Understanding and Supporting Children with Literacy Difficulties
Understanding and Supporting Children with Literacy Difficulties: An Evidence-Based Guide for Practitioners
by Dr Valerie Muter
A good guide to supporting those with literacy difficulties, particularly in the context of co-occurring conditions
What it’s about
Understanding and Supporting Children with Literacy Difficulties goes beyond a narrow focus on dyslexia to look at literacy difficulties more generally. Dr Muter argues that literacy disorders can best be understood using multiple deficit models. These models help to explain why individuals diagnosed with a certain disorder will nevertheless have different profiles of skills, and why certain conditions such as dyscalculia or ADHD may co-occur with literacy disorders.
For teachers, there are relevant chapters covering:
the development of literacy skills in children
how the development of literacy skills can go wrong
how and why individuals may have different profiles
what types of intervention have been shown to be effective (or, indeed, ineffective)
how bilingualism can interact with literacy disorders.
There are also chapters on assessment, which may be of less interest to literacy teachers, but may be useful for those wanting more insights into the diagnostic process.
The best bits
The explanations of why conditions may co-occur were particularly interesting. For example, dyslexia and ADHD can be difficult to disentangle at a behavioural level; poor attention may affect learning to read, and difficulty learning to read might manifest as poor attention. However, slow processing speed is a common factor that may contribute to literacy disorders and to ADHD, and could help explain their relatively high co-occurrence.
The author’s discussion of the causes of dyslexia is also clearly written, and she’s not afraid to engage with the debate on whether dyslexia is a useful term. She concludes:
“Personally, I do not think it matters whether we describe an individual child’s reading difficulty as dyslexia or a specific reading problem or a literacy disorder, as long as we recognise that it is important to arrive at an understanding of the nature of their difficulties and how they might be addressed so as to improve their overall educational outcome.” (p. 52)
(For a more detailed discussion of the term ‘dyslexia’, see my review of The Dyslexia Debate Revisited.)
The less good
Although the writing style is fairly readable, the long paragraphs make it a bit hard to take in at times, and there aren’t very many pictures or diagrams.
Who is it for?
I agree with the book’s cover – this book is written for practitioners who support children with literacy difficulties! As the book discusses literacy difficulties in the context of other cognitive difficulties and different learning environments, it may be particularly useful for those working in schools who support children who have a range of difficulties.