Knowledge and Attitude of Primary School Teachers Regarding Early Identification and Management of Learning Disability

Introduction: In India, 1% to 19% of the total students have Learning Disability. Learning disability may vary from person to person and is incurable but can be controlled if diagnosed earlier. Teachers play a vital role in its identification. Aims: Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude of primary school teachers regarding early identification and management of Learning Disability. Study Design: The study design is Descriptive cross sectional design. Place and Duration of Study: selected school at Tapi District, Gujarat, between 2020 – 2021. Methodology: The research was carried out by using Quantitative research approach and on 150 primary school teachers. The non probability sampling technique was used. The tool includes socio demographic variables, Knowledge questionnaire and Attitude scale. Results: No teacher have excellent knowledge i.e 0.00% regarding Learning Disabilty. 59.33% have good knowledge and 40.66% teachers are poor in knowledge regarding Learning Disability. 96.66% teachers have positive attitude towards children having Learning Disability while 3.33% teachers have negative Knowledge. There is positive correlation between Knowledge and Attitude. Original Research Article Koshy et al.; JPRI, 33(48A): 174-181, 2021; Article no.JPRI.76148 175 There is significant association of knowledge with age and classes allotted at p< 0.05. There is significant association of Attitude with classes allotted at p< 0.05. Conclusion: Majority of the teachers have good Knowledge and most of them have positive attitude towards the children with Learning disability.


INTRODUCTION
Learning disability is a type of Learning disorders that arises from neurological problems. It can be due to the faulty brain structure or functions. This affects the ability of brain to process and comprehend. This makes difficult for the child with Learning disability to learn and process like other normal children [1].

Justine james.et al. (2018) conducted a study in
India to assess the percentage if learning Disability and the study reveals that 1% to 19% of total students are having Learning Disability [2].
Due to poor attention spam and weak concentration, students cannot perform well in academics, but this kind of students may be found good in extracurricular activities. Here, it is responsibility of parents, care takers and teachers to motivate to do other activities by focusing and strengthening on abilities rather than disabilities. In Indian setting, pressurizing the child for scholastic performance in academics is much found and this results in Anxiety, Depression, and Stress disorders. Sibnath Deb .et. al (2015) conducted a study on 190 samples in high school students of India to assess the stress in the academics caused due to the parental pressure among Indian high school students. the result reveals that almost two third of the students were found to be stressed out due to the parental pressure for good academic performance [3].
Learning Disability is not an Intellectual disorder. The child might be bright and intelligent, but as the teachers and parents will not be able to identify that the child is actually suffering from Learning Disability, this children may be identified as failures, poor or disinterested in studies. As a result they might be ignored by teachers. This can lead to damage in motivation and threat to child's future and career. Therefore it is found to be important for the teachers to do early identification and management of Learning disability.

Problem Statement
Knowledge and Attitude of primary school teachers regarding early identification and management of Learning Disability.

Review of Literature
Syed Arifa 1 , Syed Shahid Siraj 2 (2015) conducted a study titled "A descriptive study to assess the knowledge and attitude of primary school teachers regarding learning disabilities among children in selected schools of district Pulwama Kashmir". Quantitative descriptive study was used. Convienient sampling technique was used for data collection from teachers at selected school at District Pulwana. Selfstructured Knowledge questionnaire and Attitude scale was made.
karlpearson's correlation coefficient was used to check the realiability of the tool. The result showed that majority of the teachers 73.3% had moderate knowledge on learning disability, 20.0% had inadequate knowledge and only 6.7% teachers had adequate knowledge on the subject. Majority of the teachers that is 93.3% had Most favorable Attitude towards children with learning Disability. Only 6.7% teachers showed Favorable attitude and none (0%) had Unfavorable attitude level towards the children with learning disability. There was significant correlation between knowledge of teachers and their attitude towards such children [4].

Elizabeth
K Thomas 1 , Seema p uthaman 2 (2019) conducted a study titled "A Study on the knowledge and attitude of primary school teachers towards inclusive education of children with specific learning disabilities" with the aim to determine the knowledge and Attitude of 180 primary school teachers who meet the inclusion criteria. The result concluded that 63% teachers have average knowledge and 51% have positive Attitude towards the child having Specific learning disability. There is significant correlation between teacher's knowledge and attitude [5].
Vranda M N (2016) conducted a study titled "Attitude of Primary School Teachers towards Children with Learning Disabilities" with the aim to assess the attitude of primary school teachers regarding learning disability. The study was conducted on 200 teachers to assess attitude using Teachers' Attitude about Learning Disabilities (PSTALD) scale. The result shows there is less favourable attitude of teachers towards inclusion of children with learning disability in regular schools [6].

