Child-Centered Approaches in Educating the Learning Disabled

Introduction

Some 10 million American students are afflicted by learning disabilities, one out of every five children in the United States. According to G. Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, approximately "70-80% of the population will respond to most any type of teaching method, but the other 20-30% need explicit instruction." He further contends that poor teaching may actually cause some children to become disabled (Diegmueller, 1996).

To some extent, this assertion probably lays some unfair blame on America's corps of teachers. However, Reid's statement implies that the situation of students with learning disabilities could be significantly improved if we 'individualized' learning for this 20-30% of children who fail to respond to 'conventional' teaching approaches. One approach to teaching, namely "child-centered" education, has a profound impact on the way that "slow," or disabled children learn. This section of the "Child-Centered Page" focuses on the relationship between this child-centered philosophy of the Progressives and the teaching of students with learning disabilities.

Over the past decade, conventional wisdom has increasingly supported as best practice, the goal of "providing early intervention to children with disabilities in an 'inclusive' or 'integrated' environment designed to meet the needs of ALL children (Diamond, 1994). However, this recent educational trend towards 'mainstreaming' American schools has provoked much debate within educational circles. Providing more individualized education for students with special needs began to invite the question, "what is the expense of mainstreaming on the average, or 'normal,' child's learning? Or conversely, "are there ways in which ALL students can benefit from more individualized or child-centered teaching approaches?" Because more child-centered, and individualized, approaches have become common practice in the teaching of exceptional children (both gifted and disabled), we can further examine how child-centered approaches may or may not inherently address the individual needs of ALL school children.

Assessing Disabilities
The IEP (Individual Education Plan)
Problems Incurred in 'Regular' Classrooms
What is Mainstreaming?
Child-Centered Approaches to the Learning Disabled
Specific Schools for Learning Disabled

Assessing Disabilities

How is a child determined to be 'learning disabled'?

Diagnosing the presence of learning disabilities within children has always been, and still is, a very vague and difficult process. The actual term, "learning disability," was offered by Samuel Kirk in 1963 "as an umbrella concept that encompassed diverse types of disorders that impaired learning," replacing such existing terms as "brain injured," "neurologically impaired," and "perceptually handicapped," to name a few (French, Ellsworth, and Amoruso, 1995).

Initially, learning disabilities (those not directly related to a physical disability) usually appear when a child first learns to read. Problems with reading (and subsequent difficulties in mastering academic subjects in which reading is the foundation), is usually the first indicator of a possible learning disability.
Another component in assessing disabilities is federal legislation. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142), enacted in 1975 and amended in 1990 to be designated as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, defines specific learning disabilities this way:
- "a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, or mental retardation, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage" (Gellman, 1995).

In other words, the identification of learning disabilities not related to mental retardation, deafness, blindness, speech impairments, autism, and other similarly obvious disabilities, is much less clear cut.

The widely agreed upon primary indicator of a learning disability is, "the demonstration...of a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability" (French, Ellsworth, and Amoruso, 1995). Children who perform significantly better on aptitude tests than they do on achievement tests in school subjects, may suffer from a learning disability. In comparison, an educable mentally retarded student would likely demonstrate a consistent inadequacy on both aptitude and achievement tests (Gellman, 1995).
Children who are suspected to have learning disabilities are given a set of individualized scholastic aptitude tests and achievement tests; the larger the discrepancy between the performance on these two tests, the greater chance a learning disability exists.
After the presence of a learning disability is uncovered, children then undergo further individualized tests which are better suited in determining certain types of learning disabilities. One such test is the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, which "not only provides an overall measure of (a child's) scholastic aptitude but also includes subscales that are particularly useful in identifying specific learning disabilities" (Gellman, 1995).
These tests and evaluations are usually carried out by specialists within the child's public school system, especially after a child reaches the age of three. The evaluations generally include medical, psychological, speech and language, fine motor, gross motor, and social assessments. The evaluation results all factor into the subsequent creation of an individual education plan, or IEP (Blenk and Fine, 1995).

