پديد آورندگان :
بشرپور، سجاد نويسنده استاديار گروه روانشناسي , , عيسيزادگان ، علي نويسنده استاديار گروه علوم تربيتي و روانشناسي , , زاهد، عادل نويسنده استاديار گروه علوم تربيتي , , احمديان، ليلا نويسنده كارشناس ارشد روانشناسي ,
چكيده لاتين :
Introduction
A specific learning disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a biological origin that is the basis for abnormalities at a cognitive level that are associated with the behavioral signs of the disorder. Students with learning disorder have difficulties in learning and using academic skills. Learning disabled students are vulnerable to low self concept due to academic failures, nature of the stigma of having learning difficulties and separation from the regular education process. Accordingly, there is a consensus between researches that children with learning difficulties, needing specific educations, have low academic self concept as compared to normal students. As such, it is purposed that low performance of these children at schools can result in bad feelings of them toward the school. Moreover, educational dysfunctions of these children at school can lead to low school engagement, which is counted as an important factor for learning. In this regard, previous studies have demonstrated that children with learning disabilities have secondary self perception problems such as poor self-concept and self-efficacy (Clever, Bear & Juvomen, 1992; Kurtz & Hicks-Coolick, 1997). Giving this, it is believed that these problems occur due to their poor academic achievement. The results of Hampton and Mason (2003) showed that learning disabilities have impact on self-efficacy indirectly. Plata, Trusty and Glasgow (2005) found that students with learning disability show reluctance to educational activities. They have poor self-regulated learning (Graham & Harris, 2007) and poor cognitive skills of these students are related to self regulated dysfunctions (Klassen, 2010). In conclusion, reviewing the literature shows that academic self-concept and school engagement are essential for the educational achievement. Considering this important issue, the current study was conducted in other to compare the academic self concept and school engagement between students with and without learning disabilities.
Method
The method of this research was cross-sectional. The statistical population of the study included all the students with learning disabilities in the centers of learning disabilities of Uremia education office in the educational year 90-91. Forty five students were randomly selected from this population as a sample. Also forty five students were randomly selected from the normal students as the comparative group. The data collection began after having received permission from the center of learning disability located in the educational department of Uremia. After referring to this center, the students were informed about the purpose of the study; then, the Demographic Questionnaire, Academic Self Concept Questionnaire (Liu & Wang, 2005) and School Engagement Questionnaire (Wang, Willett & Eccles, 2011) were administered to the groups in their classrooms and in the presence of the researchers. The collected data were analyzes through descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation and multivariate variance analysis (MANOVA).
Results
The results showed that there are significant differences between the children with and without learning disabilities in terms of student confidence (F=198.13; P < 0.001), student effort (F= 133.36; p < 0.001) and total score of educational self concept (F=211.13; P < 0.001). Furthermost, concerning school engagement, significant differences were found between the two groups in attentiveness (F= 4.95; p < 0.02), attractiveness of school (F= 25.0; p < 0.001), self regulative learning (F= 42.31; p < 0.001), and using of cognitive strategies (F= 20.94; p < 0.001). But no significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of belonging to school (F= 2.29; p < 0.13), and valuating the school (F= 2.12; p < 0.14).
Conclusion
The results revealed that the mean scores for the group with learning disabilities on student confidence, student effort, total score of academic self concept, attentiveness, school attractiveness, self regulative learning and cognitive strategy use were significantly lower than the scores for the normal group. It appears that children with learning disabilities as compared to the group without disabilities have little success in domains such as social competence, educational achievement, etc. Furthermore, they face internal limitations (e.g. disability to adapt to their problems) and external limitation (e.g. ostracism by peers) and attain low scores in a test of educational achievement. These factors would result in negative beliefs about self and lower self-concept especially in educational dimension. The result of this study, namely the coexistence of low academic self-concept with low school engagement in students with learning disabilities pinpoints the important role of school related variables in learning performance of these students. Poor behavioral and cognitive engagement of these students together with low academic self-concept, which was revealed in this research, indicates that low academic self-concept of these students, often due to poor academic performance, can play a role in creating the negative perceptions about investing in school learning and lack of confidence of such students to self-regulate the learning strategies. Ultimately, these factors can reduce their interest in school, academic motivation, and willingness to learn and pursue academic goals.
Keywords: academic self concept, school engagement, learning disability, students.
