Focus on diagnosing dyslexia is failing struggling readers, experts warn

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An undue focus on diagnosing dyslexia is leaving many children without the help they urgently need, according to two leading educational and clinical psychologists.

The experts 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, Professors Julian Elliott (Durham University, UK) and Elena Grigorenko (University of Houston, USA) argue that the clinical diagnosis of dyslexia is not only scientifically questionable, but current procedures are failing to serve the needs of many struggling readers, particularly those from minority backgrounds or economically disadvantaged schools and communities.

Professors Elliott and Grigorenko 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 elementary 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 analyzes 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 so that the recommended interventions for struggling readers are typically the same whether or not they are diagnosed as dyslexic. The term ’dyslexia’ should refer to any struggling reader and can be employed to describe a severe and persistent difficulty with reading. (Currently there is no valid and widely agreed means of differentiating dyslexia from other forms of reading difficulty.) 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 previously taught children with learning difficulties and served as a school 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.”

Elliott’s co-author, Elena Grigorenko, Professor of Developmental and Clinical Psychology at the University of Houston (UH), who directs the UH Academic Skills Clinic, says that the assessment and treatment for children with reading difficulties is the same regardless of whether they have the diagnosis of dyslexia or not: “We just need to teach struggling readers how to decode and to read and help them practice reading as much as possible and as often as possible, no matter whether they had, have, or will never have the diagnosis of dyslexia. There is no evidence-based treatment that remediates reading difficulties that works for dyslexic readers and does not work for other struggling readers and vice versa.”

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.

About the authors

Julian (Joe) Elliott is a Professor of Educational Psychology, and Principal of Collingwood College, at Durham University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and has been a teacher of children with learning difficulties and chartered educational psychologist. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Dyslexia Association.

Elena Grigorenko is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston and Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. She received doctorates in general (cognitive) psychology from Moscow State University and developmental psychology and genetics from Yale University before re-specialising in clinical psychology at Fielding University. She has published more than 600 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and books. She is the Past-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Dyslexia Association.

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