An Exploration of EFL Teachers’ Experience with Learning Disability Training

To reference this article (APA) / Para citar este artículo (APA) / Para citar este artigo (APA) Sowell, J., & Sugisaki, L. (2020). An exploration of EFL teachers’ experience with learning disability training. Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning, 13(1), 114-134. https://doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2020.13.1.7 An Exploration of EFL Teachers’ Experience with Learning Disability Training


Introduction
It has been estimated that, in an average-size class of thirty students, ten percent of students have learning disabilities. This means that, inevitably, English language teachers will have students with learning disabilities and could have students with learning disabilities in each class (Butterworth & Kovas, 2013). Some schools have adopted an inclusion model, which means that students with learning disabilities attend mainstream classes rather than a pull-out model that requires students diagnosed with learning disabilities to attend special classes. Research has shown that students with learning disabilities fare better in regular classes rather than special classes (Bulat et al., 2017;Fuchs & Fuchs, 1994;Moore et al., 1998). This means that students with learning disabilities should be welcomed into mainstream classes and that teachers of mainstream English classes should be prepared to accommodate their needs. Whether students with learning disabilities are intentionally placed in a mainstream classroom or are in a mainstream classroom because they have not been diagnosed, English language teachers need to be able to identify and accommodate students with learning disabilities in their classrooms so that they can provide assistance. However, English language teachers may not have received any training on learning disabilities. As a result, English language teachers may not have any specific tools for identifying and accommodating students with learning disabilities. As a preliminary step towards working for increased training for English language teachers in assisting students with learning disabilities, the focus of this re- ence studying and teaching in EFL contexts. The researchers recognize that support systems for learning disabilities might be vastly different from country to country. The researchers in no way meant to imply that teachers in EFL contexts lack training that teachers in ESL contexts receive. In fact, they realize that English language teachers in EFL as well as ESL contexts might lack training in working with students with learning disabilities.

Defining learning disabilities
The term learning disability was first defined by Samuel Kirk (1962) in his book, Educating Exceptional Children: A retardation, disorder, or delayed development in one or more of the processes of speech, language, reading, writing, arithmetic, or other school subject resulting from a psychological handicap caused by a possible cerebral dysfunction and/or emotional or behavioral disturbances. It is not the result of mental retardation, sensory deprivation, or cultural and instructional factors. (p. 263) Since Kirk's initial definition, there have been a number of countering definitions of learning disabilities, and a concrete definition agreed upon by a majority is still problematic; however, as a broad conceptual construct, learning disabilities can be understood as unexpected underachievement (Fletcher et al., 2007). Beyond the broad umbrella of underachievement, Burr et al. (2015) have specifically defined a learning disability as a neurological condition that interferes with an individual's ability to store, process, or produce information. Learning disabilities can affect a student's ability to read, write, speak, spell, compute math, or reason as well as a student's attention, memory, coordination, social skills, and emotional maturity. (Burr et al., 2015, p. 3) The National Center for Learning Disabilities (2014)

Some ways to determine learning disabilities
In order to make an accurate diagnosis of a learning disability, a multiple-analysis that obtains data about an individual student by a team of specialists over a period of time needs to be carried out. This is not possible, however, in all contexts. In some cases, it is the responsibility of the individual teacher to observe students who might be at risk, record data, and interpret the data (Case & Taylor, 2005). There are some methods that teachers might carry out on their own in determining the possible existence of a learning disability. First of all, the instructor needs to honestly evaluate the progression of the entire class carefully, considering whether instruction is culturally, pedagogically, and linguistically appropriate in meeting the needs of all learners. If most students are struggling with a given task or subject area, then the problem is usually with the instruction and not the students. If, on the other hand, most students are doing well, and only a few students are having problems, the instructor needs to closely evaluate the struggling students and offer additional help, if needed (Klingner, 2009). Unusual difficulty or struggle in the first language can also be a potential indicator of a learning disability according to Klingner and Eppollito (2014). They have noted some common shared behaviors in learning disabilities and L2 acquisition: difficulty following directions, possible poor auditory memory, difficulty concentrating, challenges in processing difficult language, and a tendency to become quickly frustrated.
On the other hand, Klingner and Eppollito (2014) have also pointed out some important, though sometimes slight, differences in features of learning disabilities and difficulties learning a second language. While a student with learning disabilities might have difficulty with phono- logical awareness, a second-language learner might have difficulty distinguishing between sounds not in the L1. In addition, a student with learning disabilities might have difficulty in learning sound-symbol correspondence while an L2 student might have difficulty with sound-symbol correspondence when it differs from their L1, as well as difficulty pronouncing sounds that do not exist in the L1. Furthermore, while a student with a learning disability might have difficulty remembering sight words, a second language learner might struggle to remember sight words because they have not been acquired as part of the learner's lexicon (Klingner & Eppollito, 2014).

