The following is a transcription of the podcast, “Learning Disabilities Basics (audio).” In this podcast, NCLD’s Dr. Sheldon Horowitz, answers common questions on the basics of learning disabilities. Learn about how learning disabilities are identified and specific ways executive functioning and executive processing relate to learning disabilities.
This is the first in a three-part series developed with the Student Success Collaborative.
Karen Golembeski: Welcome to this installment of the Student Success Collaborative podcast series on learning disabilities. This podcast and the Student Success Collaborative are generously funded by the Cisco Systems Foundation. The Student Success Collaborative consists of partners City Year, Silicon Valley Education Foundation, Teachers without Borders, One Global Economy, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
My name is Karen Golembeski and I’m the assistant director of education programs at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and with me today is my colleague, Dr. Sheldon Horowitz, and he is the director of LD Resources and Essential Information at NCLD.
Welcome Dr. Horowitz.
Sheldon Horowitz: Thank you very much.
Karen Golembeski: Today we have some questions that have been sent in to us through the Silicon Valley Education Foundation’s network of educators in Silicon Valley out in California, as well as the U.S.-based teachers that are connected to Teachers without Borders. So we’re going to start today with some questions on the basics of learning disabilities and we’re hoping that you can shed some light on what learning disabilities are and help us gain a better understanding for how to appreciate when people have a learning disability.
Sheldon Horowitz: It would be my pleasure. Let me begin by saying something about learning disabilities in general and share a little bit of information about how they are different from other types of disabilities. The words “learning disabilities” or the phrase “LD” is a name that we give not to a specific disorder but rather to a group of disorders. And this umbrella term, meaning a group of different disorders, points to specific disabilities, specific weaknesses, in the ability to do reading and writing and math and spelling and other kinds of skills that are needed to succeed in school. Whatever the areas of weakness, a person with a learning disability is of at least average intelligence and the reason for their difficulties is unexpected. LD is not the result of poor teaching. It’s not the result of laziness. It’s not the result of poor motivation. Each person with learning disabilities processes information in their own special kind of way and the more they know about what they need to succeed and the better we know as teachers and parents about what they need to succeed, the better they’ll be to work around or even in some cases to overcome the challenges of LD.
Another important thing, distinction that needs to be made is that learning disabilities sometimes occur or co-occur with other disorders like ADD or AD/HD. Now let me say that these are two different disorders: LD and ADHD are two different disorders that, however, share some characteristics. So for example, a student with LD and another student with AD/HD who doesn’t have LD, can both have a hard time absorbing information spoken aloud by a teacher in a classroom or might struggle extracting information from written passages in a textbook. In terms of how it is that you understand a learning disability or what some of the features of a learning disability are, I would urge everyone to visit the LD.org website and download and view and share and spend some time looking at NCLD’s LD Checklist. It is the best-in-the-business overview of some of the risks and some of the characteristics of LD, spanning from the very early years right through adulthood. And as an aside, I would say please visit the website frequently and look for a soon-to-be-released checklist that’s personalized for Spanish-speaking families as well. So, that’s coming soon.
Karen Golembeski: Great. Thank you. We often get a lot of questions in the National Center for Learning Disabilities about how students with learning disabilities or LD are identified and could you shed a little bit more light on that? There’s been some controversy and we’d like to hear it from you.
Sheldon Horowitz: That’s a great question. Let me begin by saying that unlike many other disorders, there is no X-ray, there is no blood test, there is no quick and easy survey or questionnaire that can be used to confirm or rule out the presence of a learning disability. The process of how learning disabilities are identified is currently undergoing some really interesting changes and significant changes and these changes make it all the more important for there to be close communication between parents and schools. So let’s talk about what each of the models for identifying learning disabilities looks like.
The old model is where a student is having trouble in school. They’re referred for evaluation, usually by a teacher who speaks to a parent, the parent signs consent, and then the process of evaluation begins. A social history is taken, where someone in the school – sometimes a social worker, sometimes a psychologist, sometimes a special educator – collects relevant information, educational information about past experiences in school, when the struggle began, even family information about whether there are any medical issues that need to be considered, other members in the family who’ve had learning disabilities. Some educational testing is done that looks at reading and spelling and math and other kinds of important skills, and IQ testing that provides both an overall intellectual snapshot or cognitive snapshot of the child, and then some interpretation of scores in that series of tests – the IQ kinds of tests – that shed light on how the child processes information, how they listen, how they remember, how they retrieve information, how they organize information that’s presented in different ways. Looking at a profile of scores based on that kind of an evaluation – that was thought to be and is in some places still thought to be, proof that a learning disability is at play.
