Review Of Literature Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Review Of Literature - Research Proposal Example In contrast to elementary schools, students at middle schools are expected to be independent with respect to the arrangement of their study material, plan the tasks provided to them, keep track of their material and their schedule, meet deadlines and therefore exhibit specific organizational abilities (Salend, 1998). The present section aims to explore the available literature investigating the expectations of teachers’ from students with learning disability (LD), with special reference to the expectations of teachers’ regarding active participation of students with learning disabilities. Initiation of studies exploring the impact of teachers’ expectations on the performance levels of students with LD can be traced back to 1970s. The earliest studies established the negative effects of labels such as ‘mentally retarded’ leading to the development of ‘learned helplessness’. On the basis of early investigations the demarcations and differe nces in attitudes were clearly established. While lack of achievement in regular students was considered to be as a consequence of lack of effort; the same in case of LD students was attributed to lack of ability. This is in congruence with the attribution theory, which asserts that success or failure in an endeavor can be attributed to ‘sin or sickness’ that is the ‘efforts’ and the ‘ability or disability’. ... This attitude of teacher sent non-verbal signals to the students that their competence levels are lower than the regular students in their class. On the basis of this rationale, they were able to justify their below par performance. Seminal early investigations involving 100 teachers and 1500 sixth grade students revealed significant trends in the expectation of teachers and their impact on students. The impact of high as well as low expectations was found to be lower in case of high achieving students, while the same was reported to be significant in low achieving students. Thus the low achievers performed much better in response to high expectations of the teacher; and conversely, exhibited significantly poor performance as a consequence of low expectations of teacher (Madon et al., 1997). The low expectations of the teachers however are sometimes unavoidable as in case of organizational behaviors of students with LD, since it is a highly frustrating aspect of classroom behavior, a nd disrupts the progress of classroom teaching-learning process repeatedly. Studies involving students from middle school students have revealed that these students often do exhibit failure to remember important assignments, materials required for the class, and class schedule (McMullen et al., 2007). Researchers have been able to attribute two specific causes for these behavioral problems and failure of LD students to meet teachers’ expectations of organization. The primary contributing cause has been specified to be that the LD students as a consequence of their deficits lack the ability of temporal-sequential organization. They lack the planning skills, are not able to assign time to different tasks, allocate time for completion of