Dyslexia-Successful Inclusion in the Secondary School

Lindsay Peer,Gavin Reid

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136628047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Increasingly dyslexia is becoming a whole-school issue. The responsibility for addressing the needs of dyslexic students no longer rests with one individual but is the responsibility of all school staff - subject specialists and school management. This timely book addresses this need by providing specific guidance to secondary school staff on how to support dyslexic students within different subject areas and within the principles and practices of inclusion.

Section 1: Introduction

Chapter 1

Dyslexia and its Manifestations in the Secondary School

Lindsay Peer

This Chapter Aims to:

• describe dyslexia and look at the affects across the curriculum
• discuss recommended policy changes within a framework of Inclusion
• make recommendations for levels of training for providers.

Introduction

The teaching profession is a hard working and caring one, but teachers have to work continually under constraints of time and resources… However we all know that success motivates. A student with unacknowledged learning difficulties will not be successful, so he is unlikely to be motivated to learn. The sooner his difficulties are pinpointed and addressed, the sooner he will be successful and motivated to progress. Instead of diminished self-esteem, with its associated behavioural difficulties, his self-esteem will grow with his achievements. Therefore time spent initially solving those difficulties will lead to less disruptive behaviour, fewer long-term problems for the student and a significant saving in time for the teacher.

And time is at a premium for the secondary school teacher.

(Peer 2000a)

My opinion relating to the position of teachers has not changed since writing the first edition of Winning with Dyslexia some years ago. Having spent many years in secondary schools as a mainstream English and Drama teacher and Head of Department before going into the area of special needs, I am fully aware of the pressures under which mainstream teachers find themselves. The stress of having yet more responsibilities and paperwork placed upon them with every new educational initiative can be frustrating to say the least. Currently we are in a phase of Inclusion’, which means that today more demands than ever are being placed upon teachers. They find themselves in the position of having to possess expertise in a range of areas that previously were not within their remit – and for which in many cases they have no training.

Schools find themselves under the microscope of the media as well as the usual channels of inspection. It is not unusual to hear parents discussing ‘failing schools’; asking whether their children are reaching the ‘expected targets’; discussing league tables’. This is a new world – one in which parents demand to know far more about systems and outcomes than ever before. Many parents are empowered and become involved with the running of the schools.

The special needs debate is ongoing. The Human Rights Act and the Disability Commission are highly significant in a world where equal opportunities are valued. Inclusion’ of those with special needs in any system as a principle, can only work when issues have been recognised, systems put in place and each learner is provided for according to need. Giving the same to all is not appropriate when we look at the broad range of special needs. We need to ensure that what is done differently for an individual means that each is provided with an effective way forward – allowing them to be on a level playing field with peers.

Contentious issues are being raised.

• Possibly due to funding limitations, Statements of Educational Need are being removed: this was seen as a protection for many children with special needs. In principle I would be happy to support this change of direction, provided that resources are put in place and teachers are trained so that SEN children still have their needs met. Parents are very concerned that their children might be placed in a seemingly inclusive situation but without the relevant support. As such, it might be said that in such circumstances, inclusion by definition would mean exclusion. Parents are not willing to accept the excuse that there is insufficient funding to support their children, unfortunately this is still happening in some places.
• There is debate as to whether or not specific children should be placed in mainstream or special schools.
• There is discussion as to whether or not groups of adolescents should be disapplied from specific studies.
• National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies are being introduced into secondary schools. This then begs the question as to who will be responsible for the success of the SEN children across the curriculum?

The issues with which any education system needs to deal are endless.

It is perfectly clear to everyone involved with the education system that there are currently massive changes in the air at every level. However the mainstream teacher working within this current of change has to override the pressures and continue the daily toil, working hard to ensure success for all members of their class every day of the week. This includes those who are dyslexic and those others who experience a range of literacy and/or numeracy difficulties.

What we have not mentioned are the young people themselves – the people for whom these changes have been designed to support. Who are dyslexic learners? How do we recognise them? What are the implications for teaching them?

What is Dyslexia?

There are several descriptions of dyslexia, one of the specific learning difficulties. I find the following useful:

Dyslexia is best described as a combination of abilities and difficulties which affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling, writing and sometimes numeracy. Accompanying weaknesses may be identified in areas of speed of processing, short-term memory, sequencing, auditory and/or visual perception, spoken language and motor skills.

Some children have outstanding creative skills, others have strong oral skills, yet others have no outstanding talents; they all have strengths.

Dyslexia occurs despite normal intellectual ability and conventional teaching; it is independent of socio-economic or language background.

(Peer 2000b)

So what does this mean in practice? It has been estimated that approximately four per cent of any given population are severely affected by dyslexia, with a further six per cent moderately so. We are therefore referring to a population in school of about 300,000 at any one time, this raises issues of consideration of equal opportunities for educators in every institution.

Internationally there is much research and practice that is being carried out in the field of dyslexia and information on any aspect is easily found. From genetics to teaching, from self-esteem to auditory and visual processing, there is information for those who require it. We know from years of experience that dyslexic learners can go on to do extremely well in their chosen careers provided they are understood and appropriately supported. Inclusion in the right circumstances will be of great benefit to them. However very often they are not identified; this as a consequence leads to mishandling and poor outcomes. The hard-working brightest may be told that they ‘should try harder’; the average might be led to believe that they are learners with moderate learning abilities. There is still too much ‘misdiagnosis’ in the system due to a genuine lack of knowledge of the aspects which can identify dyslexia.

