{"id":56779,"date":"2021-04-09T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=56779"},"modified":"2021-04-07T18:50:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T01:50:52","slug":"how-to-adapt-the-assessment-for-college-access-for-students-with-dyslexia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-to-adapt-the-assessment-for-college-access-for-students-with-dyslexia\/","title":{"rendered":"How to adapt the assessment for College access for students with dyslexia"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Among the different Spanish autonomous communities there are no clear and agreed criteria to determine what are the necessary adaptations for a student with dyslexia in high school for the University Access Assessment (EvAU) exams.\u00a0We find from concise instructions with minimal adaptations in the\u00a0Community of Madrid<\/a>\u00a0to the detailed recommendations offered by the Dyslexia and Family Association (\u00a0DISFAM<\/a>\u00a0) in its\u00a0PRODISLEX<\/a>\u00a0protocols\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Making adaptations for the EvAU exams dependent on those carried out by high school counseling teams does not make much sense.\u00a0The right to equal access to higher education requires homogeneous accommodations for all students with dyslexia.<\/p>\n

It is possible that in some cases these adaptations are perceived as a privilege that favors people with a diagnosis and even, sometimes, people with dyslexia themselves feel uncomfortable, for what they understand as unequal treatment with respect to their peers.<\/p>\n

However, these adaptations, far from privileging these people, ensure their access with equal opportunities.<\/p>\n

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability (AED).\u00a0These difficulties present neuropsychological conditions that make some learning more difficult than normal.\u00a0These conditions do not imply pathology or disease: they suppose a different and atypical functioning.<\/p>\n

AEDs are those related to learning written language, oral language and mathematics: dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and specific oral language learning difficulty.<\/p>\n

In the case of dyslexia, the origin of the difficulties is manifested in poor abilities to establish the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (to link the letter with its corresponding sound) and to recognize words fluently and without errors.<\/p>\n

The problem of reading comprehension<\/strong><\/h4>\n

These phonological and spelling difficulties result in slow reading that usually leads to reading comprehension problems.\u00a0In addition, children with dyslexia also have some mathematical difficulties, such as\u00a0difficulty remembering multiplication tables and other number facts<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

However, we must bear in mind that people with dyslexia do not have any difficulty understanding spoken language and their intelligence ranges between the same values \u200b\u200bas those of the population without reading difficulties.\u00a0They have trouble reading, not learning.<\/p>\n

Why are accommodations necessary?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Our educational system is highly mediated by reading and writing skills.\u00a0All knowledge is acquired and evaluated through the written language.\u00a0Textbooks, notebooks, tests, dictations, practically all learning tools are based on the use of reading and writing.\u00a0This decisively harms people whose difficulty lies precisely in the use of this tool.<\/p>\n

Craig Collison coined the term\u00a0“lexism”<\/a>\u00a0in 2012\u00a0.\u00a0By including it, Collison, who at the time was a graduate student with dyslexia, made a twist in his interpretation of this difficulty.<\/p>\n

While the label of dyslexia places the problem of school failure on the individual who suffers from it, lexism speaks of a process of discrimination towards people who process written language in ways that deviate from the normative.<\/p>\n

In this way, the weight of the problem is transferred from the person who suffers from the difficulty to the educational system that does not take into account the difficulties of a minority group, people with dyslexia, for whom access to knowledge through the written language it is especially complicated.<\/p>\n

Accommodations for people with dyslexia lower the barriers that lexism imposes to academic success mediated by the alphabetical notational system.\u00a0Written tests are for people with dyslexia, like stairs and curbs for a person with mobility disabilities in a wheelchair: an insurmountable barrier that prevents them from roaming freely.<\/p>\n

It has been more than 10 years since\u00a0the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) pioneered<\/a>\u00a0the adaptation of university entrance exams for students with specific learning difficulties.\u00a0It reached an agreement with DISFAM (Dyslexia and Family Association) and, since then, there are already many universities that have established\u00a0protocols for the adaptation<\/a>\u00a0of these exams so that people with AED can access university studies on equal terms – between others, the universities of Andalusia, Arag\u00f3n, Castilla y Le\u00f3n, Catalonia, the Community of Madrid, the Foral Community of Navarra and the Canary Islands\u2013.<\/p>\n

How to help students<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In other communities there are no specific protocols.\u00a0The orientation teams inform the University of the adaptations that these students have had during their studies and the university adopts the same adaptations.<\/p>\n

The most common adaptations to facilitate the performance of people with dyslexia on an exam, and which are found in most of the protocols developed by universities for the EvAU exams, are these:<\/p>\n