Devising technique to help kids with learning disability : Allahabad

If you are among parents whose child finds it hard to identify alphabets and symbols or face difficulty in reading or writing, here's good news. Experts from five centres across the country, dealing with such problems faced by kids, are conducting a massive survey in their respective cities to identify the symptoms of specific learning disability in school going kids and derive a tool which would in turn help teachers take special care of such kids to help them overcome the shortcoming.

The five centres chosen for this ambitious project of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), includes Dr Bhoomika Kar of the Centre for Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS), Allahabad University along with Geet Oberoi, director, Orkids Centre for Learning Disabilities, Delhi, Kate Currawala, director of Maharashtra Dyslexia Association, Mumbai, Kshipra Vaidya the research co-ordinator from Dr Shanta Vaidya Memorial Foundation, Pune and KS Prema of department of Language Pathology & head of the department of Special Education, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore.

Speaking about the project, Dr Bhoomika Kar told TOI that SLD or Specific Learning Disability has been included recently in the Person with Disabilities Act. In view of the above and the fact that schools across the country are ill-equipped to identify children with learning disabilities, two screening tools in English and Hindi for children between 6-8 years (classes 1 and 2) and 8-10 years (classes 3,4 and 5) have been developed to identify children with learning disability.

Since learning is accomplished primarily in the school environment, a screening tool that could be administered by school teachers has been developed. The objective of the project is to validate these screening tools on approximately 10,000 children belonging to different school environments in various parts of the country. In addition to Hindi, the tool will be translated into two more regional languages, Marathi and Kannada.

For the purpose, each of these experts has to screen over 5,000 school kids and identify the symptoms of learning disability. "In Allahabad we have selected three schools each of private, government and Kendriya Vidyalayas and are meeting teachers of these schools which in turn would conduct the survey, asking a set of questions with 25 randomly picked students", said Dr Kar. Some kids make mistakes in writing 'b' and 'd' or pronounce 'bad' and 'dad' while some others find it difficult to solve questions with symbols of plus or minus, this is where the tool will help the teachers to help out the students, she added.

The project is led by Dr Nandini Singh of the Brain Research Center, Manesar who is also the coordinator of the project. Each of the experts have received around Rs 12 lakh and period of around one year to complete the project.

 

Source :  TOI , 1st August 2013