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        Precision Teaching and Pupils with Learning Difficulties        73

PUPILS WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES

AND PRECISION TEACHING -

Precision Teaching, a systematic data-based approach to instruction, with its roots in Applied Behaviour Analysis, has a relatively brief history in the UK compared with some 10-15 years’ development and application in the USA, Canada and Australia. Since the late seventies, however, its impact in this country has been reflected in a distinct surge of interest among educationalists concerned with children with mild to moderate learning difficulties, and in a steady, enthusiastic assimilation of its principles and procedures by growing numbers of teachers and educational psychologists, in their day-today work with such children.

The aims of this chapter are threefold. As Precision Teaching (PT) is viewed as a highly significant development but one which has often been misapprehended, an attempt will be made firstly to provide some perspectives on the needs of pupils with learning difficulties and how these needs have been conceptualised and addressed by the professionals involved. Against this background, the origins, rationale and essential features of PT will then be described. This will be followed by a discussion of how the approach is put into operation, a brief review of applications in the UK and some important implications for the professional practice of teachers and educational psychologists.

The Scope of the Problem

Varying estimates have been made of the number of children, within our schools, who experience difficulties in the acquisition of basic educational skills (Clark, 1970; Davie et a!., 1972). These estimates vary according to the date, sample, measures and criteria adopted. What we can be certain of, however, is that a sizeable minority of the school population, possibly up to 20 per cent as suggested by the Warnock Committee (DES, 1978), are likely to present a significant challenge to our teaching expertise and educational provision. As only a fraction of this group are ever likely to be catered for in special settings, it must be recognised that the main and undeniably onerous task of teaching such children rests with the teacher in the ordinary school, though hopefully not without the support of school psychological and other advisory services. Because such children fall inevitably between the demonstrably handicapped and the educationally competent, their needs are often inadequately recognised and met; whether through insufficient staffing or teacher-preparation and training, with the result that many become the ‘casualties’ of the education system (Forness, 1972; Raybould, Roberts and Wedell, 1980).

Against a background of increasing disquiet concerning the long-term effectiveness of traditional approaches to remedial provision (Chazan, 1967; Carroll, 1972; Leach and Raybould, 1977) there has been a movement in educational thinking toward a greater degree of integration of such children into the mainstream (fostered by the Warnock Committee) coupled with recognition of the need for more accountable practice among the relevant professionals. This movement has culminated, thus far, in the implementation of the 1981 Education Act on April 1st 1983 which, inter alia, makes very much more explicit and detailed demands on the way ‘special needs’ are conceptualised and provided for.

Psychometric Evaluation of Learning Difficulties

The history of educational psychology practice, since the appointment of Cyril Burt as educational psychologist to the LCC in 1913, has been characterised by an exponential growth in the development of psychometric tests to the point where this is now a heavily invested industry. Tests of general ability (IQ) in particular, have long been the stock-in-trade of educational psychologists. That such tests are prescriptively sterile should need no defence; their primary use has been for making decisions about special educational placement. Practising psychologists, however, have expressed increasing disaffection with such instruments (Burden, 1973; Ward, 1973; Gillham, 1978), questioning their educational validity. Their reliability for making discriminative decisions about priority of need has also occasioned criticism (e.g. Cronbach and Gleser, 1965). Certainly, there is now considerable research evidence to suggest that their ability to estimate ‘potential’ or predict educational growth, particularly among the educationally disadvantaged, is extremely tenuous (Gersten et a!., 1981; Haywood et a!., 1975; Maggs and Morath, 1976; Zeaman and House, 1963).

Similar scepticism has been applied to so-called ‘ diagnostic’ tests based on the assumption of ‘underlying’ abilities and disabilities (e.g. Frostig and Maslow, 1973; Kirk and Kirk, 1971; Tansley, 1967). Designed for the purpose of educational prescription, they too have been found wanting, both in terms of their reliability in identifying such underlying variables and the necessary evidence to support their supposed diagnostic-prescriptive function (see Hallahan and Cruickshank, 1973; Ysseldyke, 1973; Ysseldyke and Salvia, 1974; Larsen, 1976; Hammill and Larsen, 1978).

