The Masking Strategies that Hide a Learning Difference
In the last of my six years as an independent school Special Educational Needs Coordinator, I received a shock to my complacency.
By the sixth year of my tenure, I believed we had built a rigorous system of detection for dyslexia that wouldn’t leave anyone behind. Computerised screening of all new pupils, a notification system that classroom teachers were regularly using to alert us to pupils with possible special needs, cross-checking of school reports with screening data – these had combined to create a net that I thought nobody would slip through. Around 25% of the school’s pupils were on the Special Educational Needs List; and in each case, I knew exactly why. If a teaching colleague suggested there were “too many pupils” on the list, I would challenge them to pick a name at random and I would explain exactly what special needs that pupil had.
And then, in my sixth year, a colleague referred a girl for screening because she was struggling to prepare for her A Levels.
Yes. A Levels. This girl was aged 18 and had been in our school for five years. And when we screened and then formally assessed her, dyslexia was screaming out of every score. She had severe reading difficulties.
Oops. How could a girl with difficulties of this magnitude have spent ten years in a leading British independent school, renowned for its small class sizes, without anybody noticing her dyslexia? Not her teachers, not her parents, not her herself — and not me either.
The answer, it turns out, is — all too easily. It is thought that up to 20% of children in the UK and in Ireland may go through school with undetected dyslexia, which can have profound impacts on their educational experience.
Even when a school has well-established systems for detecting special educational needs, some children may evade detection because of masking. Usually, it isn’t that the child is aware that they have a learning difference and is trying to hide it. Rather, the child is desperately trying to fulfil the learning expectations placed on them by well-meaning adults who do not understand that this child has a different way of learning from the other children in the classroom. The child doesn’t realise that they have a learning difference; all they know is that learning is really hard — so they try really hard — and that’s it.
By their mid-teens, these “masked” dyslexics have usually developed exam anxiety and a low self-belief as a learner.
If they were detected earlier as having a learning difference, their learning outcome could be different. Research suggests that children exposed to the Davis methods at an early age are far more likely to emerge as gifted and talented learners than those who are not. By contrast, when a child's dyslexia slips under the radar, then they will be taught, and will desperately try to learn, in the same way as their non-dyslexic peers. The result can be disastrous: you work unbelievably hard, your results are underwhelming, you are quietly written off as a well-meaning but mediocre student, and your self-belief as a learner takes a nosedive. The irony in all this is that your dyslexic way of thinking, if properly cultivated, contains all the ingredients of genius.
So how can we detect and cultivate such learners earlier? The typical signs of “invisible” dyslexia are:
Works much harder than peers, but results are generally at or below the class average;
May test with average reading comprehension, but will feel insecure if asked to read an unprepared text out loud;
Tendency to rote-learn; will not participate in in-depth discussions about academic matters because the meaning of the subject matter has not really been assimilated;
Is a teacher-pleaser, or else is very quiet in class;
Is praised for compliant behaviour in school but may well “vent” with temper outbursts at home;
Has poor self-belief as a learner. May want to collaborate with others on homework tasks to check they got it “right”;
May engage in “memory tricks” to remember material. May remain reliant on the “alphabet song” beyond the normal age, on “finger tricks” and mnemonics for times tables and/or on tricks for telling left from right;
By mid-teens, may well have developed anxiety around exams and formal testing;
May use humour to diffuse situations where they could be “shown up” for not knowing something. May accept nicknames given by friends that suggest they are “slow on the uptake”;
May excel in some more creative areas such as art, drama, sport, design technology and/or music, but is unlikely to consider these areas of talent to be as “important” as academic learning.
These children need to be helped. The compliant, “average” child does not deserve to be ignored and left unsupported by their educational setting. They deserve to experience themselves as what they are – learners with the potential for great achievements – for their own good, and for the good of the world.
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