REVISING THE WAY WE TEACH TO REACH: START BY UNDERSTANDING LEARNING DISABILITIES AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO MODIFY INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS

There is a pool of individuals in both pre- and post-secondary classrooms that have “invisible” disabilities (such as dyslexia, a reading learning disability) that may impede their full ability to train for and achieve in science. Many of these individuals are highly intellectual and merely require a revision in the methods used for knowledge exchange. Some expressions of dyslexia manifest as a disconnection between the ability to read text and process that information, but this is not to say that visualizations are not needed. Quite the contrary! Presentation of information by interlacing activities using tactile and graphical visualizations, as well as supplementing with sound, are effective pedagogical means to engage students with, and without, dyslexia. Therefore, such “accommodations” are really “universal designs” appropriate for a broader learning audience.

Several simple and relatively inexpensive universal methods can be incorporated into curricular activities. We will model: (1) developing a portable kit containing common items such as clay and color pencils for creating visual images of ideas/concepts; (2) building models (the importance of having a mix of prepared models and making the opportunities for students to make models); and (3) including use of color coding. It is also important to select text-based materials (books, lab manuals and references) that are either available to the student electronically so that a text reader can be used by the dyslexic student or can be scanned and converted (a more time intensive process). We will demonstrate the use of “Kurzweil” (see http://www.kurzweiledu.com/), an assistive technology that makes audible text information available from .doc, .rtf or .html formats (not .pdf files, which are not accessible by current text readers). Another important technique is to introduce concepts in the field so the dyslexic student can have concrete experiences from which to form concept connections. Again, this type of experiential learning is invaluable to most learners.