Strength-Based Approaches Vs. Remedial Approaches and Their Impact on Students
Introduction
A year ago I was working in a special education school which catered to students with learning disabilities in a remediation program. What remediation means in this context is to catch them up to their appropriate grade-level. There are two measures we can use to understand a student’s abilities. For example, a student’s grade level may be 10th grade in reading comprehension, but their instructional level is 3rd grade. This means that the student is in the 10th grade, but their reading comprehension is on a level expected in a typical 3rd grader. So, the focus of the program I was working in was to bring these students up to grade-level with the hopes of them returning to public school. At first glance, this sounds like a great idea and seems like a pretty simple concept, but in reality, it is much more complicated than this. It was this program that really inspired me to be more focused on strengths than deficits. I believe it is important to discuss the difference between remediation and strengths-based approaches. In addition, it is also important to know when remediation is appropriate, because in some situations it is, and when strengths should be the focus. Also keep in mind that remedial education and strengths-based education can be utilized simultaneously. The reason this is so important to understand is because our education system primarily focuses on remediation rather than students’ strengths. When this occurs, and I have witnessed it first hand many times, students become disenfranchised with the education system and learning becomes more of a chore rather than a positive fulfilling experience.
What are strength-based approaches?
Strength-based approaches focus on a person’s strengths rather than their deficits. One example would be if a student’s instructional-level is far lower than their grade-level due to dyslexia, yet, they excel in math. Then a strength’s based approach would focus more on math rather than trying to remediate their reading level.
There are a few benefits to a strengths-based approach. First, it is more likely to keep students engaged and motivated to learn. I want you to put yourself in a student’s position. Imagine you are a gifted reader who can speed read at a rate of one page every 30 seconds and has advanced comprehension skills. At the same time, you have dyscalculia, a learning disability in math, and test at 6 grades below what grade you are in. Also imagine that you are in the 11th grade taking Algebra II with the ability of a 5th grader. Since you are so advanced with reading, the teacher decides to focus on your math disability in order to help you catch up to your peers. Since your brain is designed to be an exceptional reader rather than a mathematician, neglecting your strength and trying to remediate the deficits force your brain to do something unnatural. This causes you to lose interest in school, decreases your self-esteem, and can even cause long lasting trauma. Naturally, only focusing on deficits would make someone question their abilities and develop low self-esteem; even those who are exceptionally gifted in another area. Students are taught that their gifts and interests do not matter, which makes school an unsafe environment for a student. They feel constantly invalidated and gaslit, losing interest in learning in general (even in their exceptional skills and interests) and losing faith in the education system as a whole.
Another benefit strengths-based methods offer is it promotes exceptionality in students. Oftentimes it is more beneficial in the long run for students to really cultivate their talents and interests because they will take these skills and utilize them as adults. They can go into careers that allow them to use their talents, leading them to reach their full potential and potentially making an impact on our world or society. I also think it is important to mention that students with an uneven distribution of exceptional strengths and deficits are called twice exceptional. Students with a more evenly distributed intelligence, whether average intelligence or even low or borderline intelligence, can still be quite successful utilizing a strengths-based approach for pretty much the same reasons as twice exceptional students. No person is going to have a perfectly consistent score in all subsets of assessments such as the Woodcock Johnson or Wisc-V. In this situation, even if the scores are not significantly different, still focus more on their strengths. It is important to note that everyone has strengths and deficits to some degree regardless of their IQ. Oftentimes, certain talents are not even tested for in neuropsychological or academic testing. The greatest group of people that are most affected by this are those that are exceptional artists. Unfortunately, our society generally does not appreciate the value the arts provide and these students are often the most affected by the current deficit based education system. Imagine not being able to grow your talents and only focusing on your deficits. Meanwhile, you make limited progress in your deficits when you could be making exceptional progress in your talents and interests. Alternatively, a strengths-based approach allows you to focus on the things you are good at, increasing your self-esteem and confidence. It also allows you to access your full potential so you can be truly exceptional.
