LDA Seminar, August 2007
Supporting Students with Learning Difficulties: Trends and Issues
Camberwell Centre, Melbourne, 18 August 2007
An LDA Seminar on the topic Supporting Students with Learning Difficulties: Trends and Issues was held on Saturday 18 August at the Camberwell Centre in Melbourne. The seminar focused on trends and issues relating to the teaching of students with learning difficulties, with a particular emphasis on the scientific evidence relating to effective instructional practices. The Seminar was introduced by Professor Kevin Wheldall, President of LDA, and speakers included Professor Max Coltheart, Director of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Professor John Sweller, Emeritus Professor at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Professor Margot Prior, of the University of Melbourne, and Dr Jo Jenkinson, formerly a Consultant at ACER and Senior Lecturer at Deakin University. The papers provided an interesting and informative overview of current issues and debates relating to effective teaching, particularly for students with learning and reading difficulties, and generated some lively discussions following each presentation, as well as in the panel discussion at the end of the Seminar.
A DVD of the Seminar was mailed to all members of LDA at the end of last year (December 2007). Copies of the DVD are now available for sale at $50. For copies of the DVD, contact our Administration Officer, Kerrie McMahon, at ldaquery@bigpond.net.au
Abstracts of Papers:
Abstracts of each of the papers presented at the Seminar are provided below:
Dr Jo Jenkinson
Formerly Consultant at ACER and Senior Lecturer at Deakin University
Reading, Resources and Remedies: A History of Learning Difficulties Australia
Learning Difficulties Australia, formerly the Australian Remedial Education Association, began life more than 40 years ago as the Diagnostic and Remedial Teachers Association of Victoria. Since its inception as a body of educators and other professionals dedicated to the support of students with learning difficulties, the association has been active in disseminating information on research and practice relating to the field of learning difficulties, and in providing professional support for teachers and other professionals working with students with learning difficulties. It has established a referral service for qualified remedial consultants, published some 130 issues of an internationally recognised journal, made submissions to government enquiries and to tertiary institutions, organised workshops and seminars for teachers, and established relationships with other professional bodies concerned with learning difficulties. This paper relates the history of the association in the context of changes in education, in models for supporting students with disabilities, and in methods favoured for the teaching of reading.
Professor John Sweller
Emeritus Professor at the School of Education, University of New South Wales
The evolution of human cognitive architecture and its instructional implications for students with learning difficulties.
For several decades, educational psychology has been dominated by the view that direct explicit instruction is inferior to various combinations of discovery learning or ‘immersion’ in the procedures of a discipline. This view is plausible on the grounds that the bulk of what we learn outside of educational institutions is learned either by discovery or immersion. It is a view that is sufficiently attractive to be impervious to the near total lack of supporting evidence for the superiority of discovery or 'immersion' learning as opposed to direct instruction in the teaching of specific discipline knowledge as required in an educational context. This paper will outline a theory, cognitive load theory, which distinguishes two types of learning: biologically primary knowledge, which is not learned consciously because we have evolved to acquire that knowledge easily and automatically, and biologically secondary knowledge, which requires conscious effort and must be explicitly taught. Educational recommendations cannot assume that procedures that work for biologically primary information will work for biologically secondary information.
Professor Max Coltheart
Director of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science
Learning to Read: The scientific evidence and implications for instruction
Scientific understanding of the very early stages of learning to read (and of why some children struggle here, and of what can be done to help them) has been steadily accumulating since the mid 1960s. In this talk I will summarise this research in relation to a particular model of visual word recognition and reading aloud and show how that model is useful for thinking about children's reading difficulties, their assessment, and their treatment.
Professor Margot Prior
University of Melbourne
Implementing the recommendations of the Nelson Report: Implications
for teaching and for teacher training.
Reviews and words on paper are important but if they are not followed by action to produce change for the better, they are worthless. What kind of action is required following on from the review and recommendations? Action must include a thorough overhaul of teacher training systems in the universities and colleges, which is the responsibility of the teacher training and certifying agencies; and will involve an injection of the latest scholarship into the teacher training degrees, related to the evidence about how reading develops and is effectively fostered in young children. Intensive professional development and training for teachers who are working in the system already, along with close monitoring of children’s progress will be essential. Effective raising of awareness in parents and families in the community of the importance of preparing their children for success in reading must be energetically pursued. A change in pre-school education and philosophies, and in training of pre-school teachers, is also of critical importance so that pre-reading skills are part of what children learn at kindergarten before they begin school and so that teachers are competent to instil pre-reading skills, thus enhancing their school readiness and success in learning in those critical early years.'