Challenges and Strategies in Educating Learner’s With Disability During Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The study titled Challenges and Strategies in Educating Learners with Disabilities During the Covid-19 Pandemic aimed to explore the difficulties encountered by teachers and the strategies they employed to ensure effective learning among students with disabilities. Specifically, the objectives were to identify the challenges teachers faced, determine the strategies they used, and highlight the most effective approaches across different schools. Data gathered revealed several challenges, including disobedience of students to parental guidance, frequent behavior tantrums, selectivity in accepting instruction, difficulty in developing modules and activities, questionable reliability of student responses to modules, ineffectiveness of online platforms, short attention spans, and limitations in the learning environment. To address these, teachers implemented various strategies such as monitoring students through group chat messages, video calls, and phone calls; conducting weekly orientations with parents to provide guidance on lesson execution and activities; modifying modules; conducting house-to-house visitations; using big books and talking books; offering and delivering modules every 15 days; rewarding students through virtual recognition; holding one-hour online classes; and incorporating songs to capture attention. Among these, the most effective strategies varied by school: School A found group chat monitoring most effective, School B emphasized the modular approach, School C preferred delivering modules every 15 days, and School D identified one-hour online classes as the most impactful. These findings highlight the adaptability of teachers in overcoming pandemic-related barriers and underscore the importance of context-specific strategies in supporting learners with disabilities.