What are remedial practices?
Remedial or remediation might be a word that most non-educators probably do not recognize. All it means is a deficit focused approach to education where the goal is to catch up a student or rehab a student with a disability. In other words, it is an attempt to “fix” a person’s deficits. Thus, the student’s strengths are ignored because they are already on grade-level and the focus is on addressing the deficits in order to bring them up to grade-level. There are different remedial programs available from whole schools dedicated to it, to student pull out sessions, to even private centers or specialists. It really depends on a student’s needs and if they can get their needs met in the least restrictive environment possible. Staying in a general education classroom and taking a remedial class or getting pulled out with a reading specialist, for example, would be the least restrictive environment because they are still in general education classes. The most restricted environment would be what we call in my state a non-public setting. These schools are similar to how charter schools work except most of the time the public school pays for the student to go there due to them not being able to fully meet the special education student’s needs. Iit is also a long complicated and often costly process to get them into these programs. Not all of these programs are remedial as different non-public settings focus on different populations within special education. Fully remedial programs tend to be for students with learning disabilities rather than mental health or developmental disabilities like ADHD and autism. However, a lot of the time people with learning disabilities are also ADHD, have significant mental health challenges, and/or autistic. Take me for example. I have dyscalculia (a learning disability in math) in addition to ADHD and autism. So this complicates things which creates even more issues for the deficit based models. Only the learning disabilities are being addressed, if it is even effective (not all programs are equal in results and quality), and the struggles and strengths that come with ADHD, mental health issues, and autism are virtually ignored. At least this has been my professional experience working in programs or classes that are remedial in nature. I have also witnessed unofficial remediation of autistic, traumatized youth, and ADHD students where the remediation is indirect and usually based around remediating “social skills” that attempt to make us conform to neurotypical norms. Obviously, this in particular is counterproductive. However, it is also important to consider that a lot of remedial programs have been a game changer for a lot of students; especially students with only learning disabilities.
According to federal law, special education students can only be taught with evidenced-based methods, materials, and curriculums. When something is “evidenced-based” it means that it is supported by rigorous research that has demonstrated its effectiveness. It makes sense because experimenting on special education students can easily become a waste of the students’ time because it is ineffective or could even lead to ethical issues. While I could have a whole discussion on “evidenced-based” curriculum, I will save that for another day. For now, this is all you really need to understand. Evidence-based materials could be anything from graphic organizers to cloze reading worksheets (this is basically a fancy way of saying fill in the blanks, but it aids in reading comprehension and is more complex than a simple fill in the blanks worksheet). Basically any materials that have been shown in research to consistently help student learning would be evidenced-based. Evidence-based materials and curriculum are also called “tried and true”. For example, if you were remediating a student with dyslexia, you would have to use materials and methodologies proven time and time again through research that it is indeed effective for dyslexic people. While evidenced-based education sounds great and even obvious, oftentimes evidenced-based practices are not as evidenced-based as they seem. It is important that studies are both reliable and valid, high quality, and peer reviewed before they are labeled as “evidenced-based”.
So what is the best approach? Remedial or strengths-based?
Unfortunately there is not a clear cut answer to this as there is a diverse population in special education. I have personally found that remediation is best for students that got behind in school for other reasons other than a learning disability or developmental “disorder”. For example, I once had a student who was adopted when he was older, but prior to that he was in a bad situation that neglected his education. At first, this student appeared very low and there were even discussions to place him in the alternative curriculum program (these students do not graduate with a diploma). Fortunately, his adopted parents felt that he had a lot of potential and that he just needed to catch up. The school, and me included, disagreed at first, but sure enough he made great strides after being in my English class and taking a remedial class. He was determined to succeed and did. For him, remediation helped. In my class, we did not really do only strengths-based or remedial methods, rather, I incorporated both. Meanwhile, I have had an older student in a entirely remedial program who became suicidal and the program he was in contributed to that greatly. This student was twice exceptional: emotionally disabled, learning disabled (reading and math), ADHD, and most likely an undiagnosed autistic. At the same time, I found when the material was not remedial but highly adapted, modified, and age appropriate, he excelled. Just to be clear, I am not saying to totally eliminate remedial methods as they are effective for some students, but for others, it does more harm than good and other strategies are more effective.