Training of learning disabilities
Research on learning disability training for EFL instructors is largely absent from the literature. This lack of research is possibly an indicator that little training for identifying and accommodating learning disabilities has been carried out in EFL contexts. A pilot study by Lemperou et al. (2011) showed that EFL teachers in Greece had limited awareness of methods for identifying and assisting students with dyslexia in their classes, but that they had the desire to learn appropriate methods for helping those students. Smith (2006), who researched EFL teachers in the United Kingdom, found that the participants in the study lacked enough explicit instruction on disabilities. Due to this lack of training, many teachers in Smith's study admitted a lack of confidence in accommodating students with disabilities. Huang's (2011) study on developing pedagogy for students with learning disabilities in Taiwanese schools revealed the need to improve EFL training programs by including training on teaching language learners with learning disabilities. However, the researchers did not have access to information regarding the number of students and alumni who currently receive IUP email, so they could not know how many potential study participants received the email. Potential participants could respond to the researchers' survey for a time frame of only one week (November 9-November 16, 2018). The researchers received 23 responses to their survey. The researchers did not collect any demographic data or identifying information other than the country or countries that participants currently teach in or had taught in previously.

Data analysis
The researchers collected both quantitative and qualitative data. Question one explained the study. Question two asked for participants' consent (Do you give your consent to take part in the survey?). Question three asked whether potential study participants had EFL teaching experience (Do you have English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching experience?). Participants who answered "no" to question three could not proceed with the survey. Question four asked which countries study participants had taught in or currently teach in (The survey did not ask participants to indicate a native or non-native English speaker status). Questions five through eight sought to find out about teachers' confidence in teaching students with learning disabilities, previous training they had undergone related to training for teaching students with learning disabilities, types of training they believed would be beneficial, and the types of learning disabilities they believed they had encountered in their English language classrooms.
Questions five and six were multiple-choice questions, and questions seven and eight asked for short answers. Questions five and six were analyzed using descriptive statistics. For questions seven and eight, the researchers engaged in exploratory coding. For the qualitative data, the researchers first conducted a "content analysis," which, according to Joffe and Yardley (2003), involves "establishing categories and then counting the number of instances in which they are used in a text or image" (p. 56). In other words, through content analysis, the researchers established frequency of commonly-occurring words. Once the researchers had established frequency, they determined emerging patterns, or codes. According to Saldaña (2016), "A code in qualitative inquiry is most often a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data" (p. 4). Coding allowed the researchers to group and categorize the words or phrases. For this particular study, researcher one underwent an initial exploratory coding procedure to analyze the open-ended qualitative responses. After this initial coding process, in collaboration with researcher two, some codes were refined. where the official language of the country is not English. The country with the most respondents was China, with six participants, followed by Indonesia, with four, Saudi Arabia, with three, and South Korea, with two. The remaining countries each had one teacher participant.

Study participants' confidence level for assisting students with learning disabilities
With question five (Do you feel confident in your ability to assist students with learning disabilities in your classroom?), the researchers wanted to find out about the participants' level of confidence in assisting students with learning disabilities (Figure 2 shows the level of confidence that participants have in assisting students with learning disabilities in their classroom.) The majority of participants showed uncertainty in their ability to assist students with learning disabilities, with 13 participants (57 percent) responding "maybe." Six participants (26 percent) responded "no." Only four respondents (17 percent) of those surveyed indicated that they were confident in their ability to accommodate students with learning disabilities.

