Literacy Care

Special Education
and Educational Therapy

What Is It?

Special Education is a particular discipline of education that is dedicated to the study, general schooling and implementation of interventions for those who learn differently from the usual person. These differences may be intellectual, physical, social, emotional, educational or a combination of these. Special Education includes the need to make a range of adjustments, modifications and accommodations for the person as well as remediation in the areas of content and methodology. Special Education normally involves the need for extra care and personal interest in people and also the requirement for an understanding of associated medical and allied health professions that also deal with those who learn differently or who are considered as learning disabled.

Educational Therapy is a term used to describe the therapeutic dimension of the special educationalist's work as opposed to the instructional and scholastic side. It incorporates the wide range of methodologies and practices that are used to help the learning disabled person to enhance their perceptual, processing and cognitive skills. This aspect of the special educationalist's work includes both the execution and subsequent measurement of visual and auditory perceptual skills such as visual sequencing, visual manipulation and discrimination and auditory blending, auditory analysis and visual-auditory association. Long term, short term and working memory as well as logic and reasoning and attentional skills are also worked on.

Who Does It?

The special educationalist is usually a registered teacher who has completed a four year undergraduate degree in Education plus a further two or more years in Special Education. Many such teachers have Masters and Doctoral Degrees which usually means they have decided to specialize within the area of Special Education and focus on literacy, numeracy, learning disabilities or perhaps physical or mental disability. Some of these teachers have a PhD and are more heavily involved in research.

Where Can I find an Educational Specialist?

By far, the greatest number of special educationalists are found in schools that have Special Education Units or Special Developmental Units. They are often known as Learning Support Teachers or Special Needs Teachers. Depending on the level of qualification and personal interest some of these specialists can be found in private practices such as educational consultancies, private child development clinics, special schools and even medical practices.

How Does Special Education Fit In With Paediatric Medicine and Practices such as Psychology, Speech Pathology and Occupational Therapy?

The disciplines mentioned above are largely concerned with the biomedical wellbeing and the learning and development of children. These disciplines form the nucleus of professions that know most about and deal the most often with disorders in childhood. Each of these disciplines has a unique set of services and skills to offer the learning and developmentally challenged child. The special educationalist together with these other disciplines realizes that when such disciplines integrate their abilities, usually through the development of a collaborative and interdisciplinary plan, that the child with special needs will be maximally benefited.

Assessment and Treatment

Depending on the level of qualifications that the special educationalist has they may be involved with diagnosis or intervention or both. In most cases an educational specialist will be concerned with tests that reveal how well the child is performing scholastically. That is, they are interested in their reading, spelling, writing and comprehension performances. Very often they are interested in their organisational and study skills. Depending on what work they plan on doing with the learning disabled person they may do tests that provide information about cognitive and perceptual development. A special educationalist is particularly interested in finding solutions to academic problems. Sometimes this means filling in the gaps and just providing better teaching. At other times it means formulating a structured well defined and planned intervention that aims at achieving specific goals in set time frames. Processes of appraisal and ascertainment also concern the special educationalist who is very often the person responsible for coordinating the range of professionals that are usually involved.