CONCEPTIONS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS ABOUT LEARNING DISORDERS Concepções de professoras de ensino fundamental sobre os transtornos de aprendizagem

Conflict of interest: non existent community, since the speech pathologist aims to create favorable and effective conditions so the capacities of all students can be developed to the maximum3. Despite the importance of the joint work of these professionals, the speech pathologist is not part of everyday school life of many teachers4, which may explain the lack of understanding among educators about the possibilities of how speech pathologists can help them5. This may also be due to factors such as deficiencies in teacher training courses, which have not addressed the work of the teacher in the classroom with children who have problems with oral and written communication, lack of attention in the school community5 and the minimal preventive action by the speech pathologist. Thus, the speech pathologist has an important role in disclosing their expertise in this field. Ensuring that the work of the speech pathologist at the school has a preventive effect requires the validation of teachers in the classroom6, so the speech pathologist can observe the students with oral and written communication development and can promote the maximum  INTRODUCTION


INTRODUCTION
Due to advances in speech pathology science in the educational context, on September 18, 2010, the Federal Board of Speech Pathology (CFFa, in Brazil), adopted resolution no.387, establishing educational speech pathology as a new specialty.Among the skills of the professional expert in educational speech pathology is working in partnership with educators to contribute in the promotion of students' development and learning 1 .Thus, the partnership between teachers and speech pathologists seeking the integration of knowledge and experience in the school environment 2 can benefit the entire school Lara et al. 18 noted many questions and concerns from teachers about their understanding of learning disorders.
Previous studies [19][20][21] that focused on teachers' knowledge about school difficulties and learning disorders have shown that in relation to the causes that justify the diagnosis of disorder of reading and writing, most pointed to intrinsic causes (physiological, biological) as causes for the reading and writing disorder, while a minority pointed to extrinsic causes such as the school environment, teaching method, and family environment.
Therefore, it becomes necessary to guide teachers on the topic, because it will affect their actions in the classroom.Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the conceptions of elementary school teachers about school difficulties and learning disorders.

METHODS
This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Dentistry of Bauru -USP, under case number 003/2009.This is a cross-sectional study in which we selected two state schools and one private school in a town of Bauru, Brazil.The schools were selected because they have already done research partnerships with the university.In each school, the director authorized the research after detailed explanation of the objectives and procedures.Thereafter, the researchers met with the teachers, clarifying important points about the study and recruiting participants.
All teachers of the schools were invited to participate in the study, and those who spontaneously demonstrated interest signed the consent form, confirming their participation in the research.
We used a dissertative questionnaire for checking teachers' knowledge on the subject, prepared by Gonçalves 22 that addresses the most important issues about their views and concerns of the subject (Figure 1).In this article, we will only address the results for the teachers' knowledge about the distinctions between school difficulties, learning disabilities, and dyslexia, as well as their definitions, causes, and manifestations.We used open questions to permit teachers to respond in their own words, which gave us the advantage of collecting a larger amount of data and avoiding the influence of predetermined answers, which can happen with objective questions 23 .potential of the student by developing activities for them 7 .
Many students meet disapproval in the school system, and other avoid presenting learning disorders 8 , however, the teacher may little knowledge about the essential issues of the development of written language, such as when to start this process, factors that favors the origin of difficulties and conducts regarding these problems 9 .
There is an inaccuracy in the literature about the definition of learning disorders 10 , which may be signed by the various names given: learning problems, school problems, etc.Thus, the term learning disorders will be adopted in this work as a generic term that encompasses learning disabilities and dyslexia.School difficulties will also be discussed, and for greater clarification, brief definitions are presented.In the case of school difficulties, income and school performance can be influenced by affective problems such as school-related problems.The student may be experiencing learning difficulties as a result of inappropriate methodology or by difficulties in his or her relationship with the teacher and colleagues 11 .Thus, the causes of the difficulty are related to teaching factors and thus is not ranked as a disorder.
Learning disabilities, on the other hand, are categorized within a set of symptomatology signals that cause disruption in the child's learning, interfering markedly in the acquisition and maintenance of information.A learning disability is a dysfunction of the central nervous system.Therefore, it is a neurological disorder associated with a failure in the acquisition, processing, or storage of information, involving specific areas and neural circuits in a particular development time 12 .
In addition, dyslexia is a neuro dysfunction characterized by a lower performance than expected based on mental age, socioeconomic status, and educational attainment, and affects the processes of reading decoding and comprehension 13,14 .
The study of Capellini and Rodrigues 15 showed that teachers have deficits in their initial and/or continued information about learning disorders.According with Stefanini and Cruz 16 , teachers can recognize that the cause of such problems can be in the family, in the child, and/or in the school.Therefore, it is important that teachers know in detail the causes of these problems, and furthermore, reflect especially on the educational ones that depend especially on their.Also, knowledge about learning disabilities can help teachers because they are also the intermediaries for parents who are looking for health services 17 .1 and 2 show the characterization of the sample with respect to age, years spent teaching, graduate degrees (in this sample, only graduatelevel sensu lato was identified), and knowledge about the topic.

