Abstract:

There is a growing trend toward inclusive education, particularly for learners with disabilities. Higher education teachers thus face increased challenges in implementing teaching methodologies effectively.  It is important for teachers to utilize inclusive teaching practices, such as personalization and differentiation, in order to accommodate students.  The setting of flexible tasks and grouping strategies, as well as the respect for individual learning characteristics, can provide an effective learning environment for every student.  Learning disabilities require different accommodations, including emotional accommodations. 

Students with disabilities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, are those who have problems with cognitive functions, memory, concentration, and decision-making due to mental, physical, or emotional conditions, severe difficulty hearing or deafness, various visual disabilities or blindness, and mobility problems.  Students with disabilities accounted for 21% of undergraduate students and 11% of graduate students in the 2019-2020 academic year. According to the National Center for College Students with Disabilities, students with disabilities report that instructional environments and classroom barriers include faculty resistance to accommodations, faculty pushback, and instructors who do not respond to accommodations requests.  Consequently, students with disabilities were less likely to feel welcome on campus or supported by their institutions. Thus, the literature review aims to explore the application of the 4MAT model to increase inclusive learning in the classroom for learners with disabilities. The literature review examines the teaching methods and assessment methods that can be used to assist learners with disabilities to develop analytical, innovative, dynamic, and common-sense learning preferences.  

The 4MAT model describes the interplay between what people perceive and how they process it. There are some learners who perceive their experiences and dwell on them for a longer period of time than others.  Though all learners conceptualize what they perceive, some take longer than others to conceptualize what they perceive. According to the 4MAT model, students experience things, sense what they are learning, capture the learning moment, feel the learning through the learning experience, and conceptualize it by transforming the learning experience into conceptual forms such as ideas and systems. Bernice McCarthy, the designer of the 4MAT model, argues that the interplay between the learning experience and conceptualization is key to the learning process.  This connects students' personal values and perceptions to experts'.  Besides perceiving information, learners also reflect and act on it. The reflection process involves students pondering, questioning, observing how others feel about the information, and observing other learners' reflections. As part of the acting process, learners apply ideas to the outside world, test the information they have learned, and manipulate information they have learned.  Interplay between observation and action is crucial since it provides the impetus for acting on internal ideas.  Learners are encouraged to test their ideas in the real world and adapt what they learn to ambiguous and multiple situations.

Keywords:

4MAT Model, learning disabilities, learning, teaching.