Although the issues of Learning Disabilities (LD) and students with LD have been studied extensively outside of Vietnam, this is a new concept in Vietnam. In order to learn something about students with LD who are current enrolled in primary schools, the academic skills of 2893 students who are from grade 1 to 5 were investigated and the data were statistically analysed.
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE OF HNUE Interdisciplinary Science, 2013, Vol 58, No 5, pp 128-135 This paper is available online at http://stdb.hnue.edu.vn THE STATUS OF STUDENTS WITH A LEARNING DISABILITY IN VIETNAMESE PRIMARY SCHOOLS Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Phan Thi Huong Johannes Paetzold, Hoang Thi Le Quyen and Dinh Nguyen Trang Thu Faculty of Psychology and Education, Hanoi National University of Education Abstract Although the issues of Learning Disabilities (LD) and students with LD have been studied extensively outside of Vietnam, this is a new concept in Vietnam In order to learn something about students with LD who are current enrolled in primary schools, the academic skills of 2893 students who are from grade to were investigated and the data were statistically analysed The results showed that 3.84% of primary school students have LD, male students with LD (5.35%) being more than female (2.17%) Most of these children had difficulties doing calculations and reasoning, with their specific learning difficulties more obvious after grade Students with LD tended to have a number of specific difficulties which were in more than one area of scholastic attainment These results imply that more attention should be given to students with LD primary schools in Vietnam Keywords: Learning Disabilities, primary school students, specific learning difficulties Introduction Since Doctor Samuel Kirk first defined Learning Disabilities (LD) in 1963, it has come to be understood differently In general, LD is considered to be a kind of disability manifested by specific difficulties in the acquisition and use of scholastic skills including listening, speaking, reading, writing, calculating, and reasoning, which is caused by central nervous system dysfunction LD is differentiated from Intellectual Disabilities and not a direct result of sensory (visual or auditory) impairment, intellectual disability or environmental factors LD is a developmental and life-long disability [4] Most students with LD have a normal level of intelligence and are able to learn, but they have a lot of specific difficulties in scholastic skills and thus their academic achievements are much lower than their Received February 29, 2013 Accepted May 12, 2013 Contact Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, e-mail address: nch19381@yahoo.com 128 The status of students with a learning disability in Vietnamese primary schools classmates LD is manifested evidently in the schooltime by specific learning difficulties in the basic scholastic skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing, calculating and reasoning) [4] Identification of LD starts with discovering students’ specific difficulties in scholastic attainment Learning Disabilities is something that has gotten a great deal of attention around the world but it is a new concept in Vietnam where there is no formal definition, no screening and no diagnostic tools Also, no specific quantitative research has been done to access the number of LD students in Vietnam Therefore, a study was needed to find out the number and distribution of LD students in primary schools and to direct future research that might support them 2.1 Content Methods 2.1.1 Participants Totally, there were 2893 students (see Table 1) from grade to in primary schools (2 schools in Nghe An, schools in Hanoi), including 1513 male (52.3%) and 1380 female students (47.7%) participating in the study from February to May 2012 (This sample made up 0.04 % of primary students in whole country) Table The number of participants categorized by gender and grade Total Grade (17 classes) Grade (18 classes) Grade (18 classes) Grade (15 classes) Grade (17 classes) Total 2893 641 585 643 471 553 Male 1513 339 292 353 243 286 Female 1380 302 293 290 228 267 2.1.2 Identifying students with LD The characteristics of scholastic skills of students were investigated to identify their learning disabilities These characteristics were reported by teachers who had been teaching them for nearly months througth a questionaire called Checklist of learning disabled characteristic of students This checklist was developed with reference to screening questionnaires used in Japan and USA, including basic information about the student and a list of conceptual specific difficulties noted in students with learning disabilities in six areas of scholastic attainment (listening, speaking, reading, writing, calculating, and reasoning) In each area, five specific difficulties were evaluated according to four levels of occurrence (from never to frequently) We identified students as having LD if all of the following conditions were met: - The student had specific learning difficulties if there were at least three frequently-occurred difficulties in at least one of the six scholastic skills (listening, 129 N.T.C.Huong, P.T.Huong, J.Paetzold, H.T L.Quyen and D.N.T.Thu speaking, reading, writing, calculating and reasoning) - These specific learning difficulties could not be changed by teacher’s support within six months - The student had not been diagnosed as having any disability - His/her specific learning difficulties had not been caused due to the influence of psychological factors or the external environment 2.1.3 Data processing and analysis The data were quantitatively analyzed by using the Direct Probability Calculation Method and Chi-square Test in Statistic software named JavaScript-Star version 5.5.0j (Original programming by Satoshi Tanaka) 2.2 Results and discussion 2.2.1 Overall prevalence of students with LD currently enrolled in primary schools Table and Figure show the distribution of students with LD categorized by gender and grade The approach in this study identified 111 students from grade to grade (3.84%) as having learning disabilities In comparison with the prevalence in other countries like the UK (3.5%) [1], Japan (4.5%) [2] and the USA (5.7%) [3], the prevalence of students with LD in Vietnam was different but matched the trend of the prevelence of primary school students with LD in the world, which is said to be below 10% G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 Total Table LD students categorized by gender and grade Students with LD Total of Total Male Female students N % N % N % 641 16 2.50 13 3.83 0.99 585 16 2.74 10 3.42 2.05 643 29 4.51 21 5.95 2.76 471 26 5.52 20 8.23 2.63 553 24 4.34 17 5.94 2.62 2893 111 3.84 81 5.35 30 2.17 ( : The statistically analyzed result on number of students with LD from grade to 5: χ2(4) = 9.015, 05