Learning Disabilities in Primary School. How to Diagnose and Remediate the Difficulties with a Team Approach: The First Results

Abstract

Background. An important problem of our day is the significant increase in thenumber of learning-disabled pupils all over the world. This has led to the emergenceof a new branch of neuropsychology — “school neuropsychology” or the “Neuropsychologyof learning.”Objective. This paper analyzes the role and functions of a neuropsychologist inprimary schools and the possibilities of his/her collaboration with other specialistsin diagnosing children’s problems and organizing remediation for problematic kids.Design. We established four steps for launching neuropsychological work at primaryschools: 1) setting up a screening group for neuropsychological assessment ofall children entering the first year of school; 2) a comprehensive neuropsychologicalassessment of the children who showed poor results in the first step of the study;3) a team remediation program; and 4) evaluation of the remediation results by anew neuropsychological assessment at the end of the remediation program.Results. The results of the first step of our study showed a very high percentageof children with cognitive problems — 37% of 202 6–8 year-old schoolchildren enteringthe first year of school. They formed a group at risk for future learning disabilitiesand maladjustment at school. Age and gender differences, and the structureof cognitive underdevelopment, were discussed in the second step of our study. Inthe third step, a team of school specialists, including a neuropsychologist, a teacher,a school psychologist, and a school social worker, implemented a remediation programwhich was created and supervised by a neuropsychologist.Conclusion. A comprehensive neuropsychological assessment of the pupilsrevealed a complex structure of cognitive disturbances which interfere with pupils’learning abilities in primary school. The team approach can efficiently preventlearning disabilities and help children with cognitive underdevelopment and risksof future unsuccess at school, when this collaboration of school specialists has acommon theoretical approach and is based upon comprehensive neuropsychologicalassessment.