A new model for thinking about learning disabilities is now being implemented in lots of schools. [It’s] a little bit of a hybrid model, but it’s based on a bunch of different assumptions. It clearly doesn’t discount the importance of looking at specific skills, but it looks at this process of determining whether a learning disability is present from a very different perspective. The going-in assumption is that there’s nothing wrong with the child, and that the first place to look for a reason for the child’s struggle is in the general curriculum and in the teaching methods and strategies that were used. Not just at the point of referral but starting way, way back, much earlier in the child’s school career. This approach demands that before any testing takes place teachers try a number of different approaches to help a child learn. They collect data. That’s also referred to as progress monitoring. And in a very careful way they offer increasingly targeted and intensive instruction which is sometimes referred to as “differentiated instruction” across two or three tiers, or levels of intervention. During this process, general educators, special educators, other people who work in the school tap each other’s knowledge and creativity and they work as a team to see how they might accelerate the child’s learning. If the child is still not making progress, it’s at that point that a formal referral for special education testing is made. But that evaluation process of formally testing the child is immeasurably enhanced by all of the data that was collected about the student’s performance over time.
That process that I just described, which could involve a referral for special education testing, is known as multi-tiered system of interventions, or more commonly RTI, or response to intervention. The best place to look for more information about this model and how kids get evaluated in this new model is online at the RTI Action Network.
Karen Golembeski: Thank you. We received several questions from the field asking about executive functioning and executive processing. I was wondering if for our final question for this part of the series if you could tell us a little bit more about what does executive functioning and processing mean, and how do these terms relate to students with learning disabilities?
Sheldon Horowitz: Sure. Executive functioning. It’s a funny word to use when you’re talking about kids doing things in school, but executive functioning is a term that is used to describe things that we all do, and we do them all the time. They’re the kinds of skills and the kinds of behaviors that we tap that we use to get organized, to stay organized, to get things done. It’s what we do when we think about the day that’s ahead of us and we plan the steps that we need to take to get things accomplished. Executive functioning for example is very much dependent upon our ability to understand what’s expected of us or to remember the things that we need to tap or to use to succeed, even to change directions in midstream, to readjust what we’re doing and to go off in a different direction. So if you think about those kinds of behaviors, and you think about kids with learning disabilities, it’s clear and very easy to see how LD and executive function are intertwined.
We just published a brand new set of articles on the LD.org website about this topic and let me run through just a couple of the things that it covers, but absolutely be sure to visit the site [where you can] read more about this really interesting area in detail.
When we think about executive function, one of the things we talk about is the ability to stop and think before acting. Some people refer to it as impulse control. Kids with learning disabilities, many children with Attention Deficit Disorder, they do a lot of that kind of talking before they think or doing before they really understand. They get started on homework before they read the instructions. They plow through things without really looking at details. So impulse control, the ability to stop and think before acting is one of those things that falls under the umbrella of executive function.
Emotional control. The ability to manage how you feel and think about something as you’re doing it is another aspect, another piece of this executive function world. Lots of kids with LD will get frustrated and give up or won’t be able to tolerate being corrected. Once they’ve tried really hard and delivered a product sometimes they find it hard to sort of calm down and focus on what it is they need to do because the task itself, because it’s hard for them, be it reading or writing or spelling or any other academically related skill, is just so hard for them and they’ll often postpone and procrastinate before they get started. That’s another aspect of the executive function domain.
Another interesting aspect of this executive function domain is flexibility, and I mentioned before the ability to change directions and strategies, even falling into routines. Every time you study for a test, if you do it one way and the teacher’s asking you to do it in another way, that could sort of throw things way out of whack for kids who don’t have that flexibility built in and who have executive function difficulties.
[There’s] something that we call working memory, the ability to hold information in your mind and use it to complete a task – many students with LD have difficulties in this working memory area. The most obvious difficulty manifests itself as just trouble following directions. You know, the teacher gives three directions, and the child remembers the last one of them, but not the first or the second. [Another difficulty is] trouble listening and then taking notes and then going back and catching up to where the teacher is in terms of talking and explaining something in the front of the room. Even moving from one class to another and remembering that you need to bring these books from your locker in the morning and these books in the afternoon, those are the kinds of things that impact, that are impacted by executive function in the working memory area.
Self-monitoring. [It’s] very, very important and also something that’s difficult for lots and lots of kids with learning disabilities. They just plow ahead. They don’t seem to monitor how well they’re doing. They don’t look back and they can’t easily check their work. They don’t proofread well. They may lose sight of how long a project is taking, even though they’re doing it correctly. They may do more than is expected. They may skip a question without noticing it and not be able to monitor that that’s in fact happened. So self-monitoring is an important area within this executive function domain.
And sometimes just task initiation [can be a challenge] – getting started [or] knowing how to set something up. Even after instructions are given, you know: [the] paper has to be in a certain place, I’m doing it in pencil, not in pen, I need to make sure that I’ve allowed enough time to read something through before I get started… If there are multiple steps, whether you skip one step or you start on step two, or you start on step one but don’t have enough time to finish, very often just initiating, getting started and doing so with a purpose and a sense of organization is really hard for kids with learning disabilities.
So again, visit the LD.org website. There are a series of articles talking about this particular area and I think anyone who works with students with learning disabilities will see these kids in some of those, in some of that narrative.
The podcasts for this series and the Student Success Collaborative are generously funded by the Cisco Systems Foundation. The Student Success Collaborative consists of partners City Year, Silicon Valley Education Foundation, Teachers without Borders, One Global Economy, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
