Impact of Educational Therapy Programme on Mathematical Skills of Rural Children

The present study was an attempt to see the impact of planning and implementation of educational therapy programme on mathematical skills of school children. The sample for the study consisted of 15 teachers and30 children of class II from the rural private schools of Ludhiana district. Self Structured Cognitive Abilities Assessment Checklist were used to assess teachers' cognitive abilities to design educational therapy programme for children, Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1965) was used to assess the intellectual abilities of the children and Self Structured Mathematical Skills Checklist was used to assess different mathematical skills of children. Rural teachers who showed high level of application level of cognitive abilities were selected to plan and design educational therapy programme for children with mathematical difficulties which was implemented for three months. Pre-intervention results revealed that children were in low and medium level of mathematical skills and none of the child was in high level. Post- intervention results revealed that rural children of class II shifted to medium and to high level and none of the child remained in low level of mathematical skills. Further, dimensionwise analysis revealed that the mathematical skills were improved in each dimension indicating that children were better able to perform in number facts, place value, addition, subtraction and counting. Hence, the educational therapy programme significantly enhanced the mathematical skills of rural children..