Beginning primary teachers and children with mild learning difficulties

Abstract

This study is about examining beginning teachers’ needs in relation to helping primary school children with mild learning difficulties. Both pre-service and in-service teachers were approached to assess their experience and needs in this area. In common with previous work in Ireland and internationally, beginning teachers were found to have problems with children in some difficulty, in relation to providing differentiated programmes to children, and with children who presented behaviour problems. While some steps can be taken to remedy these issues in the pre-service education of teachers, it is argued that these issues are best remedied for beginning teachers in an induction programme with support in their schools.

Notes

1. The work described here was undertaken within Comenius Projects 26459-CP-1-FR-Comenius C31, and 94158-CP-1-2001-1-FR-Comenius-C21 and the support of the European Commission is gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed herein are entirely the responsibility of the author. An earlier version of this paper was published as a chapter in Gash, Hugh (Ed.) (2006) Beginning teachers and diversity in school: a European study (Bragança, Portugal, Instituto Politéchnica de Bragança).