The two most obvious groups of dyslexic learners are:

• those with visual and creative ability – but are less proficient orally;
• those who are orally proficient but are less competent with visual, spatial and hand skills.

There are those who have a mixture of the two, but their abilities do not shine as clearly. What is significant is that (a) they are all competent in some areas if given the opportunity to show their ability, but (b) that they all have problems with the processing of language leading to specific weaknesses in aspects of literacy and/or numeracy that will affect the learning process.

We know that some dyslexic students have weaknesses in aspects of the reading process, but all have problems when writing. If the learner exhibits a cluster of the difficulties listed below, it would be worth investigating further. As you can see from the lists, the weaknesses will affect learning across the curriculum. Do bear in mind however, that we are dealing with learners who despite their difficulties may indeed be extremely able and are as frustrated by their struggles as are their teachers! (See Handy Hints Poster for Secondary School Teachers (BDA 2001).) General areas that are affected include:

• processing at speed;
• misunderstanding complicated questions although knowing the answer;
• finding the holding of a list of instructions in memory difficult, although can perform all tasks;
• occasionally, name finding.

The types of problems experienced in reading might be:

• hesitant and laboured reading, especially out loud;
• omitting or adding extra words;
• reading at a reasonable rate, but with a low level of comprehension;
• failure to recognise familiar words;
• missing a line or reading the same line twice;
• losing the place or using a finger or marker to keep the place;
• difficulty in pinpointing the main idea in a passage;
• finding difficulty in the use of dictionaries, directories, encyclopaedias.

The types of problems in written work might be:

• poor standard of written work compared to oral ability;
• poor handwriting with badly formed letters;
• good handwriting but production of work extremely slow;
• badly set out work with spellings crossed out several times;
• words spelled differently in one piece of work;
• has difficulty with punctuation and grammar;
• confusion of upper and lower case letters;
• writing a great deal but loses the thread’;
• writing very little but to the point;
• difficulty taking notes in lessons;
• organisation of work and personal timetable difficult;

The types of problems found in mathematics have actually very little to do with mathematics! They are to do with the same problems that appear in other subjects across the curriculum:

• difficulty remembering tables and formulae;
• finding sequencing difficult;
• confusing signs such as + and X;
• thinking at a high level in mathematics, but needing a calculator to remember basic facts;
• misreading questions that include words;
• confusing directions – left and right;
• finding mental arithmetic at speed very difficult.

As a result of the sheer frustration, perceived misunderstanding on the part of teaching staff and sometimes parents, and often exhaustion from the concentration expended in order to perform adequately in each class, there are sometimes behavioural problems too. It is clearly imperative to find ways of working efficiently with these children in order for all to benefit.

There is a further problem too; that is of dyslexic learners who have a bi- or multilingual background.

Teachers and psychologists have tended to misdiagnose or ignore dyslexia experienced by multilingual students because of the multiplicity of factors that seem to be causes for failure. Reasons cited include home background, different or impoverished language skills, inefficient memory competencies, unusual learning profile, emotional stress, imbalanced speech development, restricted vocabulary in one or all languages, leading to reading, spelling and writing weaknesses; sometimes numeracy is affected. However, educators are often aware that these students are very different from others who experience difficulty, as they are often bright and able orally or visually. The difference between their abilities and the low level of written work is very obvious. There are similar concerns regarding pupils who have specific difficulties while attempting to acquire a modern foreign language.

(Peer and Reid 2000)

There are schools that have many of these children in them and of that group a proportion will be dyslexic. Dyslexia is not limited to those who speak only one language! I was recently talking to the head of a large comprehensive that had over 70 languages spoken in her school. They had never considered dyslexia as an issue for anyone in this group. It is highly significant that there are very few of these multilingual learners nationally who have been identified. It may be because educators and psychologists have little experience with this sub-group of learners or it may be because it has never been considered. In our recent book, Multilingualism, Literacy and Dyslexia: A Challenge for Educators (Peer and Reid 2000), we have dealt with these very issues which so keenly manifest themselves in the secondary school sector where success in public examinations is so critical.

One of the main problems in a large secondary school is just that…the size. There is an unrealistic expectation that the SENCO and the English teacher are the ones responsible for supporting all dyslexic children and others with literacy difficulties! The truth is that even if qualified, there are simply too many students, their teachers and their parents with whom to deal and nowhere near sufficient resources to answer that demand. It is therefore absolutely vital that all teachers should see themselves responsible for supporting and helping develop the dyslexic children in their classes and within their subject frameworks. They need to understand the weaknesses as well as recognise the strengths to see where the problems are likely to lie in their particular part of the curriculum and how best to deal with them. They should then begin to consider ways of adapting that which they are doing, to give access to the dyslexic learner – in an inclusive way. Whether it is the geography teacher who works on sense of direction or the PE teacher who helps develop hand skills and balance. Whether it is the maths teacher reinforcing techniques to replace rote learning of facts or the history teacher finding ways to work with sequencing of time lines and so on. All the skills and strategies automatically will transfer from one class to another, allow...