Page 29 - SEN114 September/October 2021

Dyslexia
About the author
Dr Jamie Galpin is an Education Officer at nasen, a charity that supports and champions those working with, and for, children and young people with SEND and learning differences.
@nasen_org
category (‘dyslexia’ as opposed to ‘reading disability’) can effectively tackle normative misconceptions that reading difficulties are an indicator of laziness or low intelligence.
However, too great a focus on categorical definitions can lead to these difficulties becoming pathologised. An abundance of effort goes into strengthening the legitimacy of the diagnosis through searches for markers of distinction. New barriers to support may then arise as certain groups become increasingly situated outside the norm. Teachers can feel less skilled to support such a group, and a ‘normal’ school is no longer deemed able to meet these distinct, special needs.
Rather than the validity of the norm being questioned, labels can serve to reinforce the misconception that there is a normal child and a normal way of learning. Inherent variability becomes translated into disorders or deficits. Implicit here is the idea that diagnoses explain something undesirable. When the focus is an individual biological problem, labels can unintentionally serve to reinforce ‘normalcy’ as a legitimate concept. One could argue, for example, that dyslexia necessitates an acceptance of normative assumptions of literacy. The normal child is a relatively modern creation, only appearing in the last century or so – and yet it is rarely questioned.
“Children labelled with dyslexia hold lower beliefs about their academic ability”
There are further unintended consequences around the need for defined groups, both for those who do and do not receive diagnoses. For those who do, there may be less chance of being perceived as unintelligent or lazy – a benefit that is hard to dispute given the relief it can bring in helping people understand their own struggles. However, the fragility of such legitimacy is brought into relief when questions arise around the validity of the diagnosis.
Efforts to address this fragility through the search for more ‘concrete’ biological explanations lead to further problems. Framing a difference as being within the brain, or referring to a neurologist as part of a diagnostic process, implies a neural basis for deviation from the norm – i.e. an abnormal brain. Such biological, essentialist explanations can lead to a fatalistic response to experiences of challenge. These can be pathologised through an individualistic, deficit-explanation and lead to a diminished self-concept. These explanations may also lead to negative perceptions amongst staff in schools, with recent research indicating that children labelled with dyslexia hold lower beliefs about their academic ability than peers without the label. Parents and teachers echo this perception (Knight, 2021).
Those who do not receive diagnoses may be spared the low expectations brought by the dyslexia label, though this group of struggling readers will still sit outside the norm because typically reading should not be such a struggle. Other labels may be deployed to explain their failure to learn as they should:
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