Identifying Specific Learning Difficulties - Essay Example

Discuss the different approaches to assessment and consider what is most appropriate for identifying specific learning difficulties. Introduction TheSpecial Educational Needs Code of Practice (DfES, 2001a) refers to specific learning difficulties in a section considering 'cognition and learning'. The section also refers to other learning difficulties such as moderate, severe and profound that affect a child more generally and are not therefore specific learning difficulties. The Code states: Children who demonstrate features of moderate, severe or profound learning difficulties or specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia or dyspraxia, require specific programmes to aid progress in cognition and learning. Such requirements may also apply to some extent to children with physical and sensory impairments and those on the autistic spectrum. Some of these children may have associated sensory, physical and behavioural difficulties that compound their needs. (Chapter 7: section 58) This calls for the need of definition of these conditions that affect cognition and effect the ease of learning. In this assignment, the different approaches of assessments needed for these conditions will be examined and discussed so as to arrive at the most appropriate assessment strategy to identify specific learning difficulties. Although there are various learning difficulties recognised, the focus in this assignment will be on dyslexia. Definitions Reading is a very complex skill and for this reason it is not surprising to find that some children encounter difficulties in learning to read. There are several identified categories of learning difficulties. These are dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, irrespective of the categories or classes, the students with any of these specific learning difficulties will require specific learning programmes designed for them since its has been observed that despite receiving an individualised programme and/or concentrated support, such children continue to make minimal to no progress in specific areas of their difficulties over a long period of time. The Special Educational Needs Code of Practice (DfEs, 2003) further clarifies that Pupils with specific learning difficulties have a particular difficulty in learning to read, write and spell or manipulate numbers so that their performance in these areas is below their performance in other areas. Pupils may also have problems with short-term memory, with organisational skills and with coordination. Pupils with specific learning difficulties cover the whole ability range and the severity of their impairment varies widely. (DfES, 2003, p. 3). However, despite this definition, the students are considered to have learning difficulties if these are 'significant and persistent, despite appropriate learning opportunities and if additional educational provision is being made to help them to access the curriculum' (DfES, 2003, p. 3). Dyslexia has been defined as marked and persistent difficulty in learning characterized by problems in reading, writing, and spelling in spite of the student being able to demonstrate progress in other areas of learning. The word 'dyslexia' actually translates as 'difficulty with words'. More than a century ago, a school medical officer in England, W.P. Morgan, first described what he called a case of 'word-blindness' (cited in Doris 1998, p. 4). In the words of Shapiro (1998, p. 22) "one of the fundamental precepts of dyslexia is that affected children learn differently from children whose reading difficulty derives from low intellect." The term dyslexia is currently applied to a severe and chronic form of reading difficulty found in children of normal intelligence, even sometimes of high intelligence. These students have difficulty in learning to read, write, and spell despite being in a supporting home and teaching environment. These pupils do not demonstrate any overt or obvious reasons for their difficulties including deficits in sensory pursuits or intellect. Despite the vast amount of research data, it has been stated that, 'the cause of dyslexia is unknown; however, it is believed to be a combination of physiological, neurological and genetic factors' (Connel 1999, p. 10). British Psychological Society (1999) defined dyslexia as 'Dyslexia is evident when accurate and fluent word reading and/or spelling develops very incompletely or with great difficulty' (p. 18). With this, it must be added that this occurs despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence and socio-cultural opportunity. It depends on fundamental cognitive disabilities, which are frequently constitutional in origin. Some authors have suggested that this persistent disturbance occurs due actually a difficulty "in the coding of written language which has as its cause a deficit in the phonological system" (Hien and Lundberg, 2000, p. 9). Defining dyspraxia is difficult because there are a number of prevalent definitions. The term 'dyspraxia' is a Greek word meaning difficulty ('dys') with doing or acting ('praxia'). It is now considered as a disorder resulting from disorganisation of motor co-ordination. It has been variously defined as an impairment or immaturity of the organisation of movement; resultant of affect in the organisation of thoughts and perceptions sometimes associated with disorganisation of language. These difficulties are not due to global learning difficulties, but are specific with most people with dyspraxia demonstrating average intelligence. In all these pupils, there are no medically evident neurological signs. Unlike dyslexia, dyspraxia is poorly