RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL SKILLS AND PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF THE CHILDREN WITH MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN TRICHY DISTRICT

Background: Children with mild intellectual disabilities demonstrate wide diversity in academic and behavioural performance. They develop adequate social, personal, and communication skills. As adults, they function in a variety of contexts. Persons with moderate intellectual disabilities have limited intellectual abilities, have problems in abstracting and generalizing, and are not ready for much academic work until their early teens. They show rather clear-cut deficits in adaptive behaviour. The children with mild intellectual disabled show underachievement in all academic areas, have difficulty in working with abstract ideas, and have problems generalizingtheir learning to new situations. The study aims to explore the effect of social skills on the problem behaviour and academic performance of children with mild intellectual disability in aninclusive setting. Materials and Methods: 400 Children with intellectual disability and their teachers in the inclusive set-up both in rural and urban areas of Trichy District were chosen for the study. The data was collected through the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS)-Gresham & Elliott, 1990). Obtained data were transcribed and analyzed using Descriptive and Differential analysis. Findings: The statistical procedure showed that there is a positive significant correlation between social skills, problem behaviour and academic competence and asignificant relationshipbetween them. Conclusion: Social skills are essential for children with intellectual disabilities to learn through schooling along with academic skills. Several researchers have reported a significant relationship between students’ social behaviors and their problem behaviour and academic outcomes.