Questionnaire
The study included 11 teachers from private schools and 20 public school teachers.Regarding their undergraduate studies, all the teachers are licensed in pedagogy.Among the teachers of public schools, one of them also has certification in psychology.In relationship to information received about the subject before the development of this research (in courses, lectures, seminars, and postgraduate courses), we obtained the following characterization, arranged in Table 3.
By the characteristics of the sample, it was possible to separate the teachers into two groups: public x private school, and with x no prior knowledge about the subject.
After collecting data, we organized the responses by thematic categories.Following the categorization of responses, we analyzed the presence of misconceptions, and those responses that had one or more misconceptions were classified as wrong.The establishment of the categories and their analysis were based on the definitions of the DSM-IV 13 and studies by Zorzi (2003) 7 and Ciasca (2003) 12 .
The following describes the thematic categories for the definitions, causes, and manifestations of school difficulties, dyslexia, and learning disorders, and which categories were considered incorrect.

Manifestations
These categories were found in the responses of teachers to the definition of dyslexia.

A. Do not know B. Difficulties in the acquisition and development
of speech and language C. Failure in the reading and writing process D. Failure in language skills that are reflected in reading E. Difficulty in reading and writing F. Disorder

G. Exchanging and reversing letters in writing H. Difficulty in reading comprehension I. Difficulty in mathematical calculation
We ranked as wrong answers in which category I was present.
For the causes, the answers were divided into the following categories.

Distinction between Disorders
Teachers were asked whether there are differences between school difficulties, learning disabilities, and dyslexia.It is observed in Table 4 that 100% of private school teachers believe that there are differences between the disorders, while 70% of public school teachers reported no difference, and this difference was statistically significant.When comparing teachers with and without prior knowledge of the subject, this difference was not statistically significant.The responses were considered wrong when categories A and I were present.
Next, we carried out a comparative quantitative statistical analysis, processing the data with SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 17.0), using the chi-square test and adopting a significance level of 5%.

School Difficulties: Definition and Causes
The Table 5 shows that 65% of public school teachers correctly reported the definition of school difficulties, while 36% of private school teachers did the same.Yet 59% of teachers with prior knowledge correctly defined the problem as opposed to 50% of the teachers without prior knowledge.These data were not statistically different.
Table 5 also shows that 45% of private school teachers answered correctly the causes of school difficulties, while 25% of public school teachers did.Among teachers with prior knowledge, 35% knew the causes and 29% of teachers without prior knowledge also did.These differences were not statistically significant.Dyslexia: Definition, Causes, and Manifestations Regarding the definition of dyslexia, Table 7 shows that 100% of private school teachers and 75% of public school teachers correctly defined the disorder.Among teachers with and without prior knowledge of the subject, 88% and 79% of teachers, respectively, answered correctly.These differences were not statistically significant.
For the causes of the disorder, Table 7 also shows that 64% of private school teachers and 30% of public school teachers answered correctly.Still, 50% of teachers without prior knowledge and 35% of the teachers with prior knowledge also answered correctly.None of these differences was statistically significant.
In terms of the manifestations of dyslexia, statistically significant differences were noted between groups, both between teachers of public and private schools and between teachers with and without prior knowledge on the subject.Thus, Table 7 shows that 80% of public school teachers answered correctly compared with 36% of private school teacher, and 94% of teachers with prior knowledge answered correctly, compared with 29% of teachers without prior knowledge.

Learning Disabilities: Definition, Causes, and Manifestations
Regarding the definition of learning disabilities, Table 6 shows that 82% of private school teachers answered correctly, compared to 30% of public school teachers.Among the teachers who reported having prior knowledge of the subject, 41% of them correctly identified the definition of the disorder and 58% of the teachers who had no prior knowledge also did so.These differences were not statistically significant.
With regard to the causes of this disorder, there was a low level of accuracy in all groups.Thus, Table 6 shows only 15% of teachers in public school and0% in private school answered correct, as did 6% and 14% with and without prior knowledge, respectively.These answers did not differ statistically.
Table 6 shows that when asked about the manifestations of Learning Disabilities, 45% of public school teachers answered correctly and 36% of private school teachers did the same.Among teachers with and without prior knowledge, 59% and 21%, respectively, answered correctly.We also found no statistically significant differences in this issue.study, in which there were no statistically significant differences in the responses of teachers with and without prior knowledge of the subject, except in relationship to the manifestations of dyslexia, which will be discussed below.