RESEARCH METHODOLGY
The research was carried out by using Quantitative research approach and Descriptive cross sectional research design on 150 primary school teachers of Tapi District, Gujarat. The non probability sampling technique was used. The tool includes socio demographic variables, Knowledge questionnaire and Attitude scale.
The tool was validated by five experts in the field of psychiatric nursing. The reliability of the tool was checked and it was found 0.7 for Knowledge and Attitude questionnaire. Pilot study was carried out on 16 samples to find out the feasibility of the research study. The main study was carried out on 150 samples.
Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to do the data analysis and interpretation.
A) Inclusion criteria: 1. Primary School Teachers who are willing to participate in the study. 2. Primary School Teachers available at the time of data collection. B) Exclusion criteria: 1. Teachers who are teaching in private schools. 2. Teachers teaching in schools for physically or mentally challenged children.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The findings based on the description an inferential analysis tabulated as follows:

Description of Correlation between
Research Variable

Socio-Demographic Characteristics of Teachers
The findings of the present study shows that 54% of teachers belongs to age between 31years to 50years, while 4% and 42% of participants belongs to age less than 30 years and age more than 50 years respectively.

Knowledge of Primary School Teachers Regarding Learning Disability
The present study was conducted among the teachers of Tapi

Attitude of Primary School Teachers
Regarding Learning Disability

Correlation between Knowledge and Attitude of Primary School Teachers Regarding Learning Disability
There was significant correlation between knowledge of school teachers regarding learning disability and their attitude towards such children. The correlation was calculated by karl's pearson's formula and the score was 0.99.
A study was conducted by Seema Uthama 1 , Elizabeth k 2 (2019), "Knowledge and Attitude of primary school teachers towards inclusion education of children with Specific Learning Disability". The study found that there is a significant correlation between teacher's knowledge and their attitude towards inclusion criteria [5].

Association of knowledge with Selected Socio-Demographic Variables
The association between knowledge and sociodemographic variable which was tested by using chi-square test. Findings shows that age and classes allotted is associated with knowledge at p<0.05. The other socio-demographic variable such as gender, educational qualification, total years of experience, had special training on learning disability and learnt child psychology were found statistically non-significant with knowledge of primary school teachers.
B Amali Rani (2016), "A study to assess the effectiveness of psycho education module on knowledge regarding early identification of children with learning disability among primary school teachers in selected school at Chennai". The association between post test knowledge scores of primary school teachers with their demographic variables. There is association between demographic variables such as age, years of experience and teachers those who attended in service training on learning problems [8].

Association of Attitude with Selected Socio-Demographic Variables
The association between Attitude and sociodemographic variable which was tested by using chi-square test. There is significant association between classes allotted to the teachers with socio-demographic variable at p<0.05. The other socio-demographic variable such as age, gender, educational qualification, total years of experience, had special training on learning disability and learnt child psychology were found statistically nonsignificant with knowledge of primary school teachers.
Bhavya1, Bhavya s 2 , the knowledge and attitude of teachers regarding specific learning disabilities among children . The present study finding shows that there is an association between attitude and demographic variables such as gender, classes allotted, child psychology and there is no association between age, years of experience, marital status, in-service education, and family history of learning disability 7 .

CONCLUSION
The following results are obtained from the study. Majority of the teachers have favourable Attitude towards the child having Learning disability.
There is significant correlation between attitude and knowledge of teachers.
There is significant association between knowledge with age and classes allotted to the teachers.
No association was found with other socio-demographic variables like gender, educational qualification, total teaching experience, learnt child psychology, dealt with child with Learning disability.
There is significant association between knowledge and classes allotted to the teachers.
No association was found with other socio-demographic variables like age, gender, educational qualification, total teaching experience, learnt child psychology, dealt with child with Learning disability.

A study can be done in a large
population area to generalise the study findings. 2. A study can be conducted to check the prevalence of learning disability and types of 3. learning disabilities among various age groups of children. 4. A comparative study can be done on knowledge of primary school teachers between urban and rural areas. 5. A study can be conducted to assess the knowledge regarding learning disability among parents or primary care taker of school going children. 6. A similar study can be done on secondary school teachers.

CONSENT AND ETHICAL APPROVAL
As per international standard or university standard guideline participant consent and ethical approval has been collected and preserved by the authors. concieved and designed analysis:-betty Koshy.