It is also important to note that not all “evidenced-based” curriculum and methodologies result in negative results in an actual classroom setting. There really are high quality research backed curriculum that has been shown to actually be effective in a naturalistic environment. However, when I design lessons, I prefer to focus more on evidenced-based methodologies rather than curriculum. For example, I am a huge fan of graphic organizers and use them all of the time. When I run into a student that does not respond well to graphic organizers, I adapt it. Oftentimes educators misinterpret evidenced-based methodologies and think that just because it is evidenced-based then it is effective for all special education students, but this is not necessarily the case.
Now we have a dilemma- how is only focusing on strengths going to translate to being successful as an adult? How is the student going to complete college? How is the student going to access higher paying jobs and true success? The reason that this is even an issue is because our society is based around deficits rather than strengths. Surely you have heard someone say, “I am working on myself.” But have you ever heard somebody say, “I accept my weaknesses and appreciate my strengths. Rather than working on myself, I tend to appreciate my strengths and focus on them rather than my deficits.” Oftentimes learning can be interpreted as being taught things that you previously did not know or understand, but instead we could be focusing on building and improving our strengths. It would help if society as a whole switched from a deficit based perspective to a strengths-based approach. Unfortunately, it will be a very long time before society makes such a transition, so some remediation may be necessary to navigate this deficit based society .
This brings up an important point- it is important for educators to know when remediation is appropriate and when strengths-based is appropriate. To complicate the issue further, it is not really black and white like that. I personally have found that remediation is most effective when it is incorporated into a strengths-based approach. This way, students continue to be challenged, learning is fun again, and in my experience, they make more progress in addressing their deficits than evidenced-based curriculum that is designed by the Big Ed companies (this nickname comes from their similarities with Big Pharma). Unfortunately, most schools force teachers to use a certain curriculum and do not allow teachers to teach in a way they personally find effective as experienced professional educators. As long as evidence-based methodologies are being utilized, which I have always done, then it is still technically “evidenced-based” and therefore in compliance with the federal law. So even when teachers decide that a strengths-based approach would be better for even one particular student, they still have to use whatever the school or school system wants them to use. These programs are usually provided by Big Ed companies and I personally find this pretty shady (more on that in another blog).
Conclusion
Studies are increasingly showing the value and effectiveness of a strength-based approach. Despite its increasing positive social emotional impact and effective and engaging approach to learning, the education system tends to look down on these approaches and maintains that students need to be remediated or “fixed”. The issue is that it is not that black and white. Special educators should be using a mix of approaches that are presented in a holistic and truly individualized way. It is also important to note that since strengths do not exist in a vacuum, deficits often undermine strengths causing students to not excel at their strengths as much as they could without those deficits. This is the complexity of a twice exceptional learner. Both remedial and strengths-based approaches can be effective depending on the student, but a strengths-based approach is substantially better for students’ mental well being and can be modified to also address deficits in a more holistic, effective, and indirect way (students may not even realize they are being remediated). As more research on strengths-based approaches continues to be published, it is starting to become evident that deficit based remedial education may not actually be effective after all and that strengths-based approaches are the only real evidenced-based approach.
The Neurodivergent Educator- Certified Special Educator in Maryland, advocate, entrepreneur, and Educational Therapist
Further Reading
https://www.curriculumassociates.com/
https://www.apexaba.com/blog/is-aba-therapy-evidence-based
https://www.kaltmanlaw.com/post/evidence-based-practices-in-special-education/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4565885/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-015-9488-8
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0016986214547632
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