Understanding Students with Disabilities

Definition of physical impairment

Physical impairment refers to impaired function of upper limb, lower limb and body or balance, which affects participation in learning activities.

Definition of cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy refers to that non-progressive permanent brain damage occurred to brain during early development, which causes developmental disabilities in motor, balance and gesture. It is often accompanied by sensation, perception, cognition, communication and behavior disorders and affects participation in learning activities.

How to assist students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy to learn (teachers)

• Reduce academic disabilities: Learn about special demands of students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy, arrange proper teaching strategy and adjust teaching environment to ensure learning rights of such students.
• Care campus barrier-free environment: Barriers of building structures or passages of the University might form barriers to action of students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy. There may also be hidden crisis in some equipment. In order to maintain action rights and safety of these students on the campus, environment with barriers needs to be improved.
• Assist to build barrier-free psychological environment: Teach and guide students to understand difficulties of students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy, accept and respect their differences to reduce psychological disorder of students in adaptation to the campus.

How to get along with students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy (peers)

• Avoid occupies various barrier-free space or facilities, such as dedicated parking place, dedicated elevator and barrier-free ramp.
• Actively invite students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy to participate in class and society activities and provide timely assistance to make these students have sense of belonging and participation. Avoid the case of not informing students with physical impairment under the preconception that they cannot participate.
• Observe what help do students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy need in class or classroom and on campus. Actively inquire if they need help and offer a friendly learning environment.
• Provide help in school work, such as write or copy notes or borrow books on behalf of such students.
• Think from the perspectives of the students with physical impairment and cerebral palsy.

Definition of visual impairment

Visual impairment refers to structural defects of visual organs or partial or all impairment of visual functions occurred due to congenital or acquired causes and there are still difficulties in visual recognition through correction, which causes participation in learning activities affected.

Characteristics of students with visual impairment:

• Movement ability in daily life is not flexible due to inconvenience of vision.
• They often need to lean forward and close to objects when seeing something and often tumble or bump things when walking.
• Not sensitive to colors but comparative sensitive to light. They might have a sense of dazzling at in the light.
• When reading, they often blink, and they often need to change distance of reading or get close to books. Attention duration is not long; when writing, their hands and eyes need to get close and they often miss words.
• Their performance in actions that need overall or stereoscopic perception, such as ball sports or gymnastics, etc., is poor.

How to assist students with visual impairment to learn (teachers)

• Students with visual impairment need to spend many times of reading time to read. Please tell scope of textbooks and teaching progress earlier for the convenience of previewing and reviewing.
• Please allow audio recording in class so that students with visual impairment can review after class, or arrange students to provide explicit notes or summarization of important notes to students with visual impairment.
• Students with visual impairment need to sit close to podium to see the blackboard and projection screen comparatively clear. Color matching of PowerPoint is recommended to adopt high contrast ratio.
• Please provide electronic copy of course handout or PowerPoint as much as possible for the convenience of students with visual impairment to zoom in for reading or printing.
• Typeface of exam papers needs to be enlarged. Consider extending exam duration according to type and number of questions and demands of students. If it is difficult to conduct paper and pencil test, answer on computer or in an oral way. Exact method can be discussed according to situation of students with visual impairment.

How to get along with students with visual impairment (peers)

• When leading students with visual impairment to take a car, first guide their hands to touch edge and height of car door to avoid bumping forehead; when sitting on a chair, first guide their hands to touch back of the chair and let them sit down by themselves.
• When in strange environment, please describe traffic condition along the way and remind them of surrounding obstacles and dangerous areas; do not let students with visual impairment to wait alone in the middle of the road or in the open air.
• Please actively greet students with visual impairment. First introduce yourself and lead them to meet other friends.
• When holding a meeting, the president or person sitting next to the visually impaired students shall introduce the professional titles and names of participants in proper order. When leaving, they shall inform the visually impaired students so that the visually impaired students would be aware of them leaving.
• Let students with visual impairment take appropriate posts to strengthen their cohesion, sense of responsibility and confidence.
• Communicate with students with visual impairment in oral instructions or a way of bodily contact instead of purely body language.
• Students with visual impairment have established routine classification and placement of articles in their own way, please don’t move randomly.
• When getting along with them in daily life, try inquiring demands of students with visual impairment actively.

Definition of autism

Autism refers to a situation where serious problems appear in communication, social interaction, behavior and expression of interest because of neuropsychological dysfunction, resulting in obvious difficulties in learning and life adaptation.

How to assist autistic students to learn (teachers)

• Autistic students need specific and explicit instructions, so ambiguous narration shall be avoided. Teachers shall give explicit explanation on the scope, completion duration, operation form, examination form, scoring standard and other affairs about course and examination.
• Adjust evaluation method: considering disorders and difficulties, evaluate if the predetermined evaluation method can exactly reflect performance of students, and make appropriate adjustment to examination method according to the evaluation results, such as answering questions or handing in homework with computer, taking exams in quiet and uncrowded environment, changing written examination into written report and extending duration of examination.
• Look on idiosyncrasy of such students from the positive way: appreciate reasonable and excellent fixed action of them, encourage them to develop their potential or develop it into specialty.