Defined
Another study showed that in the teacher's conceptions, family aspects were among the causes of learning difficulties, and consequently, teachers assigned to the family the greatest share of responsibility in solving such situations 25 .
Regarding the manifestations of dyslexia and learning disabilities, most teachers answered correctly, 64% and 58%, respectively.There were statistically significant differences separating teachers by type of school (80% answered correctly in public schools and 36% in particular) and the type of prior knowledge (94% and 29% of the teachers with and without the knowledge correctly answered the question, respectively).
This finding could reflect that in the daily classroom work of teaching reading and writing, the teacher can detect issues that some students are experiencing compared with the other students.In this research, we note that while the teachers often observe these manifestations, they do not know how to define and identify the causes of the disorders.Ianhez and Nico 26 reported that long ago, there was a lack of awareness among educators and professionals about learning disorders, but that teachers already knew about "delays" in school.Presently, this topic is well publicized by the media, and educators are seeking to learn about learning disorders so as to avoid excluding these students.This disorder is easier to describe than to name, as can be seen in the comment made by Ianhez and Nico 22 , and yet it is important to identify the real cause of the problem so it will be possible to properly teach and help those in need.
In the study by Fernandes and Crenitte 19 , 82% of teachers indicated intrinsic reasons (physiological, biological) as justifications for diagnosing a disorder of reading and writing, and only 38% indicated extrinsic reasons (school environment, teaching methods, family environment).When asked "What do you call this problem?", the word "dyslexia" was quite commonly cited among teachers, as 46% identified this condition as that suffered by children with disorders of reading and writing.The authors concluded that teachers have little knowledge about the disorder of reading and writing, and the difficulties revolved around identifying the real problem, manifestations which characterize this problem and how to intervene and prevent.
In the study by Rodrigues 27 , public and private school teachers were asked what dyslexia is; some answered that dyslexia is a serious illness

