Dyslexia
Dyslexia: Assessment and Support
Formula one legend and President of Dyslexia Scotland Sir Jackie Stewart, OBE, introduces the new Dyslexia Toolkit programme and opens our discussion on the wider aspects of improving provision for Dyslexia in schools.
“I would like to congratulate the initiative of the Scottish Government and especially the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Mike Russell, in supporting the ‘Assessing Dyslexia Toolkit’ Programme, in association with Dyslexia Scotland. Without the Government’s initiative, this simply would not have happened.
The early recognition by teachers of children with learning difficulties is absolutely paramount; they must be identified and assessed. All teachers require the skills and particularly the disciplines of consistent practice to assist children suffering from dyslexia, or any other form of learning difficulty.
Unidentified dyslexia can cause extraordinary damage to a young person’s life and can remove any possibility of them reaching their true potential. The frustration and the humiliation that a young person experiences with some teachers and by their peers, can drive them to negative behaviours such as the abuse of drugs and alcohol and as they grow older, through not being properly educated, can destroy their self-esteem and even lead them to a life of crime.”
Sir Jackie Stewart
Dyslexia Scotland in partnership with the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Government launched the Assessing Dyslexia Toolkit for Teachers on 1st June. This resource, hosted on the Scottish Teacher Education Committee ‘Framework for Inclusion’ site, aims to guide teachers through the appropriate pathways to determine if a child is dyslexic. It uses a traffic light system of Green for all teachers, Amber for School Based Support Teachers and Red for Teachers Experienced in Dyslexia Assessment – so whatever your knowledge base there is something new to be discovered.
We have also added a dyslexia resource section to our links page.
How can teachers and schools use resources like the new Dyslexia Toolkit to support children and young people with dyslexia and help them make the most out of their education?
Can you tell us about your examples of good practice in supporting pupils with dyslexia?
Please submit your ideas below:
Can you be a:
- Successful learner – if you can’t read books and learning materials?
- Confident individual – if you depend on others to read or write for you?
- Responsible citizen – if you don’t have access to information?
- An effective contributor – if you can’t communicate?
We work with Assistive and Communication Technology and we’re finding these questions helpful in working out, practically, what we should be doing to help pupils with additional support needs access Curricuum for Excellence.
A few examples:
Our Books for All project (www.BooksforAll.org.uk) is all about getting learning materials in formats that dyslexic pupils can read: one example is the new service we have with Hodder Gibson to provide accessible digital copies of texbooks free of charge. It’s hard to be a successful learner if you can’t read the textbooks and these should help.
The digital exam papers which we developed and piloted with SQA (see http://www.AdaptedDigitalExams.org.uk) have been very popular and this year there were 2000 requests for them, from 675 pupils. The papers can be read out by the computer and pupils type their answers on screen, and some young people choose them instead of reader/scribes. I have some doubts about the widespread use of reader/scribes: is this really the best we can do for pupils who are close to finishing their schooling? Does it help you become a confident individual to have your exam read to you, and have someone write down your answers? Digital papers are a more independent alternative and although they aren’t for everyone, evidence so far suggests that maybe half the young people who currently use scribes could use ICT or digital papers instead. (Costs less too – fewer staff and rooms needed….)
Please visit the web sites if you’re interested in this stuff.
Children are provided with what Rudof Steiner proclaimed they needed when Rudolf Steiner decided they needed it. There is no lee way in anthroposophic spiritual pedagogy, so rigid is it, they are held back academically on purpose. All children have to fit in Steiner’s anthroposophical boxes. His decisions were taken from his apparent clairvoyance, along with bits and pieces borrowed from various other places- theosophy for one.
Unfortunately, there is little scientific evidence or studies to show how anthroposophical education helps children to “progress”- or if there are, perhaps you could point us to them.
My own experience leads me to believe that children with needs such as dyslexia are often left to struggle, because it is I gather,seen as a karmic lesson they need to learn in this life in order to “progess in the right way” to their next incarnation.
There are some recent articles on Professor Colquhorn’s blog which are worth reading http://www.dcscience.net/?p=3595
Any belief system or cosmology which understands educational goals as helping a child incarnate, that uses karma, reincarnation and consulting angels as educational guides is certainly religious in nature.
Contrary to the schools publicity, Steiner education is prescriptive to a degree. Children “develop” according to Steiner’s rules, discovered clairvoyantly. They are classified according to medieval temperaments, and immersed in anthroposophical notions, even if they aren’t blatantly taught them.
While there are some excellent things about these schools, there are also some dangerous and anti therapeutic ones.
Steiner schools educational goals are spiritual. Their understanding of conditions such as dyslexia too, are spiritual, therefore the “programmes” Robin Bates talk about would almost certainly be anthroposophical, because anthroposophy, a pseudo religion invented by Rudolf Steiner, involving karma and reincarnation, and taken from his clairvoyant perceptions,forms the basis of the curriculum in these schools.
It would be dishonest not to mention this, as many people are not fully aware about the dominance of anthroposophy in shaping what goes on in Steiner schools.
