Enhancing Proactive Coping Among Students With Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The presence of Learning Disabilities (LD) increases the possibility of psychological distress due to the negative school experiences. Apart from academic difficulties students with LD are facing social and emotional problems related to their disabilities. If the psychological distress evolves over time without proper management, it may lead to psychosocial maladjustment. Previous research has shown that proactive coping helps minimize stress and maladjustment issues and is a predictor of success in people with LD. The current study explored the level of proactive coping and social-emotional adjustment of students with LD and compared with the students without LD. Also, it has tailored an intervention to enhance proactive coping for students with LD. The present study followed the correlational and experimental research design (pre-test post-test control group design) to assess the relationship of social-emotional adjustment with proactive coping and to examine the effectiveness of the intervention on students with LD. In the first phase of the study, a multistage random sampling method was used to select students with and without LD; each group consisted of 200 participants from different schools in Kerala. Experimental design was used in the second phase of the study. Researcher selected 60 students with LD who scored less in phase-1 and randomly assigned them into the experimental group and control group. Proactive Coping Inventory for Adolescents (Greenglass et al., 1999) and Adjustment Inventory for School Students-AISS (Sinha and Singh, 1993) were the tools used in this study. The data obtained was analyzed using independent Sample t-test, Karl Pearson correlation test and linear regression, paired sample t-test, repeated measures of ANOVA and estimated Cohen s d. The findings of the study showed that students with LD have lower level of proactive coping and social emotional adjustment than students without LD. The intervention developed to enhance proactive coping has significantly inc