Dr Mel Levine, one of the well known learning experts and paediatricians in America, contributed to a paradigm shift getting teachers to explore what stopped children from learning. He was obsessed with helping children find success. He wrote, A Mind At A Time , to create awareness amongst parents and teachers that not all minds are equal and one needs to have an understanding of the differences in children’s learning styles. He has been instrumental in guiding teachers to think about and work with learning differences in school. Dr Levine’s approach stressed that whatever their learning difficulties all children had strengths to build on.
Dr Mel Levine believes that specific breakdowns in learning become noticeable in certain obvious behaviours that are seen everyday both in classroom and at home. This he calls as ‘Observable Phenomena’. He believes that observation is a powerful tool as it gives us insights that are unavailable to diagnostic tests commonly used in schools and clinics. According to him an observable behaviour may be communicating a need. By becoming aware of the critical observable behaviour of a student at class level, teachers will be better able to recognise and attend to learning breakdowns.
Teachers’ role
Take Amit for example, whose head goes up and down several times while copying from the blackboard. The teacher suspected either he has difficulty in holding a sufficient chunk of information long enough to transfer it on paper or has difficulty with reading. When tested on teacher made informal test, he was found to be very poor in reading. That explained his head movement. He copied letter by letter! The movement of head here is the observable phenomena.
Many people criticised Dr Levine’s work as depending on observation instead of reliable scientific tests. But he argued that one can observe a lot by simply watching. Many disorders do not show up on formal tests but are very much there. Since parents and teachers see them every day, they notice those little things that specialists may not. Take 13-year-old Ritu’s case for instance. A shy and withdrawn teenager, who comes into class without a word and sits down. She usually follows instructions but never takes part in discussions. She has no friends and perpetually looks sad. She was diagnosed as being depressed and was prescribed antidepressants to make her feel better. It was the games teacher who noticed that Ritu had problem expressing herself. The abysmally low verbal output was the reason why she was so withdrawn and had no friends. Many times the tests used by psychologists fail to identify components of expressive language.
Observation is important
Here is another example to show how important observation is. Ram was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder as he looked disinterested and bored while teacher wrote on the blackboard. Instead of copying, he would look around or get busy with going through his bag. It took an alert teacher to notice that though he did not copy from the blackboard but once the boy sitting next to him had copied he would anxiously start copying from his note book. The teacher suspected that Ram may have vision related problem. A simple eye test showed he had refractive error which was corrected with glasses! Overlooking it might have had serious consequences.
Observing student behaviour may give one a different perspective on every day problems and once you understand the cause you can come up with effective strategies to help overcome difficulties.
It is very important that teachers upgrade their knowledge on theories of learning and development. They need to ask questions about what they observe. The more awareness they have, the more meaningful their observation will be.
(The writer is a Remedial Educator)
