Module 1: Intellectual Disabilities

Characteristics of Learners with an Intellectual Disability

Research suggests that there are characteristics common to intellectual disability. Knowing these characteristics can help inform our understanding of how students with intellectual disabilities learn.

Learning Can Be Challenging

Click on the diagram to explore some of the ways learning can be challenging.

Learning New Information

Assess each learning opportunity to determine if this information is new to the student. Developmental milestones for students with intellectual disabilities are not achieved at the same time or at the same rate as their peers. In some cases, students do not achieve milestones such as walking and talking, and the student will need to use alternative methods for mobility and communicating.

A consequence of delayed skill acquisition is that as children develop and get older, the gap widens between the student’s skills and those of their classmates. As the gap widens, it’s important to continue to include students with intellectual disabilities.

When skill acquisition for a student is slower than their peers, mutually shared interests such as music or sports can be used to create opportunities for engagement and the development of relationships.

Learning Abstract Concepts

Understanding abstract concepts requires multi-layered cognitive ability including:

  • Perception
  • Interpretation
  • Integration
  • Executive functioning (such as judgment, insight, initiation)

Students with an intellectual disability can have difficulty grasping abstract concepts. Assess the skill or activity to determine if it requires abstract thinking.

Retaining New Information

Learning is closely associated with memory. New information is learned because it is remembered. Assess regularly to see if the skill taught has been retained.

Generalizing Information

Students with intellectual disabilities have trouble generalizing their learning across people, places, and time. Assess the learning opportunity to determine if the skill has been learned in a different context.

Synthesizing Information

Sometimes learning requires taking different pieces or components of information and combining them into a new whole. This type of synthesizing will be difficult for students with intellectual disabilities. Assess whether the new learning is a stand-alone skill, or if it requires synthesizing with other components of learning.

How to Support Students

Click on the diagram to explore strategies you can use to support students with intellectual disabilities.

Provide Additional Time

Students with intellectual disabilities require additional time to process instructions, learn the skill, and successfully respond. Educators need to modify their expectations and provide the needed time. They also need to inform others (classmates, schoolmates, school staff) about the extra time that is required for learning and any expected response. Ensure that the full amount of time needed is available and try to limit prompting throughout the learning, as it can disrupt the learning in progress.

Teach the Skill in Context

Students with intellectual disabilities have difficulty generalizing, so teaching the new skill in the proper context is essential. If the student is able with instruction and support to purchase a drink at a café, then practise the learning at the café, not at their desk in their classroom. New settings, like a brand-new café, will require the skill to be taught again.

Skill Acquisition Requires Repetition

Consistent repetition is required to learn skills in their everyday contexts and situations. Students with intellectual disabilities can have difficulty with remembering. Rote memory is a method for committing learning to memory. Rote memory is established when information is learned through repetition.

Provide Individualized Support

Support is an essential component to learning for the student with an intellectual disability. Support can come in different forms (such as teachers, EAs, assistive technology, modified curriculum) and different levels (such as more time, cueing, prompting, direct assistance). Individualizing support means choosing the right form and level of support for each student.

Provide Ongoing Opportunities for Practice

It is important to continually practice skills once they have been learned. Learned skills can be lost if not practiced.

Opportunity for Practice: Difficulties and Strategies

Read the four examples. Select all the learning difficulties you see, and what strategies you could use to assist learning.

1. Street Crossing

Places to cross the street are very different from one another. Some have crosswalks and some don’t. Some have pedestrian signals, and they can be very different. We often say, “Stop, Look and Listen,” and cross if there are no cars coming. But what if there is a car coming, but it’s still a block away?

Difficulties
Strategies

2. Greetings

When a friend greets their friend with an intellectual disability in the hallway, it takes additional time to recognize the friend. Understand that the friend has said “hi,” and to co-ordinate the motor system to respond with a smile or a wave. By the time the processing has occurred, often the friend has continued down the hall without expecting or waiting for a response, and the opportunity for learning is lost.

Difficulties
Strategies

3. Splinter Skills

To develop a “pincer grasp,” the student puts pegs in a pegboard, or picks up small items and puts them in a coffee can. A pincer grasp can also be used for when we pull up the zipper on our coat. A student learning a splinter skill is unlikely to synthesize the information that the skill— used to put small objects in a coffee—can then be applied to the activity of zipping up your coat.

Difficulties
Strategies

4. Language

Learning another language in high school, not using it for years, and then trying to converse with someone in that language. Learned skills can be lost without practice.

Difficulties
Strategies