Dyslexia in Adolescence

Global Perspectives

Peggy L. Anderson,Regine Meier-Hedde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317242000
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Dyslexia in Adolescence: Global Perspectives presents international case studies on the psychosocial development and academic progress of adolescents with dyslexia to enhance understanding of adjustment factors, outcomes and support. The continuation of a qualitative longitudinal research project that focused on children between ten and twelve years of age, this volume revisits them between ages fourteen and sixteen. Through semi-structured interviews, personal narratives, and other assessments, these case studies relate the trials and tribulations associated with the development of adolescents with dyslexia from around the world and the challenges that parents face in supporting their children.

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DYSLEXIA IN ADOLESCENCE

Peggy L. Anderson and Regine Meier-Hedde

Understanding Dyslexia

Well over a century ago, Rudolph Berlin, a German ophthalmologist, coined the term dyslexia and described the unusual case of six adult patients with normal language skills who had lost their ability to read (Anderson & Meier-Hedde, 2001). Much later, this condition would come to be understood as acquired dyslexia as opposed to developmental dyslexia, which is the variant associated with children and adolescents. Today dyslexia continues to be one of the most enigmatic conditions known. That obviously bright children, often with above average intelligence, fail to learn to read as expected is a conundrum to the children themselves, their parents and their teachers. These children will become adolescents and adults who develop competency in other areas of education, vocation and life in general, but the ability to decode and comprehend print to any degree of efficiency, and to actually enjoy reading, may forever elude them.

Discrepant views and definitions of dyslexia frequently overwhelm parents and teachers to the point of frustration, leading many to debate the value and practicality of the label. In fact, Elliott and Grigorenko (2014) have devoted an entire book to questioning the theoretical construct of dyslexia, concluding that the use of this term should be discontinued because of its lack of scientific precision and validity. Before addressing some of these problems associated with defining dyslexia, it seems prudent to identify areas for which there is some accord. Although seemingly reductionist, there appear to be two major characteristics of dyslexia definitions that garner the most support and agreement: the neurological etiology and the discrepancy between the child’s reading level and cognitive potential, sometimes referred to as unevenness in development. The latter is particularly important as historically children with dyslexia have often been treated as “slow” or intellectually incapable of typical achievement, which was sometimes used as a defense for ignoring their needs in the classroom.

Many countries have definitions of dyslexia, some of these are official, meaning they are issued from a government office, and others are unofficial, but widely accepted. There are also numerous countries that do not have their own national definitions, but have borrowed them from other countries. This overlapping of official and unofficial definitions and sharing across countries may have increased awareness of the condition, but has done little to clarify the term. In the United States, the influential International Dyslexia Association (IDA) uses the following definition subsequently adopted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), many states, and other countries:

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

(Lyon, Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2003, p. 2)

It is important to note that this IDA definition is not the official definition of the U.S. government as dyslexia is considered to be one example of a specific learning disability (SLD) covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), the educational entitlement legislation that guarantees services for school aged children with disabilities. This category is similar to that of other countries including Australia, Canada, China (Hong Kong) and the United Kingdom that use the term specific learning difficulties of which dyslexia is an example. In the United States this relationship between dyslexia and SLD causes some confusion as parents who have had their children privately tested and diagnosed with dyslexia are astonished when the schools refuse to provide services because the evaluation criteria have not met certain State guidelines (e.g., achievement is not significantly depressed to meet requirements for educational treatment). To further complicate the situation, some school district administrators and teachers who do not understand the relationship of dyslexia to the federal category of specific learning disabilities have been known to counsel parents that their schools do not recognize, diagnose or treat dyslexia. Such misinformation is baffling because dyslexia is named in IDEA as an example of a specific learning disability, but there is widespread ignorance surrounding this point, so much so that the United States Department of Education (Yudin, 2015) recently issued a federal guidance letter to officially inform all public schools that it is appropriate to use the term dyslexia “to describe and address the child’s unique, identified needs through evaluation, eligibility, and IEP (Individualized Education Program) documents.” Further, the federal guidance missive encouraged all “States to review their policies, procedures, and practices to ensure that they do not prohibit the use of the terms dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia in evaluations, eligibility, and IEP documents.” It is too soon to tell what effect that this federal directive will have, but hopefully schools in the United States will be more knowledgeable about dyslexia and more responsive to parents.