The major objection from many practising psychologists to both varieties of psychometric test, is that they are predicated on, and reinforce in their users, the concept of ‘within-child’ variables: that the causes of educational inadequacy and failure rest largely on deficits within the child’s intellectual processes. Cyclic arguments are an inevitable consequence (He can’t read because he has a specific reading disability etc). Vargas (1977) has termed these ‘explanatory fictions’. Opposition to this narrow view starts with the recognition that learning difficulties arise from an interaction of many complex factors, amongst which probably the most salient is the adequacy of instruction and the extent to which instruction matches the current needs of the learner. This view was reflected in two particular statements contained in the evidence submitted by the British Psychological Society (1976) to the Warnock Committee:

‘A young child’s educational needs cannot be assessed or predicted by tests alone, but by exposing him to carefully planned teaching and learning situations.’ (4.4)

‘Special education is special in so far as it pays particular attention to the match between learner and curriculum.’ (6.3)

The notion of assessment-through-teaching embodied in these statements will be elaborated in a subsequent section.

Teachers’ Expectations of Pupil Performance

The powerful influence of teachers’ expectations on the educational performance of children is now widely recognised (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968; Pidgeon, 1970; Brophy and Good, 1974; Leach, 1977) together with the possible reinforcement or entrenchment of these expectations by the practice of psychometric and diagnostic labelling (Forness, 1974). Four particular dangers to the pupil with learning difficulties are worthy of reiteration:

(i) Self-fulfilling prophecies: the awareness of a particular diagnostic description may lead us to look selectively for supportive evidence.

(ii) Inappropriate lowering of expectations: the knowledge that a pupil has been designated ‘slow learner’ may lead to an unwarranted reduction in the teacher’s expectations of the pupil’s performance, with the probable result that he will oblige accordingly. Assumptions about ‘potential’ should be tested out empirically during the process of teaching rather than cherished without question. Many teachers would attest to the fact that ‘slow learners’ are often ‘fast learners’ when the conditions are right.

(iii) Indifference or rejection: though we may not always care to admit it, different children produce different emotional reactions in all of us. Certain established labels may indeed inspire heightened sympathy, extra care and patience. Conversely, they may all too easily reinforce personal prejudices and preferences, especially if we feel insufficiently trained or prepared to cope with the presenting problems.

(iv) Premature abandonment of enquiry: diagnostic labels or administrative categories provide a tempting and expedient resolution of a teaching problem. (You say he’s ESN? Oh well, that explains it!)

What is desirable is a continuing process of hypothesis-testing based on an empirical evaluation of the child’s progress through the curriculum.

Let us now examine some very important practical questions faced by teachers in devising suitable curricular programmes for children with learning difficulties; questions to which the psychometric and diagnostic-prescriptive approaches to assessment have patently not provided adequate or relevant answers.

Five Key Teaching Questions

(i) Is the pupil on the right task?: Selecting an appropriate curricular activity is a crucial initial step in any teaching programme and one which causes concern to the busy class teacher. Often the level of difficulty may be set beyond the pupil’s present competence with deleterious effects on his motivation. A commonplace example is that of the pupil placed on a reading book where his errors are so numerous as to indicate a ‘frustration’ rather than an ‘instructional’ or ‘ independent’ level of learning (Betts, 1957). Teachers frequently request help from advisory personnel in establishing more precisely those skills the pupil has securely acquired and those yet to be taught, in order to place him appropriately within a curricular sequence.

(ii) Is the pupil learning?: Another problem for the teacher is in determining whether her efforts are having any direct effect on the pupil’s learning. Some children typically make such slow progress that it is often difficult to discern whether there is any sustained forward movement. The phenomenon of’ two steps forward, three back’ is an all too common and disheartening experience. Small changes and daily fluctuations in the pupil’s performance may be highly significant, however, given the pupil’s current stage of learning, but the usual means for monitoring educational progress (i.e. standardised attainment tests) are, among other shortcomings, insufficiently fine-grained and curriculum-related for the purpose of day to day, week to week checking. In consequence, the teacher is obliged to rely on a combination of self-made checks and subjective judgement.

