Teachers’ awareness of dyslexia among lower and upper school students in Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Previous studies on dyslexia awareness among primary and junior secondary school teachers that focus on some individual communities in Nigeria are common in literature. However, none of the previous studies have focussed on each state in Nigeria. In our present study, we focus on Ondo state as a whole in Nigeria to determine the level of dyslexia awareness among primary and junior secondary school teachers. A descriptive research design was adopted, and the findings show that there is a low level of awareness of dyslexia among the teachers and that dyslexia as a concept should be incorporated into the general studies curriculum for all pre-service teachers to prepare the would-be teachers for identifying and managing dyslexic students. We submit also that it is not unlikely that many dyslexic students, if not all, at least, in view of our different experiences as former students either in the sixties or seventies in the Nigerian public schools who had witnessed the then general rule of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, must have been unfairly treated for their poor academic performance and unjustifiably punished and publicly ridiculed in the class for an academic offence not deliberately committed by them. The research concludes that there should be a synergy between the Ministries of Education and Health to determine the state of health of school age children and identify the ones with special needs for special attention to guide against bully and vulgarity in language use by teachers against students with learning disabilities.