Class format that most closely describes participants' training
The purpose of question six (Which class format most closely describes the training you received? [Check all that apply]) was to find out the format of the training (if any) study participants had received ( Figure 3 shows the type of training format the respondents had received.) The most common types of training were a day-long seminar (26 percent) and a half-day seminar (26 percent) with six responses per category. The second most common responses were semester-long course (13 percent), week-long course (13 percent), and no formal training (13 percent) with three participants each. Two participants (9 percent) indicated other types of training. One participant mentioned that they had gone to a fellow co-worker for advice on working with students with learning disabilities, and another respondent reported having independently searched for information on learning disabilities.  Workshop A number of participants indicated that workshops could be beneficial because they could allow participants the opportunity to interact with an expert as well as the chance to problem-solve with colleagues.

Types of training participants indicated would be beneficial
Additionally, participants indicated that hands-on training involving theoretical and practical information could be beneficial in learning how to accommodate students with learning disabilities.

Online resources
A less popular, but still relevant, preference was online resources. One respondent mentioned that online resources could be useful for both teacher and student. Another respondent indicated that a variety of online resources, such as journals, practical activities, and other materials on teaching strategies for accommodating students with learning disabilities could be useful. We need to know the characteristics of each learning disability and how to work around it as teachers.
Workshop 8 Incorporating yearly teacher training within our own universities...
Allowed to ask questions among fellow teachers/ teacher trainers about their own experiences.
Working with students with learning disabilities.
Being able to talk with an expert for Q&A sessions.
Hands-on-training that provide both theoretical and practical aspects to be implemented in making instructional-related decisions.

Online
Resources 5 Learning about resources I can suggest to the students... to receive help for their learning disability.
Resources online to help me accommodate this population of student (journals, activities, materials on helpful teaching approaches).

Can't specify/unsure
The most frequently-occurring response regarding question 8 (What type of learning disabilities, if any, have you encountered in your classrooms?) was "unsure" or "can't specify." Some respondents indicated that they did not know the characteristics or symptoms of any of the common learning disabilities, so they had no frame of reference as to whether a student had a learning disability or not. Additionally, some EFL teachers responded that they did not have familiarity with learning disabilities and, therefore, did not want to make a guess at the kinds of learning disabilities their students might have for fear that they might misdiagnose a student with a learning disability when their struggles were the result of a cause other than a learning disability.

Reading
Several respondents indicated that they had worked with students who had displayed learning difficulties related to reading. One teacher mentioned that some of their students had particular difficulties determining the main point of a piece of writing and difficulties with retention.
Another respondent reported having students who struggled to keep up with their peers because of reading comprehension difficulties.

Short attention span/memory
A few respondents mentioned short-term memory or short attention span as a possible sign of a learning disability. Some respondents indicated students' difficulty understanding a lecture as a potential sign of a learning disability. Other respondents understood difficulties in following instructions or comprehending lecture content as potential signs of learning disabilities. One teacher also mentioned the terms ADD and ADHD. This is a very tough question because I do not have a background in learning disabilities and I feel I am only making a guess.
I do not want to make a false accusation or just assume a student who may just be struggling has a learning disability.

Reading 7
Students who have difficulty keeping up with the rest of their classmates due to understanding the material they just read. They have issues processing what they read.
Working with students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

Short Attention
Span/ Memory 5 ADD/ADHD They struggled with my lecture style teaching approach.
Problems with their short-term memory.
I have also had students who have trouble understanding instructions or my lectures on what I just explained.

Lack of confidence in accommodating students with learning disabilities
The first major takeaway from the results of our study revealed that the majority of participants were not confident in their ability to ac-

UNIVERSIDAD DE LA SABANA DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
commodate students with learning disabilities. The participants were either sure that they did not know how to accommodate learning disabilities or were noncommittal regarding their ability to help students with learning disabilities. Stainback and Stainback (1996) mentioned that there is a sort of "mystique" surrounding special education, with many teachers believing they are unfit to teach students with learning disabilities. Due to a lack of experience with this population, teachers might second guess their ability or look to pass off the responsibility of teaching students with learning disabilities to someone they perceive as better trained. In some cases, teachers who are not confident about assisting students with learning disabilities might give them preferential treatment. These teachers may feel as if they have to individually assist students with learning disabilities within a mainstream classroom. Wight (2015) pointed out that educators, EFL instructors included, don't always have the skills to design a course that is inclusive. However, many of the techniques teachers could use to accommodate students with learning disabilities benefit students without learning disabilities as well, such as differentiating instruction, diversifying course material, scaffolding lessons, and making the class interactive.