(iii) Is the pupil learning quickly enough?: Whilst real progress may indeed be discernible, the child who is already considerably behind his age-peers in skill-attainment will need to accelerate his improvement if there is to be any likelihood of his catching up or at least, reducing the attainment gap. This teaching problem is often posed as the question ‘Is the pupil fulfilling his potential?’ though the traditional answer from educational psychology has been framed in reference to an arbitrary, hypothetical construct of intelligence based exclusively on psychometric assessment. A real problem remains in predicting whether the pupil is accelerating rapidly enough to acquire the minimum levels of educational competence necessary for successive stages of schooling, albeit that these levels are conspicuously ill-defined or operationalised.

(iv) What should be done if the pupil is not learning?: This is the cri de Coeur from the class teacher whose teaching method, of proven success with the majority of pupils, fails to be effective with certain individuals. If we truly subscribe to the view that each child is unique, it follows that each teaching experience is equally unique. It is also reasonable to assume, as has been argued by Keogh (1971) and Wedell (1978), that children learn by a variety of different routes and by a compensatory interaction of different learning strengths and weaknesses. In the case of successful learning, these routes usually defy attempts at description, yet provide fascinating scope for research, as for example in Clark’s (1976) study of young fluent readers. In the case of unsuccessful learning, we are forced to examine, as systematically as possible, the question: ‘What teaching methods are most effective for this particular child?’ Paradoxically, there is no dearth of teaching methods. Remedial textbooks abound and classroom teachers and their school colleagues share an enormous ‘pool’ of teaching expertise. What is necessary is a model by which that expertise can be used selectively to produce the most effective individualised teaching programme.

(v) What level of performance should be expected?: This is a vital question facing the classroom teacher, often several times a day, in relation to children with difficulties in learning. In the absence of empirical guidelines from educational research for setting criteria levels of performance which will lead to proficient skill development, the teacher has only experience and judgement at her disposal. Problems arise, however, when it subsequently becomes apparent that a particular pupil has not maintained or generalised a skill previously thought to have been ‘covered’. Because of inevitable pressures to move on through the curriculum, many children fail to master and consolidate crucial basic skills: their cumulative learning becomes patchy and unreliable, and unless the school maintains a detailed and objective skill-based record system, each successive teacher faces an increasingly difficult task of identifying a pupil’s specific teaching needs.

Assessment-through-Teaching

Questions such as those discussed, which relate essentially to specific educational performance, can only properly be addressed by the use of performance measures. This point has been emphasised by Bloom (1979) in his distinction between summative and formative assessment. The purpose of summative assessment, usually involving the use of norm-referenced tests, is to make comparative judgements of the educational achievement of pupils; that is, to classify. In contrast, the purpose of formative assessment is to provide feedback to inform the teacher and pupil about what has been learned and what still needs to be learned, in a curriculum sequence. The assumption of formative assessment is that the teaching of all educational skills considered essential to pupils, should be to a ‘mastery’ level (Bloom, 1975). The process of formative assessment has been facilitated by technological developments in criterion-referenced measurement (for a review, see Sumner and Robertson, 1977) which focuses directly on the adequacy of a pupil’s performance on specific tasks, or in relation to specific instructional objectives (e.g. Mager, 1962; Gagné and Briggs, 1974; Popham, 1975). Moreover, the continuous relationship between performance assessment and teaching was highlighted by Robert Glaser (1962) in his now well-known instructional paradigm, depicted in Figure 1:

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                Figure 1

        Instructional        Entering        Instructional        Performance

        objectives        behaviour        procedures        assessment

        

              (feedback)

The fundamental principle may be stated thus: without assessment there can be no adequate teaching; without teaching there can be no adequate assessment.  Glaser’s paradigm, in essence a repeating test-teach-test cycle, has stimulated the development of a variety of curriculum-based approaches, often referred to as assessment-through-teaching or data-based instruction. The features of this model have been discussed by Blankenship and Lilly (1981) and are summarised as follows:

  1. Attention is directed to the specific behaviour of concern, ignoring ‘underlying causes’.
  2. Categorical or diagnostic labels are avoided.
  3. ...

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