Durham Uni expert calls for 'urgent help' as children struggle to learn to read
A professor says a re-think is needed
A Durham University professor says an undue focus on diagnosing dyslexia is leaving many children without the help they urgently need.
Julian Elliott and Elena Grigorenko, from the University of Houston in the USA, are calling for educators, psychologists and policy makers to rethink approaches to assessment and support for children who are struggling to learn to read.
In a new book, they argue that the clinical diagnosis of dyslexia is not only scientifically questionable, current procedures are failing to serve the needs of many struggling readers, particularly those from economically disadvantaged schools and communities.
They say that the primary focus should be on ensuring that all struggling readers receive support and intervention as early as possible. To achieve this goal, a dyslexia diagnosis is not helpful and should not be required.
Instead, Professors Elliott and Grigorenko suggest that all primary school teachers should have adequate training to confidently identify, and intervene with, children who are struggling to read. Where initial class teacher interventions prove to be insufficient, systems need to be in place to rapidly provide additional educational support.
Their calls underpin a set of recommendations in a landmark new book, The Dyslexia Debate Revisited published by Cambridge University Press.
The book analyses the most commonly employed approaches to dyslexia assessment and diagnosis and shows how these typically lack meaningful criteria, have little conceptual coherence or consensus, and fail to demonstrate scientific rigour.
Their recommendations include:
• Policy makers and educators must ensure that intervention strategies are in place to help all struggling readers from as early an age as possible. A clinical diagnosis of dyslexia excludes many other struggling learners from consideration and should not be required for a child to receive help.
• Greater recognition and understanding are needed that the recommended interventions for struggling readers are typically the same whether or not they are diagnosed as dyslexic.
• Currently, there is no clear, scientifically valid, and widely agreed means of differentiating dyslexia from any other form of reading difficulty. The term dyslexia can be employed to describe a severe and persistent difficulty with reading but, if used, this term should refer to any struggling reader.
• Use of the term ‘dyslexia’ should be understood as describing an educational difficulty not a medical condition/diagnosis.
The book undertakes a detailed study of contemporary research into the nature of reading difficulty and its assessment and treatment. The authors’ analysis of these issues serves as the basis for their recommendations.
Book author, Julian Elliott, Professor of Educational Psychology, at Durham University, who was previously a teacher of children with learning difficulties and a local authority educational psychologist, said: “We desperately need to reform education policy and practice around the assessment and support of all children who experience difficulty with reading. Currently, too many children are being left behind.
“As our research demonstrates, a formal diagnosis of dyslexia, typically based upon a range of clinical tests, is not only scientifically questionable, but it also has no meaningful relevance to the interventions and strategies needed to help struggling readers.
“We need to stop formally diagnosing and labelling a relatively small proportion of poor readers as dyslexic and, instead, focus upon identifying and intervening with all children who struggle with reading.
“The current system is leaving swathes of children struggling, particularly those in economically disadvantaged schools and communities. This is surely wrong.”
By removing the diagnostic imperative, educational psychologists and other assessors of reading difficulty, would be freed to redirect their energies to supporting and guiding educational intervention and support at home and at school.
The book draws on decades of experience on the part of both authors, as mainstream and special education teachers, teacher trainers, educational and clinical psychologists, and as university teachers and researchers.
Their academic and professional expertise spans the fields of genetics, neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, education, and social policy.
Dr Joanna Stanbridge, Senior Educational Psychologist at Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “Thanks to the robustness and rigour of Professor Elliott’s work, the dyslexia debate has significantly moved on.
“As practising Educational Psychologists, Professor Elliott’s work has been integral to our determination and success in developing equitable and effective systemic frameworks to support children and young people’s literacy difficulties at a whole county level.
“We are no longer caught up in questions about who does and doesn’t ‘have dyslexia’, but rather are focussed on much more important issues of who is struggling with literacy and, crucially, what can we do about it.”