How to get along with autistic students (peers)

• Hold the attitude of empathy, inclusiveness and appreciation: understand and tolerate their honest but not euphemistic expressions and respect their principle of never change easily. These are just roots for them to insist in the end bravely. Even try appreciating their advantages and specialty and give positive feedback.
• Give specific and explicit expressions: speaking content should be specific and explicit as much as possible, and metaphor, implication, punning or vogue information shall be avoided in case that students with spectrum characteristics of autism have difficulties in understanding or misunderstand content of your expressions to cause mutual misunderstanding.
• Accept their limitations on interpersonal interaction and assist them to fit into groups (group activities, presentation, sharing notes or archaeological problems, etc.): communication problems and communication defects are all major disorders of autistic students. Accept the fact that they cannot make it instead of inexertion. Give them more understanding and inclusiveness, and become supporters and helpers for them in interpersonal interaction.

Definition of emotional and behavioral disorder

Emotional and behavioral disorder refers to obvious abnormality of long-term emotional and behavioral performance, which seriously affects school adaptation; its disorders are not results directly caused by intelligent, sense or health or other factors. Symptoms of emotional and behavioral disorder include psychotic disorder, affective disorder, fear disorder, anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or other continuous emotional and behavioral problems.

How to assist students with emotional and behavioral disorder to learn (teachers)

• Correct know and understand mental disorders. Individual difference of each student is large, so labelling (alienation or overprotection) should be avoided.
• Don’t argue with him/her about content of delusion or auditory hallucination. Introduce to the Health and Counseling Center when necessary.
• Help other students to know mental disorders and learn about interpersonal technique.
• For schoolwork, meetings can be held to have lecture teachers, tutors and students to discuss classroom learning and examination affairs together.

How to get along with students with emotional and behavioral disorder (peers)

• When getting along with them, listen to their heart and express concerns and accompany them.
• Express empathy to their feelings. Don’t criticize or reason with them to avoid causing their feeling of rejection.
• When expressing happiness and encouragement, avoid improper or excessive optimism, which might make them feel more frustrated.
• Avoid blindly asking them to overcome themselves relying on their will power, which will make them think they are not diligent enough.
• If such students need more help, peers can contact with relevant unit in the University, such as the Health and Counseling Center and the Student Safely Division.

Learning disability

Learning disability is collectively referred to a mixed group of disorders manifested by difficulties in listening, speaking, reading, writing, mathematical calculation and other learning activities due to dysfunction in attention, memory, understanding, perception, perceptual motor and reasoning caused by dysfunction of the neuropsychological function; such disabilities are not results of sense, intelligent, emotion or other handicap factors or insufficient cultural stimulus, improper teaching or other environmental factors. Its identification standard is as follows:
(1) Have average to above average intelligence.
(2) There is obvious difference in individual endogenous capacity.
(3) There are obvious difficulties in auditory comprehension, oral expression, literacy, reading comprehension, writing, mathematical operation and other learning performances. Furthermore, it is difficult to improve through intervention provided by general education.

How to assist students with learning disabilities to learn (teachers)

• Usually, these students have troubles in reading and writing. When teaching with Power Point presentations, some students who have difficulties in learning expect to receive handouts in advance. Furthermore, word size, word space and line space are expected to be enlarged for the convenience of the students to make preview and preparation.
• Important course information, such as evaluation methods and homework hand-in rules and others can be presented in the form of written text as much as possible.
• Considering their difficulties in reading and writing, teachers can allow them to extend homework hand-in time or exam duration. Wrong words, phonetic script and other situations are allowed for students with writing difficulty. Teachers should measure actual situation of students, and reading newspaper or oral exam can be adopted if necessary.
• Some students cannot answer questions or read text aloud in class, the method of voluntary speech or on-stage reporting can be adopted to allow students to prepare in advance.
• There are great individual differences in learning disabilities; please learn about individual state and demands of students first and then give appropriate assistance.

How to get along with students with learning disabilities (peers)

• If these students cannot follow the progress in learning, peers can provide assistance, like borrowing notes or discussing course.
• Learning strategy: collaborative notes, cooperative learning, and reading group.

Definition of multiple impairments

Multiple impairments refer to a combination of 2 or more simultaneous impairments without correlative relation, which affects learning. For example, some students who have special diseases and have physical impairment and hearing impairment at the same time have to be tutored in special education programs for physical and hearing impairments.

Category of Other Disabilities

• Language impairment: There is obvious deviation or falling behind in language or language symbol processing capability comparing with that of people at the same age, which causes difficulty in communication and affects participation in learning activities.
• Health impairments: refers to the situation that people have diseases, weak physical ability and need long-term recuperation, which affects participation in learning activities.
• Other Disabilities: refers to the situation that people have obvious difficulty in learning and life and cannot be classified into the above categories.