Children with auditory problems

A
A. Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in young
children can have a major impact on their development of speech and
communication, resulting in a detrimental effect on their ability to learn
at school. This is likely to have major consequences for the individual and
the population as a whole. The New Zealand Ministry of Health has found
from research carried out over two decades that 6-10% of children in that
country are affected by hearing loss.
B
B. A preliminary study in New Zealand has shown that classroom noise
presents a major concern for teachers and pupils. Modern teaching
practices, the organisation of desks in the classroom, poor classroom
acoustics, and mechanical means of ventilation such as air conditioning
units all contribute to the number of children unable to comprehend the
teacher's voice. Education researchers Nelson and Soli have also
suggested that recent trends in learning often involve collaborative
interaction of multiple minds and tools as much as individual possession
of information. This all amounts to heightened activity and noise levels,
which have the potential to be particularly serious for children
experiencing auditory function deficit. Noise in classrooms can only
exacerbate their difficulty in comprehending and processing verbal
communication with other children and instructions from the teacher.
C
C. Children with auditory function deficit are potentially failing to learn to
their maximum potential because of noise levels generated in classrooms.
The effects of noise on the ability of children to learn effectively in typical
classroom environments are now the subject of increasing concern. The
International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (I INCE), on the
advice of the World Health Organization, has established an international
working party, which includes New Zealand, to evaluate noise and
reverberation control for school rooms.
D
D. While the detrimental effects of noise in classroom situations are not
limited to children experiencing disability, those with a disability that
affects their processing of speech and verbal communication could be
extremely vulnerable. The auditory function deficits in question include
hearing impairment, autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention
deficit disorders (ADD/ADHD).
E
E. Autism is considered a neurological and genetic life-long disorder that
causes discrepancies in the way information is processed. This disorder is
characterised by interlinking problems with social imagination, social
communication and social interaction. According to Janzen, this affects
the ability to understand and relate in typical ways to people, understand
events and objects in the environment, and understand or respond to
sensory stimuli. Autism does not allow learning or thinking in the same
ways as in children who are developing normally. Autistic spectrum
disorders often result in major difficulties in comprehending verbal
information and speech processing. Those experiencing these disorders
often find sounds such as crowd noise and the noise generated by
machinery painful and distressing. This is difficult to scientifically
quantify as such extra-sensory stimuli vary greatly from one autistic
individual to another. But a child who finds any type of noise in their
classroom or learning space intrusive is likely to be adversely affected in
their ability to process information.
F
F. The attention deficit disorders are indicative of neurological and genetic
disorders and are characterised by difficulties with sustaining attention,
effort and persistence, organisation skills and disinhibition. Children
experiencing these disorders find it difficult to screen out unimportant
information, and focus on everything in the environment rather than
attending to a single activity. Background noise in the classroom becomes
a major distraction, which can affect their ability to concentrate.
G
G. Children experiencing an auditory function deficit can often find
speech and communication very difficult to isolate and process when set
against high levels of background noise. These levels come from outside
activities that penetrate the classroom structure, from teaching activities,
and other noise generated inside, which can be exacerbated by room
reverberation. Strategies are needed to obtain the optimum classroom
construction and perhaps a change in classroom culture and methods of
teaching. In particular, the effects of noisy classrooms and activities on
those experiencing disabilities in the form of auditory function deficit need
thorough investigation. It is probable that many undiagnosed children exist
in the education system with 'invisible' disabilities. Their needs are less
likely to be met than those of children with known disabilities.
H
H. The New Zealand Government has developed a New Zealand
Disability Strategy and has embarked on a wide-ranging consultation
process. The strategy recognises that people experiencing disability face
significant barriers in achieving a full quality of life in areas such as
attitude, education, employment and access to services. Objective 3 of the
New Zealand Disability Strategy is to 'Provide the Best Education for
Disabled People' by improving education so that all children, youth
learners and adult learners will have equal opportunities to learn and
develop within their already existing local school. For a successful
education, the learning environment is vitally significant, so any effort to
improve this is likely to be of great benefit to all children, but especially to
those with auditory function disabilities.
I
I. A number of countries are already in the process of formulating their
own standards for the control and reduction of classroom noise. New
Zealand will probably follow their example. The literature to date on noise
in school rooms appears to focus on the effects on schoolchildren in
general, their teachers and the hearing impaired. Only limited attention
appears to have been given to those students experiencing the other
disabilities involving auditory function deficit. It is imperative that the
needs of these children are taken into account in the setting of appropriate
international standards to be promulgated in future.
=> Classroom noise is one of the main effects on student’s
comprehension.