acknowledged, and yet as a condition it may well hinder and inhibit a child's educational and social progress since it involves all those aspects of functioning which are described as relating to 'doing'. Dixon and Addy (2004) has defined dyspraxia as "recognised by a marked impairment in gross and fine motor organisation. which may or may not influence articulation and speech but which are influenced by poor perceptual regulation. These difficulties present as an inability to plan and organise purposeful movement' (Dixon and Addy, 2004, p. 9). As indicated by them, these children have difficulty responding and acting in a timely manner in response to spoken instructions, when seeing a task demonstrated or when interpreting a sensory stimuli, despite knowing how to undertake these activities and due to having difficulty organising them in sequential series of activities. Dyscalculia is a specific learning difficulty characterised by problems in understanding and learning mathematics. This problem is not associated with general learning difficulties such as moderate, severe or profound learning difficulties. DfEs (2001c) defines this as Dyscalculia is a condition that affects the ability to acquire mathematical skills. Dyscalculic learners may have difficulty understanding simple number concepts, lack an intuitive grasp of numbers, and have problems with learning number facts and procedures. Even if they produce the correct answer or use the correct method, they may do so mechanically and without confidence (DfES, 2001c). The characteristic difficulties of dyscalculia are difficulties performing simple calculations, difficulty responding to mathematical information, problems in numerical substitution, difficulty inverting, reversing, or misaligning symbols, and problems with correct naming, reading, or writing mathematical symbols. Many children with dyslexia may have associated ADHD. This condition is characterised by inattention or poor concentration, impulsivity, and hyperactivity indicated by restlessness. By definition, these symptoms must be present for at least 6 months being evident from early childhood. To make these diagnostic criteria foolproof, there must be absence of any other significant disorder. Jenny Lyons, Specialist AD/HD Educational Psychologist writes that 'hyperactivity and impulsiveness diminish but attention problems continue. Around two thirds of children with this condition will do less well than their peers, experiencing social, vocational and relationship problems' (PATOSS Bulletin, May 2003). Research has demonstrated that there is a genetic disposition to such disorders. These disorders have been found to be exacerbated by stress or by a traumatic experience in early childhood. Either of these might explain an inability to concentrate, to relate to peer group, to accept authority and generally be considered 'impossible'. Assessment When a child is having difficulties learning to read it is essential to find out as much as possible about the child's abilities and difficulties in order to provide well-targeted assistance. This can be accomplished through assessment, and assessment is necessary to derive valid diagnostic information so teaching methods and curriculum can be tailored in order to increase the possibilities for more successful learning. However, many authorities have defined assessment in different manners. Thomson has mentioned three major functions of assessment as follows 1. To come to some kind of diagnosis, that is, to determine whether the child has a dyslexic problem or not and what are the strengths and weaknesses to delineate specific difficulties, such as, auditory memory or visual perception. 2. 'The implication here is that within the category of being dyslexic, there will be greater or lesser degrees of specific learning situation. A child might have a complete inability to learn grapheme/phoneme correspondences or may have more subtle difficulties in learning more complex spelling patterns.' 3. To plan remediation, having identified the particular learning difficulty. The aim is to describe the consequent teaching programmes, where to start, which techniques and strategies. Assessments that attempt to look at separate aspects of reading ability, such as basic sight vocabulary, phonic knowledge, sound-blending ability, decoding and comprehension have been criticised by many reading educators. They regard such testing of specific skills in isolation as artificial and undesirable and argue most strongly against the use of standardised, norm-referenced tests in the assessment of reading ability. Instead, it has been advocated that reading abilities should be evaluated more holistically, using mainly observations of a reader engaged in authentic interactions with the print. Tansley and Panckhurst (1982) proceeded a little further to suggest that assessment must be functional in order to identify what is getting in the way of learning and must be descriptive so as to be able to identify what can be done to farther learning. It is also believed that assessing component skills of reading in children with learning difficulties can yield a great deal of very valuable and accurate information about their specific strengths and weaknesses, since it is important to know the child's full range of skills and strategies. Tyson (1970), however, argues that assessment should have two approaches, classification testing and diagnostic testing. Primary testing mainly looks into actual behaviour and secondary testing involves assessment of perceptual deficits, motor or memory. However, many authors have recommended that judicious use of standardised assessment in a framework is necessary to assess a