INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE STUDENT PROFILE

Individual Difference Student Profile

Aaron Young

Instructor: Natalie Raass

EDUC 280-001 Intro to Special Education

Fall 2019
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Individual Difference Student Profile

Recently I had the pleasure of observing a young woman in high school whom I will refer

to as Jane. I observed Jane over the course of three days for a total of 15 hours. She is currently a

sophomore in a local public high school. She is 16 years old with an intellectual and

developmental disability (IDD) as evidenced by below average intellectual development in

the form of delayed reading and listening comprehension, and adaptive behavior deficits in the

form of emotional and behavioral issues. In this essay I will relate Jane’s general information,

identify her physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development, and provide a summary of

major findings.

General Information

Jane is a young African American woman at 16 years and 5 months age. Though I was

unable to personally observe her family’s configuration and constitution, she mentioned both

mother and father on several occasions and indicated that she lives with both of them. Jane

indicated that she takes a bus to school, whether this is an accommodation as part of her

Individualized Education Plan (IEP) was not made known to me. She spends approximately

75% of her day in general education classrooms and 25% in the Resource Room for

emotional/behavioral disabilities. Being in a high school setting with a variable daily schedule,

her schedule varies depending on the daily “block schedule,” but she spends one of her block

periods out of four in the Resource Room for emotional/behavioral work. The bus delivers her to

school by 7:15 a.m., where classes run from 7:37 a.m. to 2:39 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday,

and Friday and one hour shorter on Wednesdays. She also takes the bus home from school. She

once mentioned activities her mother had planned for after school implying her mother is home

with her after school.

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Physical Development

Jane is of African American descent with brown eyes, short, curly black hair, and

relatively light-brown skin. She is mildly overweight, perhaps 10 or 15 pounds above average.

She displays no outwardly obvious scars or birthmarks, though she does seem to have some

slight thinning of hair above the forehead and near the temples. This, however, may simply be a

result of the way she wears her hair, which is typically tightly pinned up and back from her face.

Jane is left-handed and able to write legibly, albeit slowly, indicating adequate small muscle

development, though it does require a certain amount of concentration on Jane’s part. Despite

the extra care which Jane must devote to writing legibly, she enjoys writing and often writes

more than is necessary in response to writing prompts.

Jane’s physical health is outwardly adequate. She requires no corrective lenses or aids for

hearing and requires no regular medication. Like most high school students, exercise and

nutrition are not an important part of her daily routine. She brings food from home for both lunch

and snacks which typically consist of highly processed, microwaveable foods, or quick-grab

foods such as chips with the infrequent addition of an apple or banana. Jane is able to move

about freely, though her feet turn slightly outward from her body and she has a mild shuffling

gait indicating adequate, though imperfect, large muscle development. As in her writing, Jane

moves about relatively slowly, though with little obvious concentration. Likely due to her

typically slow movement, Jane prefers activities that do not involve running and quick physical

reflexes such as sports games, tending towards activities like coloring and watching videos

during her free time. Despite these atypical physical abilities, she appears to be on track for

physical maturation, displaying no obvious or outwardly visible indications of delayed physical

maturity.
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Cognitive Development

As noted earlier, Jane is a 10th grade Sophomore in a local high school. Approximately

75% of her day is spent in a general education classroom setting and approximately 25% is spent

in a resource room for emotional and behavioral needs. In the past Jane struggled to complete

assignments within the timeframe allotted the class and her grades suffered accordingly. Since

the implementation of her Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and constituent

accommodations her academic grades have shown marked improvement. Jane is especially

interested in writing. She enjoys sharing her opinions and quietly reflecting. She does not enjoy

math very much and seems indifferent to her science studies.

Jane’s attention, participation, motivation, and initiative vary dependent upon her interest

in the subject. For example, in her English class and Emotional/Behavioral session, when given a

prompt for writing she tackles it immediately and will often write more than is expected of her.

In math and science, however, she might doodle while the teacher is speaking. She will do work

she is explicitly directed to do, but only the minimum expected of her.

Jane has, at least in some respects, achieved the formal operational stage as described

by Piaget (as cited in Berns, 2016, p. 189). This is evidenced by the fact that Jane is capable of

considering hypothetical situations and responding to them appropriately, one of the ways that

her emotional and behavioral issues are addressed via role-playing. In some ways, however, Jane

is still working in the concrete operational stage (as cited in Berns, 2016, p. 189). In math, for

example, Jane struggles to manage the abstract nature of algebraic equations, requiring extensive

use of modeling to grasp the details represented by the equation.

Socio-emotional Development
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In most circumstances, Jane does well in interactions with adults. However, though not

personally observed, I was informed Jane becomes agitated when required to complete an

activity she has no interest in or has decided she is incapable of doing. In these instances, which

are reportedly few, Jane may have an inappropriate outburst, causing a classroom disturbance.

This seems to indicate Jane is in Kohlberg’s second preconventional stage of moral

development (as cited in Berns, 2016, p.473), at least in interactions with her teachers.

Jane interacts appropriately with peers, though she demonstrates an innocence typical of

younger children. My limited observations seem to indicate that, among peers, Jane demonstrates

a slightly more developed moral stage, perhaps the third of Kohlberg’s stages, the conventional

stage (as cited in Berns, 2016, p. 473) wherein Jane behaves appropriately, but with the

expectation that she will be treated the same.

Jane struggles with her self-esteem and self-concept. During lunch while we were

talking one afternoon, Jane intimated that she wants a boyfriend, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever

have one. When I asked her why she thought such, she responded that she wasn’t as pretty as

other girls and boys only like pretty girls. When I asked her why it was important to her to have a

boyfriend, she responded that it’s like having a friend but better. This lack of understanding the

complexities of romantic relationships further indicates her reduced development, as described

earlier, but also evidences a craving for interpersonal connection that is not being met in her life.

This likely impacts her emotional state, and contributes to her poor self-esteem and self-concept,

all of which contribute to her sometimes-poor emotional regulation.

Conclusions and Summary

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Jane is a warm, friendly young woman with mild reading and listening comprehension

delays. Small accommodations such as extended time and permission to revisit content to

complete assignments and activities have been effective at improving academic performance. If I

was a teacher of Jane’s, I would support her improvement in these areas by providing the before-

mentioned accommodations, but also differentiate her evaluation by allowing her to write

reflective responses, an activity she tends to enjoy, to selected materials rather than the multiple-

choice format I would likely provide other students. This would result in a small addition in time

I spend performing evaluations but could potentially provide Jane a route to improved

performance.

Jane’s areas of greatest concern are her emotional-behavioral development, specifically

emotional regulation, and development of self-esteem and self-image. If I were involved in her

IEP planning and implementation, I would propose work on role-playing situations in her

resource room, in which she might encounter undesirable expectations such as performing

classwork she holds no interest in, and weekly meetings with the school counselor focusing on

exploring her feelings regarding friends and relationships and her self-esteem. The Special

Education teacher would focus on coping methods for handling frustrating situations and

expressing herself appropriately. The counselor would also implement role-playing methods to

explore how Jane might develop stronger friendships and, potentially, a romantic relationship.

The counselor would also work with Jane to improve her self-esteem and self-concept by

identifying her personal strengths, exploring her areas for improvement, and developing methods

for using her strengths to offset her perceived weaknesses.

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References

Berns, R. (2016). Child, family, school, community: socialization and support (10th ed.).

Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.