The IDA definition of dyslexia emphasizes “deficits in phonological components of language” as the cause of dyslexia, which is common to definitions of other English speaking countries as well as those with alphabetic languages. From this perspective, a dyslexic individual has difficulties reading and spelling because of a lack of capacity to associate spoken sounds with the written, which may account for the preponderance of dyslexia cases. Certainly the decoding theory of dyslexia has had the widest influence, but more current research has taken a broader look at reasons for difficulties with reading and spelling that are not consistent with cognitive abilities (Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs & Barnes, 2007). Reading is a complex process of decoding, fluency and comprehension. Every component also relies on visual processing. Problems of reversing letters and words, missing parts of words or sentences, skipping lines of text or reading from right to left and other visual processing difficulties have a pronounced effect on decoding and fluency, in turn impeding comprehension. Neuro-psychological research supports the effects of certain aspects of visual processing on reading, particularly visual processing speed (Stenneken et al., 2011). Indeed the issue of processing speed has been a prominent finding in dyslexia research for a number of years (Ackerman & Dykman, 1996), but now researchers are starting to ask questions about the specific influence of speed on decoding. For example, how can measures of decoding determine contributions of both speed and accuracy to assess functioning in this area? (Morlini, Stella & Scorza, 2013). Research continues to be divided on the causes of dyslexia and how these explain different problems we see in dyslexic children. It is possible that further investigation will reveal support for particular factors related to reading subtypes, which will have important implications for intervention. However, at present, a more open-minded approach to dyslexia is warranted as it seems improbable that a single deficit in one particular area is an adequate explanation for all cases (Snowling & Hulme, 2012).

A final issue that confounds understanding of dyslexia is the use of synonymous or related terminology with different or similar meanings intended. For example, in the United States, there is some ambiguity between the terms reading disability and dyslexia; however, it is our understanding that in practice the two terms are used synonymously. Siegel (2003), in fact, perceives this to be the case for the entire continent of North America, which seems reasonable based on our experience. As previously mentioned, the term reading difficulties is used similarly to reading disabilities and dyslexia in other countries. In an effort to bring some clarity to this terminology, Elliott and Grigorenko (2014) suggested it would be preferable to use the term reading disability for decoding problems as a straight-forward assessment could confirm such a condition and then other assessments and labels could be assigned for related difficulties (e.g., fluency, accuracy, spelling). While it may be true, as they suggested, that this type of classification would guide intervention, this could just as easily be accomplished by using dyslexia as the overarching label and adding subskill difficulties in the same manner. We agree with Riddick’s (2010) perspective that the term reading disability focuses on the deficit model whereas dyslexia usually has a more positive connotation and can be construed as a learning difference instead of a disability, which seems preferable.

Academic Development and Implications

Early intervention is critical in preventing the effects of dyslexia from increasing as grade level advances. Unfortunately, most of these children are not provided with effective remediation sufficiently early at the intensity and duration required to avoid the deleterious effects of a wide gap between potential and reading level. All too often, children who are reading below level in first grade will remain poor readers with a 90% chance of having reading deficits in high school, usually with reading skills at sixth grade level or lower (Shaywitz et al., 1999). Longitudinal studies across different languages with more consistent orthographies than English have verified that poor reading in first and second grades is predictive of poor reading in eighth grade and beyond (Landerl & Wimmer, 2008; Tressoldi, Stella & Faggella, 2001). Most dyslexia professionals recommend systematic and explicit approaches to teaching language structure with an emphasis on phonics, but there is considerable debate regarding which programs or methods will achieve maximum results. The National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) specified that “systematic phonics programs are significantly more effective than non-phonics programs” (p. 93), but as Torgesen et al. (2001) noted, various programs do not appear to differ in their effectiveness.

