I shall not provide advice about individual children. I know there are many people who use the Internet to seek assistance with problems their children or students are experiencing; via various sources, I receive requests for help every week. I have not and shall not respond to them. To be able to consult about an individual with learning disabilities, I must obtain much more data than I get via messages requesting help, meet with multiple individuals, and assess situations; it is not currently possible for me to do so via the Internet.
Archive for January, 2005
One might wonder why I’d elect to devote time to a blog about learning disabilities. Beyond the obvious reason (communicating my own views), there are several explanations, and I list some of them here.
Blogs provide an unfettered means of communication. There are no, publishers, editors, or others between me and anyone who elects to read the words I type. The downside of unfettered communication is that I’ll publish something ill-thought, poorly written, or just plain wrong; I’ll take that risk, in part because of the consequences of the feature of blogs discussed in the next item.
Blogs also permit readers to interact with me by submitting their comments. Thus, if I say something wrong, someone will come to my rescue. (This, of course, has risks, particularly the risk that someone will hijack the comments to promote something inappropriate, as spammners use e-mail; I’ll watch the comments and I reserve the right to remove inappropriate content from comments submitted by readers [or robots].)
Blogs are a rapidly expanding medium, as Lee Rainie wrote for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Rennie reported that data collected by the Pew Internet & American Life Project beginning in 2002 show that the number of blogs is increasing rapidly and the number of blog readers is increasing even more rapidly.
Blogs are rapidly being recongized for their impact on communication:
- ABC News identified bloggers as “People of the Year” for 2004.
- The Washington Post publishes a list of blogs it considers the best in an array of 10 categories.
Some other’s answers to the question of why he or she writes a blog:
As a category of special education, learning disabilities is the subject of strong questioning. The field is battered by critics, both from within its own ranks and from outside the area. Because I’m concerned about this state of affairs, I plan to use this forum to explain my views of Learning Disabilities. I expect to devote most of my musings to the defense of LD, but I shan’t hesitate to offer my own criticism, as well.
Regardless of whether I defend or criticize LD, it must be understood that I am expressing my own views. What I post here does not represent the official position of my employer, any organizations with which I’m affiliated, or anyone else. In that sense, these musings are mine and mine alone. I share them here to promote open discussion and with the hope that discussion of the issues I raise will be beneficial to the area of LD in the long run.
My name is John Lloyd. I am a professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia (USA). I serve as co-editor of the Division for Learning Disabilities Web site, TeachingLD.org, and as an officer of DLD (currently president-elect). I’ve written about learning disabilities and other matters and one can learn more than she ever wants to know about me by visiting my U.Va. personal Web space.
Show us your data!
I remember hearing Og Lindsley recommend that the most important request one could learn to make was to ask the advocate of a treatment, practice, therapy, or intervention to show us the data. Without clear, objective, compelling data about how those who receive a therapy fare, we shouldn’t be adopting a therapy. To be sure, teachers and others are faced with great pressure to improve learner’s outcomes every day. But, that shouldn’t be a reason to use sham methods.
I find myself falling back on Lindsley’s advice frequently in considering topics in learning disabilities. Sadly, there are many faulty recommendations about how to treat LD. I’ll comment on some of these in the next few weeks.
For now and for those who are interested, there are some good sources. In a new book edited by John Jacobson, Richard Foxx, and James Mulick, Controversial Therapies For Developmental Disabilities: Fads, Fashion, and Science in Professional Practice, an impressive array of authors contribute chapters about the mistaken methods that have been advocated in special education and related areas. The book’s a bit pricy ($125 list), but the ideas are very valuable.