.

Problems faced No. of students interviewed Percentage

Stress 7 23
Anxiety 2 7
Fear 21 70
Total 30 100

The table shows the percentage of students who are under stress, anxiety and fear. It reveals
that23% is suffering due to stress, 7% is having anxiety problem and 70% have various types
of fear in their lives.

NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The domain of problems of learning is still a grey area in India. There has been a scarcity of remedial
programme for specific learning disabilities. Early identification of children with various disabilities
is the most crucial step and therefore it has been a major topic of discussion in the area of special
education for the past few years. The early detection of any type of handicap has received wide
support from the field of medicine, psychology and education and it is recognised that early diagnosis
of a specific condition can lead directly to treatment. Therefore a modest attempt is made to study
the problems, assessment and management of problems of learning in regular classrooms and to
seek the suggestions of the experts regarding the measures that can be adopted for curing fear,
anxiety and stress among students.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objectives of this study

1. To study the level of stress and anxiety of students in learning.

2. To find out how exam fear affects the achievement level of students.
3. To find out the remedial measures to overcome the stress of students.

METHODOLOGY

The questionnaire used to assess the stress and anxiety among the VIII standard students of
Baker Memorial GHSS, Kottayam. The questionnaire constructed was supervised by the
teacher educator. The questionnaire contains the questions related to the causes of stress and
anxiety of students with regard to learning, to know whether the students have visible signs of
nervousness right before a test , whether their minds goes blank during a test etc....

CONCLUSION

From this study I was able to identify the importance of specific learning and systematic
study of Social Science. I conclude that many students are having stress and fear regarding
the subject Social Science because they have not put their whole attention and concentration
while reading the subject minutely. They need to cultivate the habit of reading good books in
order to improve their knowledge. If the students are given proper care, support and attention
they can come out of this problem. From the survey it was clear that the students have stress
concerning certain areas of learning and memorizing the years, events, names of diverse
historical places which they study in Social Science. But some of the students were found to
have comparatively less tension and stress.

REFRENCES

The learner- Nature of development Dr.S.K. Mangal

www.Social Science learner.Com.