child's progress with interventions, more so in order to be able to guide additional support and resources. The assessment should always be a sufficiently full one to produce an answer to the problem posed. There are currently hundreds, if not thousands, of tests, scales, screening devices, profiles and questionnaires designed to gather information about children's skills, abilities, aptitudes, strengths, weaknesses, deficiencies, intelligence, and perception. Obviously, a common-sense approach is required. Provided that the assessment of the child is full enough to answer the basic question and so address the difficulty giving rise to concern, then the assessment should be regarded as a full one. It means there are different perspectives held by researchers and practitioners, and these concepts need to be reconciled and converted to practice. These would also attempt to satisfy the demands of legislation, policy makers, school management, teachers, psychologists, parents and, above all, must support all pupils to engage in learning within educational settings and outside. Therefore, they must be assessed in ways that determine the nature of the difficulties they face in literacy development. The usual methods of assessment are both ongoing informal assessment which allows the teacher to plan strategies for support and a formal assessment, which is most often used for profiling. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The purposes for assessment in reading include diagnosing particular areas of strength and weakness, using the information for decisions about instruction, measuring the child's progress over a period of time, comparing the child's progress to that of his peers, and for screening the children for special assistance. The information about the child can be available through observation, working individually with the child, using diagnostic procedures, and applying formal and informal testing. This indicates that assessment is needed to pinpoint the child's level of performance, explain lack of progress, identify strengths and difficulties, and reveal the preferred learning styles. Any assessment is always used mainly for the purpose of formulating the future teaching plans, but it must be borne in mind that assessment is a complex process that needs to be undertaken with care so it does not cause any stress or anxiety in the patient's mind. Formal and standardised assessment provides a score that can be compared to a norm. The educational psychologist has the general aim of investigating the child and carrying out assessment of sufficient depth to diagnose why the child has the difficulties described. The educational psychologist's assessment considers a number of sources, the school, parents, and the child. The assessment information is available from written records and interviews, and the psychologist may assess by observing, interviewing, and carrying out standardised tests. One approach is psychometric, where the assessment involves test items which have been developed to place the children in the context of their chronological and developmental age such as intelligence, reading, or memory skills. These contrast with a more informal appraisal based on task analysis. This observes the child's current reading, writing and spelling, and behaviour and relates it to a teaching programme. It may be known as criterion orientated testing as opposed to the normative testing of the psychometric approach. Regarding the statutory assessment of SEN, when an LEA is deciding whether to carry out an assessment, it should 'seek evidence of any identifiable factors that could impact on learning outcomes including . . . clear, recorded evidence of clumsiness; significant difficulties of sequencing or visual perception; deficiencies in working memory; or significant delays in language functioning.' A discrepancy view defines reading impairment in terms of a discrepancy between a child's actual reading score and the reading score that would be predicted on the basis of chronological age or IQ. Normally, discrepancy scores are defined as the difference between the score on a specified reading test and the score predicted from the regression of reading performance on a measure of IQ, and hence a discrepancy of a specified value is taken to be a measure of underachievement in reading. An appropriate assessment will pose to answer the enquiry about expected reading and an enquiry about actual reading. Therefore, the child's age and level of intelligence are important parameters. All other things remaining equal, the child's reading age should be equal to the chronological age, and indeed one of the greatest influences on his reading ability will be intelligence level. The answer to the first question is thus provided by the administration of a suitable intelligence scale. This is usually done by administration of a scale that elicits information on an overall full-scale IQ, the verbal or performance IQ, an individual verbal subset scaled scores to see the range displayed and the pattern exhibited. These will usually lead to the level at which the child is expected to be reading. In the cognitive and classroom areas, there has been considerable activity in the study of phonological awareness in relation to dyslexia. This is reflected in the development of assessment and teaching materials such as the phonological abilities test and many other tests. Phonetics, prosody, such as volume and patterns of intonation, and phonology are interrelated aspects of speech. Phonology has to do with the 'meaningful contrast of speech sounds.' When a child's speech difficulty concerns phonology there is a difficulty in relating speech sounds to