‘Teachers unpreparedfor ADHD students’ research study finds

Second-level teachers say they are unprepared to teach students who have ADHD or other special educational needs, because of “inadequacies in initial teacher education programmes”.

Many adolescents who have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) said they had only been diagnosed in their teens, which impinged upon their education and the supports they might have accessed sooner. The findings are contained in research conducted by Andrea Lynch, for NUI Galway’s School of Education.

Entitled ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in adolescence: the experiences of young women and second-level teachers in Ireland’, it includes answers from 239 teachers to an online questionnaire. Ms Lynch also conducted in-depth interviews with eight teachers who had taught adolescent girls and boys who had ADHD, and 17 adolescent girls who had been diagnosed with ADHD.