Anthroposophy, the philosophy behind Steiner education, is neither a religion nor a pseudo religion. It does see the human being as an entity of body, soul and spirit and our life on earth as part of a greater continuum, but there’s nothing sinister in that. Steiner schools work because they are based on an understanding of how children grow and develop – inwardly and outwardly – and because they provide them with what they need precisely when they need it. So, rather than being stuck behind a desk at the age of 5, the children move, play creatively, paint, draw and bake in a nurturing environment, and throughout their schooling they are motivated by their innate joy of learning rather than by pressure to succeed or fear of failure. Steiner’s kinaesthetic, ‘hands-on’ approach in the early years has helped many dyslexic and other children to progress and live a healthy, fulfilling life.
The dyslexic symptom is caused by one or medical issues or cognitive deficits or disorders. So although teacher train may help to identify potential dyslexics, teachers are not qualified to perform the specific medical diagnosis of the cognitive causes of the dyslexic symptom.
So teachers should be taken out of the diagnostic equation, and should only be able to make a nominal but informed referral for a multi – discipline clinical assessment to determine the auditory, or visual, or attentional cognitive issues or any combination of the three issues which may cause and individual to have the identified dyslexic symptom.
Some of the cognitive information processing deficits or disorders which can cause the dyslexic symptom such as Auditory Processing Disorder (APD the listening disability) may have more serious implications in daily life or more serious symptoms than the symptom of dyslexia (having problems with written language).
So every Dyslexic needs to identify “What causes your dyslexia?” before you can begin to establish the best types of support and help they may require
Dyslexia is about having problems accessing a man made communication system, the visual notation of speech, or text.
The cognitive skills sets required to perform the task of reading varies from one writing system to another. Our culture uses the Latin alphabet writing system, and English is the most complex orthography in this system. The purest languages in the Latin alphabet system are Finnish and Italian.
We need identify which of the main sub types of dyslexia affect each dyslexic either auditory visual or attentional or some combination of the three cognitive sub types.
Each cognitive sub type of dyslexia requires a different approach to the type of support and help required, and the types of support can conflict between the varying cognitive sub types.
The medical conditions which cause these cognitive deficits can be clinically diagnosed/ When anyone is diagnosed as being Dyslexic they should be referred for a clinical assessment of the possible cognitive deficits which are causing their dyslexic symptom. Or have a multi – discipline assessment to identify all of the potential medical issues.
The UK has a dyslexia industry which has for the most part ignored international dyslexia research as it conflicts with their remedial program agenda, which requires dyslexia to be viewed a a condition with a single cause.
I am have a clinical diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) , which is the the cause of my dyslexic symptom. My three sons and my wife also have a clinical diagnosis of APD which is the cause of their dyslexic symptoms. If we did not have APD we would not be dyslexic.
For more information regarding international dyslexia research please have a look at two CiteULike online research paper libraries the first regarding Developmental dyslexia at
http://www.citeulike.org/group/12693/library/order/year,,
and Alexia (acquired dyslexia) at
http://www.citeulike.org/group/13563/library/order/year,,
The research into Alexia has resulted in the evolution of the many psycholiguistic models of reading since the 1970s.
Do HMI not have some responsibilty for ensuring that schools are fulfilling their obligation to identify and support these pupils on a coherent, realistic and transparent manner?
Dear Mr. Brown,
Thank you for your reply, and for the Scottish Government Response to Offender Learning: Options for Improvement information. I am reassured that the Scottish Government has established a firm connection between learning difficulties such as dyslexia and youth offending.
I have an interest in post-16 education because I know, from personal experience, that trying to compensate for a missed education is extremely difficult and frustrating even when specialist support is available, so I can only imagine how a young person must feel when there is no support and there are problems elsewhere. With the odds stacked against them, offending seems almost inevitable.
In England, the Communication Trust has launched Sentence Trouble, a guide for the youth justice workforce to facilitate communication with young people in trouble. They have opened an online forum for practitioners to share ideas for developing tools in the youth justice system – I have told them about the work of the Scottish Government – and this is a link to their forum: http://www.sentencetrouble.info/
Kind regards,
Alan Gurbutt
Alan,
You raise an interesting point here – I visited HM Young Offenders Institute Polmont recently and saw how young offenders are often disengaged from society and that this disengagement can sometimes stem from a difficulty in learning.
Scottish Government is encouraging all agencies who work with young people and adults in the justice system, including the Scottish Prison Service, to ensure that resources are directed to identify and address the needs of those with all types of learning issues, including dyslexia and dyspraxia.
The Scottish Prison Service are looking at ways of using the internet for on-line learning and assessment, as well as developments in new technologies to support learning. They are watching developments in other countries with interest, with a view to using them as and when appropriate.
You may also be interested to know that the Scottish Prison Service and the Community Team in Learning and Teaching Scotland are currently developing a new literacy and numeracy screening tool which will better assess the learning needs of offenders.
Find out more about the learning development opportunities for offenders view The Scottish Government Response to Offender Learning: Options for Improvement.
Keith Brown, Minister for Skills & Lifelong Learning