changes in meaning. Phonological knowledge enables the speaker to understand that, when a speech sound is changed in a word, meaning changes. The phonological system is considered to lay down a sort of phonological representation of the speech sound sequence at a 'cognitive level of language functioning' (Martin, 2000, p. 14), which helps the process to be automatic. The phonological deficit theory maintains that in dyslexia the main cognitive deficit is in a person's ability to represent or recall speech sounds or phonemes, that is, there is a problem with phonological representations. This phonological deficit leads to the poor mental mapping of letters of the alphabet to phonemes. Both the phonological deficit and the poor letter-phoneme mapping operate at the cognitive level but have implications at the behavioural level, where both lead to difficulties with phonological tasks such as splitting words into their phonemes. Also, poor letter-phoneme mapping relates to reading difficulties. Some of the studies which highlight these factors include Hagtvet's (1997) Norwegian study, which showed that a phonological deficit at age 6 was the strongest predictor of reading difficulties. Other studies, such as Hulme's (Snowling and Nation 1997), have shown speech rate to be a strong predictor of dyslexic difficulties and this is reflected in the development of the phonological abilities test (Muter et al. 1997). It must be remembered, however, that formal, standardized assessment only gives a picture of a child on one particular day and that there are many reasons why that child may have under-performed. It is also very important that summative assessments which produce 'a result' are supplemented by formative or diagnostic ones which concentrate on the process of learning. These show how the children have developed the knowledge, skills and understandings that they have acquired. A reading assessment such as a miscue analysis, where the teacher identifies the exact nature of the children's mistakes as the activity progresses, can highlight specific areas where further support or overlearning may be required. Spelling difficulties invariably accompany reading difficulties and indeed it would be unusual if this were not so. A spelling test will establish a spelling age, and examination of the types of errors the child makes when attempting to spell words too difficult for him can yield useful clues to his difficulties. Another of the strengths of the dyslexia screening tests is that the specific subtests are all rooted in current and established research findings and are sufficiently comprehensive to incorporate a wide variety of elements from the research. The scoring system has been developed in a manner which can provide an 'at-risk quotient' and the profile can be clearly indicated so that the strengths and weaknesses can be clearly identified. In addition, because the subtests also include phonological tests one can note the extent to which the phonological area is presenting the most difficulty, or whether the scores indicate a typical dyslexic profile of problems in phonology, speed and motor skills. These factors can provide pointers for intervention. Fawcett suggests that an at-risk quotient of 0.9 or more can indicate that the child is 'at risk of dyslexia' and most certainly would be regarded as a candidate for extra and appropriate support in relation to the code of practice. The important question arises of whether a pupil could be considered to have dyslexia if he is performing at a level equal to that of children of the same age but on the basis of IQ predictions would normally be expected to be doing even better. In this context, Pollack et al (2004) state 'A match in reading age and chronological age does not necessarily rule out a reading problem. A bright child should be capable of scoring a reading age even two years ahead of the standardised average of his chronological age. The criterion to be looked at should always be the discrepancy between performance and the potential to satisfy his intellectual needs.' Conclusion Dykman and Ackerman (1992) take a view more in line with modern day thinking, 'Regression formulas are well and good if the purpose is to identify all students who are underachievers. But it defies common sense to diagnose the child with an IQ 130 and a reading standard score of 110 as having dyslexia. Certainly the public school system should not be expected to offer special services to such a child.' They go on to state that a pupil defined in the discrepancy way would not be considered to have a specific learning difficulty as understood in the PLASC guidance (DfES, 2003). This is because the guidance allows pupils to be recorded as having specific learning difficulties only if their difficulties are 'significant and persistent, despite having learning opportunities.' In conclusion, it can be stated that in many ways we might argue that good practice in addressing the needs of dyslexic pupils is good practice in teaching every student. Schools are required to have structures and processes in place to ensure that individual students' difficulties in learning are identified, assessed and met. There are times when every individual student may benefit from individual attention. However, offering appropriate support assumes a willingness to get to know students as individuals with their own idiosyncrasies. All of these assessment approaches have their place in assessment of a suspected dyslexic child; however, these approaches together can provide background information that may be invaluable in designing a teaching programme for an individual child. 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