4.3.1 Impulsivity and Inhibition
According to the participants, impulsivity and a lack of inhibition result in learners acting without forethought in the classroom. He or she may struggle to suppress his/her feelings and thoughts even if these are inappropriate at the time.
Participant 3: It is like they don’t always think before they act.
Participant 4: We give them time to eat before they go out to play during
break time because they can’t say I’ll eat now and play later. If you allow them to eat during break time they would want to eat for the whole day.
Participant 1 points to a “lack of impulse control” while participant 2 mentioned the lack of inhibition.
Participant 1: Learner tends to put up their hands and then they don’t have
an answer to the teacher’s question.
Participant 2: Learner puts up their hand but shouts out the answer before
4.3.2 Metacognition
Participants’ responses below pointed to a lack of metacognition in FASD learners. Participants found that learners are not always aware of their ‘reality’ and learners tend to overestimate their progress in tasks and projects. Teaching learners strategies to solve problems in the classroom prove to be very effective in improving their confidence in their work.
Participant 1: Learners don’t realise they made a mistake.
Participant 2: They don’t seem to understand why they got low marks. Participant 2: Learners tend to give themselves higher marks then they
deserved.
Participant 1: They might be biased, for them they always did well.
Participant 3: When a learner use a strategy learned, to solve a problem,
they feel very proud of themselves and it improves their confidence.
4.3.3 Working memory
Participants’ responses pointed to challenges with short term memory, especially with regards to executing instructions in completing homework or a project and keeping track of what they do with their belongings.
O: The learners get frustrated and don’t seem to know where to start when
given too many instructions at a time.
Participant 2: There’s very rarely a project that goes home because
learners tend to forget what they should do and if there is a project that goes home, parents would be phoned and explained exactly what has to happen.
Participant 3: You would sometimes have to just go over the instructions of
the task again to refresh their memory.
Participant 3: Learners often forget work done previously which hinders the
Participants 1: Learners often lose things and forget instructions. 4.3.4 Attention
Most FASD learners seem to struggle with three kinds of attention: shifting attention, sustained and focused attention. According to the participants, learners struggle to focus their attention in order to increase the efficiency of their processing. Learners also find it difficult to decrease attentional resources to unwanted or irrelevant inputs. Learners seem to find it difficult to shift their attention from one activity to another. Sustained attention is the ability to direct and focus cognitive activity on specific stimuli and is required in order to complete any planned cognitive activity, and sequenced action or any thought. This also seems to present barriers to learning for learners with FASDs.
• Sustained attention
Participant 3: We introduce a new subject in interesting ways to keep
learners’ attention. When learners’ attention wonders it may be because they have lost you and they don’t know what is expected of them.
Participant 1: We start with maths early in the morning as you need a lot of
brainpower and attention for this subject and the day ends with activities like drama, practising concerts, where you need less attention.
Participant 1: You get the learners’ attention if you do things they are
interested in.
• Shifted attention
Participant 4: Learners find it difficult to move from one subject to the next.
As a teacher we need to give learners a brain break in between subjects.
Participant 2: Sometime we sing songs. It just sort of gets the learners more
interactive and ready to pay attention. If we go straight into new work, we’ll never have their attention.
• Focused attention
Participant 1: Teacher uses finger-clinking in maths, to keep learners’
attention when counting in two’s.
O: Sometimes the teacher puts the light on and off just for the learners to
refocus on work being done.
Participant 1: The desks are set up and free from clutter, so that it limits
their attention from wondering. Each learner has his own cubicle so that that they don’t get distracted by the learner next to them or their surroundings.
4.3.5 Self-regulation
The participants described how learners struggle with self-regulation. According to participants, learners struggle to control their behaviour and emotions in accordance with the demands of the situation. Both participants 1 and 4 mentioned tantrums and that there were different ways to deal with tantrums in the classroom. They also indicated that learners may become frustrated and present with tantrums when they are not given any work to do or given too much for them to handle.
Participant 1: Learners throw tantrums when they see too many wrong
answers in their books. Learners may also throw tantrums when the work looks too much for him/her to handle.
Participant 2: Learners don’t always realise they have a problem.
Participant 4: You cannot force a learner to work because this may lead to
a tantrum.
Participant 3: You have to shut a tantrum down right away.
Participant 2: You can also try to avoid tantrums by keeping as far as
possible to the routine.
Participant 1: You can take the learner to the bathroom to wash his/her
he/she is ready to enter the classroom. You can also give the learner a chance to take a break.
Participant 4: Learners can cause a lot of problems, if left alone. If you were
to walk out of the class and not give them any toys or work to do, you don’t know what you are going to come back to, because unless there’s something that’s their main focus, nobody knows exactly how to function. You may come back to a massive fight or you may come back to a child who’s stormed out.
4.4 THEME 2: TEACHERS’ AND ASSISTANTS’ TEACHING EXPERIENCE AND