The IEP (Individual Education Plan)

A distinct characteristic of "child-centered" education is manifested in the Individual Education Plans (IEP's), which are currently designed to meet the individual learning needs of special-needs students only. The IEP is "an educational process document which...states the strengths and needs of an individual student, and highlights specific goals and objectives for the student's upcoming academic year" (Blenk and Fine, 1995).

The benefits of an IEP for students with disabilities are fairly obvious. IEPÕs enable these students to focus on key areas of their education which present them difficulty. Furthermore, the documents outline specific individual goals, and the attainment of these goals can be more easily measured at the close of the academic year.

On the other hand, educator Katie Blenk pinpoints some specific flaws in the IEPÕs which deserve some mention here. She mentions that:

IEP planning teams often excludes the people who ultimately implement the plan: the child's own teachers.
In an inclusive context (where the teacher may not be extensively trained in special needs education), does the receiving teacher understand it? Can he or she implement it without some sustained staff support? (See Disabilites Group)
Many times, the IEP isn't even looked at all year long until the next year's IEP needs to be created.

Problems in 'Regular' Classrooms

One of the biggest hurdles in educating students with special needs, especially within the public school system, lies in the development of decisions about the way children's needs should be addressed. Inherently, much larger schools, and school systems, must achieve a level of uniformity if they are to effectively execute their educational function. The traditional goal of "uniformity" naturally comes into conflict with the concept of an "individualized education," and therefore, often poses more problems for public school administrators and teachers who must keep the more common 'normal' child in mind, first and foremost.

The intricate construction of public school bureaucracies further complicates the entire concept of "individualizing" education for any student, let alone every student. A recurring comment made about 'specialized' schools by public school educators is, "you people can do it that way...you're private - you make all the decisions. We can't do it - it's the nature of a public school" (Blenk and Fine, 1995).

Within the 'regular' classroom of a public school, students with special needs run into a variety of problems:

inadequate individual attention because of large student-to-teacher ratios
teacher's ill-preparedness in dealing with educational needs of "special" children
stigmatization by peers of students who are "different" from the norm
low-priority on 'alternative,' or cutting-edge styles of teaching which might benefit children who learn in slightly different ways from the norm

These represent just a few of the problems that learning disabled students frequently confront in the 'regular' school classroom. Subsequently, students who function apart from 'normal' educational development are often left behind, and oftentimes, never given the chance to reach their full learning potential.

What is Mainstreaming?

The terms "mainstreaming," "inclusion," and "integration," are often used to describe the same educational goal of placing handicapped/learning disabled students into regular school classes. However, educator Katie Blenk suggests that each of these terms actually have their own specific meanings. Her book, Making School Inclusion Work, defines "mainstreaming" as "a process by which a child with special needs is invited to participate in one or more components of a typical school day, i.e., gym, lunch, or selected academic subjects." This has an entirely different meaning for the goals of a school when compared with her definition of "inclusion" - "a process by which the total participation of every child in a classroom is valued and reflected in physical, social, and academic arrangements which ensure inclusion in all aspects of the program (Blenk and Fine, 1995).

By her definition, mainstreaming is not as educationally ambitious as it may first appear to be. If special needs children are only 'included' in certain school settings such as gym or lunch, then there is less of a strain on the host school system to completely overhaul its approach to teaching. In other words, mainstreaming could be a more feasible way to individualize education, especially in public schools, than complete inclusion. According to Katie BlenkÕs definition, an emphasis on complete inclusion would likely burden the existing American school system and its traditional goal of uniformity more than mainstreaming. Inclusion as a universal goal would require much more money to implement and would require teacher training to be more rigorous, in the sense that teachers would be responsible for knowing how to teach to ALL children. This is not to say that the costs of inclusion outweigh its benefits; this is an issue that American educators must consider in their drive to reform our schools.

For further information and clarification about mainstreaming, including the pros and cons of instituting this practice into our public school system, see the group on Disabilities.

