Background

Across India, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities grapple with numerous challenges in education, often leaving students without ample support for safe learning spaces, let alone quality education. Of these challenges, due to social biases and a lack of healthy conversations about learning, one has consistently remained overlooked – learning differences. 

Learning differences or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) present a significant hurdle to many children all over the country, affecting nearly 8% of students up to 19, as reported by an article in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (Scaria et al.). SLDs can hinder the necessary skills children should pick up at school, including reading, writing, and math. However, many researchers have stated that the extent of the problem is difficult to estimate given a lack of data on the subject – note that there has also been recent research attesting to how 9% to 39% of school children navigate everyday learning with learning differences (The Economic Times). 

Given such uncertainties in the data, it is not easy to ideate for better policy interventions and resources on a large scale. However, much is left to be done, even if the goal is to start with small steps. Children with SLD from underserved communities who may already have financial difficulties or insufficient access to learning resources are inevitably more acutely affected by their learning styles than their peers. In the classroom, students often end up being unnoticed, their needs overlooked, or aren’t given the support they deserve. Beyond one’s educational growth, this has negative consequences for self-esteem and behavior. As a result of this, due to the lack of adequate and safe support systems, students continue to struggle, and this leads to a cycle of poor performance, which makes it even harder to succeed. 

As individuals grow older, the difficulties they faced during school might continue to follow them into adulthood, making it harder to find employment, thereby significantly reducing the chances of making it out of existing cycles of poverty and marginalization. One step at a time, it is imperative to create a learning style accepting of differences and diversities. At the heart of it, Learning Styles aims to break this cycle by providing better support for the children who deserve and need it, creating more inclusive learning ecosystems, and giving them a better chance to thrive in school and later in life.