Limited training for accommodating students with learning disabilities
The results of the study not only revealed the low confidence level of EFL teachers, but also the limited extent of their learning disability training. The majority of participants reported that the learning disability teacher training they had received only lasted a day or less.
While short trainings might be a good start, they are probably not robust enough to provide teachers with a complete toolkit for successfully working with students with learning disabilities. In a study on disability training with EFL instructors in the United Kingdom, Smith (2006) found that a longer training period proved to be more productive in helping teachers assist learners with physical and/or learning disabilities. In order to understand and competently apply accommodation strategies for assisting students with learning disabilities, teachers likely will need extensive and extended training. open-ended question, so answers did not fit into neat categories and preferences exhibited some overlap. The most desired types of training indicated were specific learning strategies and workshops. Specific strategy training might be best carried out face-to-face, where participants can interact with an expert in the field and troubleshoot with colleagues. One of the key strengths of workshops is that they provide a platform for participants to share ideas and experiences (Sowell, 2016). Another desired type of training was for online resources-both for resources on ways instructors could help students with learning disabilities and resources that teachers could direct students with learning disabilities toward so that those students might independently find ways to help themselves. Some teachers might have indicated a preference for online resources because of the convenience of being able to access them at any time.

Types of suspected disabilities
A final outcome from the research study was that about half of the participants indicated that they were either unsure about or could not definitively identify the type of learning disabilities students presented with in their classrooms. One reason for this difficulty may be due to the fact that the characteristics or symptoms of learning disabilities vary from person-to-person. For example, when describing the difficulty of diagnosing dyslexia, Basu et al. (2014) described how: There is no single pattern of difficulty that affects all people and not every symptoms of dysfunction is [sic] found in every child with dyslexia. Children with dyslexia show frequently a combination of one or of a variety of characteristics (Shaywitz, 2003). Difficulties related to reading, spelling, addition, verbal symptoms, and nonlinguistic difficulties can vary from individual to individual. (pp. 6-7) Thus, a teacher could suspect that a student has a common learning disability such as dyslexia, but due to the differences in their symptoms and/or due to a lack of training, the teacher may second  (Klingner & Eppollito, 2014). Although there is an extensive amount of literature on learning disabilities and an extensive amount of literature on second-language acquisition, not much is known about learning disabilities amongst second-language learners (Klingner et al., 2006;Shore & Sabatini, 2009).

Limitations of the study
One limitation of this study was that it was carried out at one university in the United States and attracted a limited number of participants.
Furthermore, the window to participate in the study only lasted for one week. In addition, this study did not inquire as to the type or length of general teacher training participants had engaged in. If participants had not undergone any sort of generalized teacher training, then it follows that it is unlikely that they would have participated in any sort of learning disability training. A further study on this same topic should seek to attract more participants and gain information about teachers' previous teacher training experiences in general.

Conclusion
The research from this study has shown that the participants in the study had received minimal or no training for identifying learning disabilities and methods for accommodating various learning disabilities in the English language classroom. Through this study, the researchers wanted to create an awareness of the lack of learning disability training for English language teachers and the need for such training.
The researchers hope that institutions with EFL courses will become aware of the need for learning disability training, whether that means making existing learning disability training more robust or initiating learning disability training in institutions where it previously did not exist. Although it would be ideal for teachers to attend workshops with experts and to participate in ongoing training for learning disabilities, such arrangements might not be possible in every institution. Nonetheless, there are still ways that teachers can improve their knowledge of learning disabilities and accommodations. For instance, teachers can take online courses or access various online resources. Teachers might also share experience and knowledge amongst themselves and within their own institution or community. Since nearly all English language teachers will inevitably have students in their classes with UNIVERSIDAD DE LA SABANA DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES learning disabilities, knowing how to accommodate them is important for creating a more inclusive classroom that is a productive learning space for all students.