Studying the current situation of screening, providing assistance, and monitoring elementary school students with learning disabilities in Thailand

Abstract

This article examines the current situation of screening, providing assistance, and monitoring elementary school students with learning disabilities in Thailand. This research applies a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to study existential ontology by gaining an understanding of the personal experience individuals undergo. 70 Thai Language teachers, special education teachers, guidance counsellors, and school administrators were surveyed. Then, the researchers conducted a focus group involving 10 participants, including teachers, school administrators, and education specialists. Teachers’ responses to the questionnaire and questions in the focus group were analyzed using a selective or highlighting approach. Each researcher analyzed the responses independently. The researchers then discussed the produced codes, categories, and subcategories in several meetings and exchanged their coding results. After there was consensus, every category and every subcategory were closely examined to look for any overlaps. The results of the analysis are presented in three topics: screening, providing assistance and monitoring. There are two themes, strengths and weaknesses, in each topic. The strengths of the screening topic include basic student assistance, systematic workflow, and teachers’ expertise. The weaknesses of the screening topic include limited teacher numbers, teachers lacking expertise, and inappropriate screening timing. In the providing assistance topic, the sub-themes for strengths include student development, teachers’ expertise in providing student assistance, and making teachers aware of students' actual problems. The sub-themes for weaknesses include teachers lacking tools for assisting students, low-quality tools for providing student assistance, and teachers lacking expertise. Lastly, in the monitoring topic, the strengths include teachers continuously receiving students' information, fostering collaboration in caring for and assisting students, and producing reliable system-generated progress reports. The weaknesses of monitoring include teachers lacking knowledge, lacking tools for monitoring students' progress, and the student progress monitoring system lacking quality.