Child-Centered Approaches to the Learning Disabled

Most of the learning disabilities which afflict nearly 10 million American children are reading impairments. The question that subsequently arises out of this fact is, "can certain reading impairments be avoided by applying different teaching styles?" A couple of decades ago, many teachers were advocating whole language instruction in the subject of reading. This approach, very child-centered in its orientation, theorized that children learn to read in the same manner as they learn to speak - naturally. Therefore, whole language instruction aimed to surround children with real literature, hoping that the skill of reading would soak in as naturally as learning to speak the English language. Unfortunately, many children who received this whole language instruction began to develop certain deficiencies in their reading skills, namely ignorance of phonics, or basic skills instruction.

This lack of basic skill instruction has, according to educational researcher E.D. Hirsch, contributed to the declining state of the American educational system and the subsequent inferiority of its students in comparison to their international peers. In his recent book, The Schools We Need, Hirsch writes that, "our K-12 education is among the least effective in the developed world...its controlling theories, curricular incoherencies, and what I call its Ònaturalistic fallaciesÓ are positive barriers to a good education." Hirsch does not dismiss the importance of ÔindividualizedÕ education, even asserting that "unquestionably, differences in temperament and ability make individualized, one-on-one tutorials the most effective mode of teaching known." However, he explains that a paradox exists wherein more 'individualized' attention for some inherently means 'individual neglect' for others. E.D Hirsch champions a more traditional lockstep system of schooling, with a higher priority on 'rigor' than flexibility.

Contemporary teaching wisdom now espouses a more middle of the road approach to reading known as "balanced" instruction, in which both phonics and whole language instruction are taught. However, what educators can learn from this example is that complete child-centered approaches do not necessarily lead to the best results every time. Although more individualized, and seemingly more conducive to student differences, child-centered approaches can sometimes ignore important subject-centered needs.

Specific Schools for Learning Disabled Students

The Maplebrook School:

One school in which IEP's are used solely in the teaching of "youngsters with learning differences and attention deficit disorder (ADD) is the Maplebrook School of Amenia, New York. The Maplebrook School strives to provide high quality education for children and adolescents who may be considered "slow," or who show clear learning differences when compared to the "norm." Along with the Individualized Learning Plans, Maplebrook has instituted tutorial programs (both individual and small-group), and also emphasizes small class sizes (typically 4-10 students per class). These attributes help set the private Maplebrook School apart from the way in which "slow" or disabled children typically receive an education at the public level. Public school educators are less hands-on and the class sizes are frequently much larger (typically 20-30 students), making individual attention less available. Child-centered education through greater individual attention is the key to the Maplebrook School.

Kids Are People School (Boston, MA):

"Because we feel that every child, at one time or another, could potentially be defined as a child with special needs, it is our belief that education should not be divided into normal vs. special needs programming, either in conducting programs or in staff training" (Blenk and Fine, 1995). This quote accurately sums up the purpose and direction of this "all inclusive" educational program located in the heart of Boston. The Kids Are People School epitomizes the concept of child-centered education by treating every child equally under the general, yet meaningful three-fold philosophy:

that children are safe
that children are happy
that the children are growing, developing, and learning

The children who attend this school run the gamut of diversity in terms of "normal child development." Some children would likely be classified as normally developed, some have learning disabilities, and still others "can barely move a hand to communicate." As a result, individualized attention (including much more specialized attention than required at the milder-disability Maplebrook School) forms the cornerstone of this "inclusive" school.

Curative Schools:

Another set of schools which focus on the teaching of disabled students only, are known as Curative Schools. The principles of Curative Education are directly derived from the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, and are directly related to his Waldorf style of teaching. The Curative approach to teaching attempts to recognize, and expose the positive attributes and capabilities of the disabled. "The focus is a mutual effort to reach an imaginative, even intuitive awareness of the significance of individuals who are handicapped and to affirm their task in life-and that of those around them" (House of Peace...Curative Counseling Page). Although the child-centered philosophy exhibited in the Waldorf Schools aims to incorporate all children together, regardless of ability, the Curative School is an approach specially designed for the teaching of children with learning disabilities.

Government 375: Educational Reform and Ideology