Edwina Huang Yiying, Group B

Case Study 2

For the area of intervention, my focus is on finding intervention strategies that would help her to improve her mathematic ability so as to help her cope with what is being taught in the classroom.

Journal Article: Constructivist mathematics education for students with mild mental retardation

As young children with mild mental retardation often face difficulty acquiring basic mathematics skills, I found that it was necessary to research on the ways to help Kim develop the necessary skills for grasping basic mathematics concepts. Mathematics, being more than just an ordinary subject, it plays an important role in the child’s life because it exist even in daily routines and mastering it would benefit the child through the growing up process.

The intervention strategy which I have researched on is a comparison regarding effectiveness of instructions based on guided instructions and direct instructions. When most people think that helping children develop their set of strategies to grasp basic facts and concepts is an effective way to help children with mild mental retardation learns, it was actually shown that most children actually face more difficulty with learning, if the strategy use is inadequate. In the strategy used, the focus of research was on the type of instructions used. According to Van Luit and Naglieri (1999) as stated in the research article, “teaching step-by-step from concrete to abstract, working with materials to mental representations and providing task-relevant examples certainly helps.” Therefore, it increases the emphasis for teachers to provide instructions is direct and detailed, in order for them to understand what is required for them to do. Through making use of direct instructions, teachers also provide systematic and explicit instructions for the children to carry out, without stressing them out.

In this article, the use of direct instruction is also compared to the use of a more constructivist-based instruction, which focuses on the child’s own production and constructions. As most practitioners believe that the constructivist approach towards education is more beneficial towards young children as they get to explore the materials, formulate their understanding and then develop the abstract problem solving skills. Although the constructivist approach are also mentioned to help children develop and acquire more useful and transferable knowledge, there is currently little empirical evidence to date to support the effects of this kind of education.

The intervention process involved two groups of students, the control group, children who received direct instructions (DI) and the experimental group, children who received guided instructions (GI). In the group where direct instruction is being used, children always start off with a recap of what was done in the previous lesson. After which, if children demonstrate ability to solve such tasks, teacher would then introduce a new task while being explained to about how to solve the problem. In this scenario, the emphasis is on the process of explanation of the strategy to be used. Although children in the experimental group also go through the same procedure of reviewing what they learnt in the previous class, they would proceed to learning more concepts when the children demonstrate full understanding on what is being taught. Although it seems similar to using direct instruction, more emphasis is placed on the discussion of possible solution procedures and strategies by the children.

As reported under the results, significant improvement was observed from children who received direct instruction when compared to children who received guided instruction. Furthermore, children who received direct instruction also improved significantly in strategy adequacy while this improvement was not observed on children who received guided instruction.
Personally, I feel that this intervention strategy is very beneficial to the child as it focuses on understanding the child first before designing the set of instructions especially for her. By adopting this method, child’s strengths are also emphasized and child learns in her most comfortable way. When the child is able to do the things planned for them, she would then develop a sense of achievement and competence.

When the child’s self-confidence towards learning is increased significantly, she would be more encouraged to learn and question, as she knows that her queries would always be answered by caring and understanding educators. As teachers plan for direct instructions, understanding towards the child’s ability is always displayed, therefore, the child sees that their teacher really understand them, and know what they are capable of doing.

In conclusion, I think that in order to make better adjustments to cater to the needs of the child and to facilitate integration of the child into the classroom, the teacher need to gain a very deep understanding on the child, before she moves on to planning for the direct instructions. On an overall basis, there is nothing much in the sense where I think needs improvement, but I would say that consistency is very much needed when making use of direct instruction, as consistency would help the child familiarize her with the skills of doing things.

Especially for children with mild mental retardation, I think it is important to make use of direct instruction because each child’s learning ability and speed is different. Therefore, using guided instruction might not be as feasible as they would be required to brainstorm for ideas by themselves, and they would not be able to move on if insufficient help was provided. By using the idea of direct instruction, the child would also adapt to the method of learning, and slowly, they would be able to do things more efficiently and effectively than they had planned.

Reference:
Kroesbergen, E. H., & Van Luit, J. E. (2005). Constructivist mathematics education for students with mild mental retardation. European Journal of Special Needs Education , 20 (1), 107-116. Retrieved September 9, 2009, from Academic Search Premier.