Volume 29, Issue 5, 2020
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.1116
Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder Among Adult Learners: Diagnosis and Pedagogy
Abstract
Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychological condition that may adversely impact pedagogy. Popular characteristics of ADHD may lead to difficulties in managing life as a whole. However, this problem can disturb a learner to a great extent, so his academic performance may be bad despite the fact that the learner is not that mentally poor. Therefore, it’s important to explore as to what could be done in order to enable learners with ADHD so their academic performance is not much affected. There are three main signs and symptoms of ADHD: inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. It is likely that X learner reflects one symptom more than the other(s). Thus, it becomes more crucial to think about a pedagogy or strategy to cater to the need of a learner with ADHD, its types in general and inattentive or impulsive or hyperactive learner type in particular. It is also possible that one learner is affected by one sub type, or all the three. In this circumstance, very specific pedagogy will be required such as differentiated instruction (DI). In this mixed method study, an adapted questionnaire and an interview schedule were utilised to elicit data which were analysed mainly qualitatively. Results will be applied to diagnosing ADHD or similar problems, their impact on learning and designing a compatible pedagogy.
Keywords
ADHD, pedagogy, inattentive, impulsive, hyperactive, academic performance