ABSTRACT
Students with physical disabilities Students with physical disabilities comprise a relatively small but diverse group. Their disabilities can range from those that have little or no influence on a child’s learning and development, through to other conditions that may involve neurological impairment affecting both fine and gross motor skills and intelligence. It is important for teachers to realise that a physical disability does not automatically cause a student to have intellectual disability or to experience learning problems. While it is true that some students with physical impairment do have learning problems, assumptions should never be made about an individual’s capacity to learn on the basis of an apparent physical disability. Even severe types of physical impairment sometimes have no impact on intellectual ability and the intelligence levels for students with
physical disabilities cover the full range from gifted to severely intellectually disabled (Heller et al. 1996; Stieler 1998).