Gifted children and learning

A
A. Internationally, ‘giftedness’ is most frequently determined by a score
on a general intelligence test, known as an IQ test, which is above a
chosen cutoff point, usually at around the top 2-5%. Children’s
educational environment contributes to the IQ score and the way
intelligence is used. For example, a very close positive relationship was
found when children’s IQ scores were compared with their home
educational provision (Freeman, 2010). The higher the children’s IQ
scores, especially over IQ 130, the better the quality of their educational
backup, measured in terms of reported verbal interactions with parents,
number of books and activities in their home etc. Because IQ tests are
decidedly influenced by what the child has learned, they are to some
extent measures of current achievement based on age-norms; that is, how
well the children have learned to manipulate their knowledge and know-
how within the terms of the test. The vocabulary aspect, for example, is
dependent on having heard those words. But IQ tests can neither identify
the processes of learning and thinking nor predict creativity.
B
B. Excellence does not emerge without appropriate help. To reach an
exceptionally high standard in any area very able children need the means
to learn, which includes material to work with and focused challenging
tuition -and the encouragement to follow their dream. There appears to be
a qualitative difference in the way the intellectually highly able think,
compared with more average-ability or older pupils, for whom external
regulation by the teacher often compensates for lack of internal
regulation. To be at their most effective in their self-regulation, all
children can be helped to identify their own ways of learning –
metacognition – which will include strategies of planning, monitoring,
evaluation, and choice of what to learn. Emotional awareness is also part
of metacognition, so children should be helped to be aware of their
feelings around the area to be learned, feelings of curiosity or confidence,
for example.
C
C. High achievers have been found to use self-regulatory learning
strategies more often and more effectively than lower achievers, and are
better able to transfer these strategies to deal with unfamiliar tasks. This
happens to such a high degree in some children that they appear to be
demonstrating talent in particular areas. Overviewing research on the
thinking process of highly able children, (Shore and Kanevsky, 1993) put
the instructor’s problem succinctly: ‘If they [the gifted] merely think more
quickly, then .we need only teach more quickly. If they merely make
fewer errors, then we can shorten the practice’. But of course, this is not
entirely the case; adjustments have to be made in methods of learning and
teaching, to take account of the many ways individuals think.
D
D. Yet in order to learn by themselves, the gifted do need some support
from their teachers. Conversely, teachers who have a tendency to
‘overdirect’ can diminish their gifted pupils’ learning autonomy. Although
‘spoon-feeding’ can produce extremely high examination results, these are
not always followed by equally impressive life successes. Too much
dependence on the teachers risks loss of autonomy and motivation to
discover. However, when teachers allow pupils to reflect on their own
learning and thinking activities, they increase their pupils’ self-regulation.
For a young child, it may be just the simple question ‘What have you
learned today?’ which helps them to recognise what they are doing. Given
that a fundamental goal of education is to transfer the control of learning
from teachers to pupils, improving pupils’ learning to learn techniques
should be a major outcome of the school experience, especially for the
highly competent. There are quite a number of new methods which can
help, such as child-initiated learning, ability-peer tutoring, etc. Such
practices have been found to be particularly useful for bright children from
deprived areas.
E
E. But scientific progress is not all theoretical, knowledge is a so vital to
outstanding performance: individuals who know a great deal about a
specific domain will achieve at a higher level than those who do not
(Elshout, 1995). Research with creative scientists by Simonton (1988)
brought him to the conclusion that above a certain high level,
characteristics such as independence seemed to contribute more to
reaching the highest levels of expertise than intellectual skills, due to the
great demands of effort and time needed for learning and practice.
Creativity in all forms can be seen as expertise mixed with a high level of
motivation (Weisberg, 1993).
F
F. To sum up, learning is affected by emotions of both the individual and
significant others. Positive emotions facilitate the creative aspects of
earning and negative emotions inhibit it. Fear, for example, can limit the
development of curiosity, which is a strong force in scientific advance,
because it motivates problem-solving behaviour. In Boekaerts’ (1991)
review of emotion the learning of very high IQ and highly achieving
children, she found emotional forces in harness. They were not only
curious, but often had a strong desire to control their environment,
improve their learning efficiency and increase their own learning
resources.