DISCUSSION
The results obtained in this study allow several observations about the quality of information being provided to these professionals.Whereas the majority of teachers (55%) reported having information regarding this subject, in the comparison of this group of teachers who had not received any kind of information, there were practically no statistically significant differences.Still, although teachers in private and public have conceptual difficulties, they demonstrated similar performances on most issues.Thus, regardless of the type of school or whether the teacher had prior knowledge about the subject, conceptual difficulties were observed in all cases.
In this study, the majority of teachers assumed that there is a difference between school difficulties and learning disorders (82%).When we compared the type of school, this clarity was higher among private school teachers (100%) than among public school teachers (70%), which is a statistically significant difference.Among teachers with and without prior knowledge of the subject, there was no difference, and the answers regarding the affirmation that there are differences between the disorders were similar in this group, with the majority stating that the disorders differ.
The definition of the disorders and their causes were reported incorrectly by most teachers, and no statistically significant difference was observed among the groups.Thus, 55% of the teachers incorrectly defined school difficulties and51% defined learning disabilities incorrectly.On the other hand, the majority (84%) correctly defined dyslexia.Regarding the causes, 52% failed to correctly identify the causes of school difficulties, 88% did not identify the cause of learning disabilities correctly, and 58% did the same with the causes of dyslexia.
In a similar study 24 , 14 teachers in public and private institutions responded to a questionnaire.It was found that 64% studied the subject during their undergraduate work, 50% knew about the concept of dyslexia, and 98% correctly identified its causes.The results showed that the majority have knowledge about dyslexia, which allows them to correctly identify the concept, its main characteristics, its causes, and the need to involve professionals in the whole process.These results are quite different to those of this research.
Still, in the aforementioned study, there was no correlation between the fact that teachers had studied the subject as undergraduates (related to learning disabilities and the main aspects of dyslexia) with the other study variables, such as the identification, definition, and manifestations of dyslexia.These results agree with the data obtained in this The study by Torres and Ciasca 28 showed that in general, teachers are not sensitive about discriminating between students who are developing and those who have reading and writing difficulty.However, some discrepancies found suggest that other factors related to the specific learning of reading and writing can influence the ratings given by teachers or they are not well prepared to detect subtle differences in these skills.
The possibility of joint reflection between health professionals and teachers (who are responsible for most referrals) could give rise to a new understanding of the problem of "pathologizing" learning and accelerate the search for new institutional solutions 21 .Furthermore, it is necessary that teachers reflect on their practice before the problem of school failure arises and on the ideological implications of this practice; in other words, they need to reflect on the possibility that they are reinforcing stigma, discrimination, and segregation of a portion of the population that is normally not within the individual model valued by society.
Thus, it is noted that in this study that 52% of the teachers failed the causes of school difficulties, implying that these teachers do not recognize the influence of the teacher and the school itself as the cause of the difficulties.Often, such students have their difficulty labeled or "pathologized," meaning that the student him-or herself is identified as the cause of such difficulties.
Following this reasoning, Carvalho, Crenitteand Ciasca 29 analyzed the descriptive responses of elementary schoolteachers.it was found that 22% of them differentiated between learning disabilities and school difficulties, and 78% did not.Addressing the teacher's knowledge about learning disorders, the authors observed that 47% of the teachers answered correctly.They stated that students with such disorders are those with learning disabilities for some neurologic reason (attention deficit, memory, perception, language problems, writing, reading, mathematical reasoning, and inappropriate social behavior); therefore, almost half of teachers knew the correct answer.However, two other issues involved.The teachers were asked to describe the disorder in the same question (because the question previously addressed was objective).Another result was then obtained, and 78% did not describe the disorder properly.And in the question where teachers identified the causes of learning disorders, sometimes correctly, their answers did not coincide with the justifications.It was possible to make the same reading of the results, but with different statistical data, through the analysis of all the answers of the same teacher.For this, who correctly answered all the questions were considered with adequate while others identified it as a learning disorder.For teachers who responded that it is a serious illness, they still have no idea of the problem that they deal with every day, and they need to learn about it to help their students so they do not suffer in the classroom.All teachers consider dyslexia a congenital disorder, not an acquired one.Still, when teachers were asked if they have identified students who have difficulties in the acquisition of reading and writing in school, all teachers interviewed answered yes, although some do not know what the proper procedure is for solving the problem.This occurred with teachers in both types of schools (public and private).
A study 20 addressed the knowledge of 52 teachers who were taking a specialization course in educational psychology.When asked "What is a learning disability?" (a term used interchangeably with learning disorder), there were five categories of responses.Identification of the difficulties as a specific and inherent student problem was the answer given by 56% of subjects, and several responses used current terminologies, such as hyperactivity, deficits, dyslexia etc.Only six teachers associated the difficulties with the pedagogical aspects, questioning teaching performance, and 6% of them considered problems in cognitive development as the origin of these difficulties.The authors report that this is a simple explanation that can be rapidly given, making the students most responsible for their not learning.The authors also reflect that would be these professionals who are specializing in educational psychology who should have a critical eye that avoids any prior labeling.They point out that these teachers should at least balance in their responses the existence of external and internal factors, and even question or reflect on the school's role in the process.
Still, these authors found that of the 52 subjects, 47 know and identify children with learning difficulties, and this was evaluated by the authors as a high number.On the other hand, the most important finding of the authors is precisely the fact that these future psychopedagogues were reluctant to classify problems in learning as easily.According to the report of these teachers, learning problems always or mostly are inherent in their own students.The authors reflected on the ease with which the inherentness of the students' disorders is pointed out.The label has consequences for the child that may not only remain related to learning or /not learning in school.Therefore, the authors suggested it would be interesting to observe what characterizes a student with learning disorders from the perspective of who labels them and what happens to such students going forward. is investing massively in initial teacher formation, so that continuing education need not act retrospectively and therefore in a compensatory way.Instead, the state needs to charge of the professional development of teachers.This would be a prospective continuous education, through which the teacher gains autonomy, including the freedom to determine what is necessary to improve themselves.
It is clear that all teachers need to understand this subject so they can reflect on the causes of learning problems, including educational ones, and can cope with the difficulties presented by these students in the classroom to develop their capabilities to the greatest possible extent.

CONCLUSION
We conclude that teachers, regardless of the type of school they teach in or if whether they had prior knowledge of the subject, have a shortage in their conceptual repertoire that refers to the definitions, manifestations, and especially the causes of school difficulties and learning disorders.Therefore, they need guidance to help them work effectively with these students.

Figure 1 -
Figure 1 -Questionnaire regarding the evaluation of the teachers' conceptions on School Difficulties and Learning Disorders C. Difficulty in writing D. Difficulty in reading comprehension E. Responds well to questions orally F. Memory difficulties G. Disorganization H. Problems with concentration and attention I. Difficulties in mathematical reasoning

Table 3 -Prior knowledge of the subject Prior knowledge* School n Total %
*Knowledge was obtained in courses, lectures, seminars, and graduate courses.

Table 4 -Responses from teachers regarding the distinction of the disorders Distinction of the disorders I do not know
*Chi-Square test.P value considered: <0.05

Table 5 -Responses of teachers regarding the definition and causes of school difficulties School difficulties Definition Causes
*Chi-Square test.P value considered: <0.05

Table 7 -Responses of teachers regarding the definition, causes, and manifestations of dyslexia Dyslexia Definition Causes Manifestation Defined incorrectly Not defined
*Chi-Square test.P value considered: <0.05 *Chi-Square test.P value considered: <0.05