Enhancing Self-Understanding and Social Integration of Middle School Students With Learning Disabilities

Research and intervention programs for students with learning disabilities (LD) typically address child and family characteristics without examining the school context and conditions that affect adjustment. Focusing on the student with LD can highlight the child and family's deficits. An ecological theoretical framework guides this research project, a collaboration of the University of Toronto, Faculty of Social Work and Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), Integra and the Toronto Catholic District School Board. This framework is based on the assumption that people are very much part of and affected by social and environmental settings. Accordingly, it is important not to see the adjustment problems of children with LD as being caused only by their LD. Instead, their academic and social problems are seen as unfolding in larger circumstances that include other children, the classroom, the school, the family and the community. These many factors act together to influence the child with LD and must be taken into account along with individual characteristics of the child.