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A Strengths-Based Approach to Supporting Early Learning
Article by Dr. Sheldon H. Horowitz, Director of Professional Services, NCLD, based on an interview with Dr. Mary Ruth Coleman
The phone rings, and your son's teacher greets you with a chipper, "Hello", followed by, "Don't worry; everything is all right" and "When can we meet?"
Your heart sinks as a wave of emotions flood through your mind. "What's wrong with my child? What did I do? What can I do? Is the teacher overreacting? Is there really a problem?"
A few seconds pass before the air temperature in the room seems to cool down and your breathing is back to normal. Now ,more relaxed but intensely focused, you say to yourself, "He's only 4 years old!"
The world became a much better place for children and families in the mid-1970s when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was passed. Schools were newly empowered to reach and teach all children with educationally handicapping conditions. Children with learning disabilities (LD) were finally the beneficiaries of attention and support that was formerly, in great part, directed toward students with vision and hearing impairments and those with moderate to severe cognitive and behavioral challenges.
Three decades later, we're still working to improve the systems of support that enable students with LD to succeed. And one of our greatest challenges remains how to escape from a "wait-to-fail" model that has taken a stranglehold on our thinking, and offer students help sooner and more efficiently, before they enter into a cycle of frustration and failure.
Some good news! The recently reauthorized IDEA and serious efforts by lawmakers to include students with LD in school-wide accountability systems (No Child Left Behind Act) are likely to have a positive impact on students with LD. Schools are being asked to commit to high quality (evidence-based) teaching, and school districts across the country are introducing "response-to-intervention" (RTI) approaches to helping students who struggle with learning before triggering referrals for special education evaluation. The catch? What about preschoolers? How should we evaluate for school readiness? When is a formal evaluation warranted? And what behaviors might signal "at risk" for LD during the preschool years?
The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) has partnered with research scientists at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and together are working to shed light on these questions.
"The Recognition and Response model comes from a project I direct called USTARS, Using Science Talents and Abilities to Recognize Students"Promoting Learning in Underserved Students", says Dr. Mary Ruth Coleman, the project director. "It's a model that we've been using for about 15 years with high potential students who have historically been overlooked by their teachers."
Together with Dr. Virginia Buysse, a colleague at FPG, Dr. Coleman has looked at how capable students from culturally and linguistically diverse families are often mislabeled or ignored, with attention being paid to their needs alone rather than also considering their strengths and undiscovered potential.
"Children of poverty who have limited language development and limited school readiness experiences" are also seen more often as being at risk rather than at potential, Dr. Coleman adds. "Young children's needs and strengths are fluid." A dynamic process that considers both strengths and weakness is especially important for children whose developmental course is uneven and for whom early skill development seems to be lagging behind that of their peers.
This earlier-is-better thinking about recognizing strengths, as well as weaknesses, in young children poses many challenges to parents and early care providers. It discourages adults from thinking about what seems to be wrong without also directing attention to what's right and unique about young children's skills and abilities. It protects young children from being identified as disabled or delayed or different, and encourages screening and skill building opportunities over time, involving parents and early educators who share a common set of goals and strategies.
Reflecting upon current special education evaluation and treatment approaches for school-age children, Dr. Coleman reminds us how difficult it is to evaluate or even screen for problems in young children.
"Often times, the standardized assessments we can use with young children are not as reliable as standardized assessments for older children, because in part younger children's abilities haven't crystallized," she says.
Just think about how young children's behavior and performance can vary based on their interest level or mood, and how variable attention and vigilance (stick-to-it-ness) can be based on such factors as whether they are tired or hungry, familiar with the tasks at hand, and even their perceived ability to succeed.
"I don't think any model is going to completely eliminate the stigma of being different. But what the Recognition and Response Model does is that it allows for a nurturing to take place that is less stigmatizing than a formal label," Dr. Coleman says. She adds that recognizing young students' strengths and needs may even show that fewer children actually need special education later on. With an early and effective safety net, we've captured opportunities to provide carefully crafted, student-specific, high-quality attention to students before they experience frustration and failure.
With support by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, the NCLD and FPG team will work to identify and share what we know about early successful transition to school and how this applies to young children with learning disabilities. Contributing to this early learning framework project are a number of national organizations and state agencies, each focusing on how best to met the needs of young children at risk for LD and learning failure.
A few things to look forward to in the months ahead:
- A list of early literacy screening tools (to be posted on the www.getreadytoread.org Web site) and information about the importance of early literacy as a window to early school success
- Observation protocols for teachers and parents to help with collecting and sharing information about student status and learning progress
- Expanded Resource Locator listings for parents and early educators at www.LD.org.
You smile into the phone, and schedule an early morning meeting later that week (offering to bring coffee and donuts). You can't wait to share information about your son's special qualities and interests, and how you are a willing and ready partner in "recognizing and responding" to his early learning needs.
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