The Rose Report (2009) recommended the adoption of the exclusive use of synthetic phonics for dyslexic students in the United Kingdom even though this has caused dissension among some researchers and educators who do not believe that this method is preferable if it excludes text-level reading until phonics are firmly established (Wyse & Goswami, 2008; Wyse & Styles, 2007). The Orton-Gillingham remedial method has achieved wide popularity as a “best-practice” in the remediation of dyslexia in spite of the fact that research provides little support for the effectiveness of this program over others for dyslexic individuals (Ritchey & Goeke, 2007; Turner, 2008; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003). Nevertheless, special education teachers who have experience with Orton-Gillingham and other multisensory phonological approaches such as the Wilson Reading Method (Wilson, 1996) may be able to unlock greater potential to make gains in reading because of their strong commitments to these programs. These multisensory remedial strategies, although developed in the United States, have also been successfully adapted for use with other countries, such as Singapore (Lim & Oei, 2015), and languages, including Arabic (Hazoury, Oweini & Bahous, 2009). To be certain, teachers need to be armed with a variety of teaching methods to address the student’s unique learning style and preferences while strengthening phonological skills (Snowling & Hulme, 2011). Students with deficits in sound symbol association benefit from strengthening phonological skills. Snowling and Hulme (2011) advocate explicit training in phoneme awareness and have reported evidence that phonological approaches, while optimal in early grades, are also effective for adolescents. Lovett, Lacerenza and Borden (2000) provided evidence on the efficacy of the PHAST Decoding Program that incorporates strategies to improve decoding, word identification, fluency and reading comprehension skills, which has been a method found to be effective with both younger children and adolescents. Intensive remediation is also a necessary component to working with adolescents who continue to struggle with reading (Torgesen et al., 2001). Even though research has provided sufficient evidence of the benefits of basic skill instruction in adolescence, these recommendations are routinely ignored as schools continue to operate on the erroneous assumption that assistive technology and accommodations are sufficient for their needs.

Until third or fourth grade, children are learning to read, but after that they are reading to learn. Consequently, a reading deficit may affect virtually all other subject areas including math, where word problems take on greater importance. The bottom line: dyslexic students often lack basic reading skills when they enter high school. Without these skills, they are vulnerable to academic failure, negative outcomes and a less-than-successful transition to the demands of further education, career and other realities of adulthood (Reiff & Ofiesh, 2016). Given that 70% of secondary students with learning disabilities comprehend text below basic levels (Cortiella & Horowitz, 2014), reading skill instruction should continue well beyond elementary school in order to lay the foundation for success in high school and after. However, with the demands of content classes and pressure to meet graduation standards, secondary school teachers usually do not feel they have the time, skills or inclination to incorporate reading instruction into their academic courses. Students with dyslexia will not fare much better in any special education or remedial classes that might be offered as these teachers will likely be providing instruction in compensatory strategies to help students succeed in content courses and devoting scant time to teaching reading (Ofiesh, 2010). Without knowing how to read, write and understand basic math effectively, dyslexic students in high school are at great risk of academic (and social/psychological) failure with a greater probability of dropping out of high school (Cortiella & Horowtiz, 2014; Newman, Wagner, Cameto, Knokey & Shaver, 2010).

Many general and even special educators have a limited understanding of specific approaches for dyslexia, particularly at the secondary level of instruction. Thus, schools that are committed to extending reading instruction to adolescents sometimes turn to assistive technology reading programs that can offer support with the use of software programs that are more cost effective than one to one or small group remediation. Software-based reading programs, such as Mindplay’s Virtual Reading Coach, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s READ 180 and Taylor Associates’ Reading Plus are examples of user-friendly technology programs that can be effective for teachers who do not have in-depth experience with reading intervention programs. An effective approach that general educators can implement is Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) where stronger readers work with weaker students several times per week in the classroom (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2005). In any event, a one-size-fits all approach cannot address the variations of dyslexia (Coyne et al., 2013). Individualized approaches are the bedrock of working with students with special needs. Instruction should address the unique needs of each adolescent and...