The Dyslexic HealthCare Academic: Dyslexic-friendly teaching
- May 10, 2015
- 4 min read
This guest blog is by Janice St John (@jstjohnmatthews), AHP CPD Lead, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, and an MRI/CT Radiographer, who also happens to have dyslexia.
Janice discusses 3 of the 7 core concepts for teaching learners with dyslexia or other neurodiverse profiles, such as dyspraxia and ADHD, including multisensory teaching, opportunities for overlearning, and relevance.
Multisensory teaching, seeing something, saying something, doing something, and hearing something, strengthens memory and recall
Overlearning – re-visiting the learning of the same material, process, practising the skill in many different ways, time after time, to reinforce learning
Relevance teaching strategies in the context – helps show the big picture, so tasks can be broken down into interrelated stages
The 7 underlying principles that underpin specialist support were discussed in detail, and in the context of healthcare, in my presentation at the RCN education conference 2015 (page 8)
These are ADSHe's core concepts (Association of Dyslexia Specialists in HE – @ADSHeDyslexia), which are often overlooked, especially at the university level, and Janice’s blog shows some ways they can be incorporated into teaching.
If, like Janice, you don’t have a name for what you do, I’ve made it easier by italicising examples of these 3 core principles in the blog.
Over to Janice and Dyslexic-Friendly Teaching
A chance encounter on Twitter has led to this guest blog for @DiverseLearners. Last month, I blogged about being a radiographer, specifically a radiographer in training and how to manage dyslexia. While writing this, I realised that as a learner, I had an excellent understanding of my learner coping strategies.
Since 2008, I have also been an educator, and I subsequently began to consider how my dyslexia may influence my teaching practice. The following are some musings on how, as a multi-modal learner, this has infiltrated my day job and how this potentially enhances the learning experience for both dyslexic and non-dyslexic learners.
Technology Enhanced Learning
I use an array of technology and software on a daily basis as a dyslexia copying strategy. Subsequently, using technology-enhanced teaching is an extension of everyday life.
My favourite piece of teaching technology is vodcasting. (I like this tool so much that I have written a peer-reviewed paper on it.
Feedback on this mode of delivery is always positive from learners. These sessions have a written script, and learners can learn at their own pace, pausing the lecture as needed. There are also opportunities to visit links to related documents as they work through the session.
Some learners report that my voice should be used for satellite navigation- who knew an Irish/ Welsh accent would work? On the other hand, others appreciate the ability to mute me- I can’t understand why!
Paper, Scissors, Butterfly Clip.
Technology is great; however, sometimes you need to go back to basics. My area of expertise is Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and I really enjoy teaching the instrumentation of these scanners.
Yet this isn’t the case for radiography learners who find the concepts difficult, as MRI uses a magnetic field rather than the X-rays they have spent the majority of their time learning.
In year 2 I normally lose learners attention about 15 minutes into an instrumentation heavy lecture.
Subsequently, I came up with the idea of getting the students to build their own scanners. Yes, you heard me right- build a £1,000,000 scanner.
Scanners are basically constructed in layers- like an onion. By using coloured cards of increasing sizes and a butterfly clip, I assign each layer a colour. As the lecture progresses, we name each layer and write information about it on the back of the card. Eventually, the layers add up to all the parts of an MRI scanner. With the aid of the butterfly clip, learners can deconstruct/ reconstruct their “scanners” at their own pace.
Making a Song and Dance of it
Perhaps the most fun session I have developed was with a colleague for a Year 1 session on joint movement. My colleague and I decided to make up a dance to the track “Let’s Get Physical”. Picture this- two lecturers teaching the movements to a lecture hall of 90 learners.
Then 90 learners repeat the moves to us as I shout out: “Flexion, extension, abduction, adduction….” with our backing track at full volume. I believe there may be a recording of the session out there somewhere- hopefully it doesn’t surface any time soon… [come on, Social Media, I am sure we can find it – Kerry].
As I write this blog, the academic in me is saying, where is the evidence that being dyslexic enhances your teaching? The teacher in me is saying that surely everything described above is what every good teacher does?
While I have no evidence to prove this very tentative link [see the introduction – Kerry], my favourite feedback to date is: “Janice has the most bizarre ways of explaining things and teaches bonkers ways of remembering things- but they really do work (sic)!!”
In the words of Edward Vickerman (Winner of the SSAT Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year, 2009):
“It (dyslexia) forces me to think outside the box; to find new ways of using technology to teach. To include everyone in a way that didn’t happen to me”.
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