Troubling Misuse of Promising Practice

When a new approach to teaching learners with CVI is suggested, we need to ask ourselves:

• Does this match our understanding of the unique learner’s visual behaviors?
• Is there scientific research to support the use of this strategy?
• If there is no scientific research, is it a “promising practice” that we can carefully try and carefully apply to each unique student’s situation?
• How do we decide to use this “promising practice”?
• How do we use it as it was meant to be used?
• How do we evaluate its effectiveness since not all inventions will be useful for all learners? (I hope the words collect data popped into your mind here!)

Recently I visited a school to consult for a student who was barely using any central vision to access literacy. The TVI had learned about word bubbling in a conference. Word bubbling is a promising practice suggested by Christine Roman in her book Cortical Visual Impairment: Advanced Principles.

This TVI took the app for word bubbling and suggested that all the child’s literacy materials were bubbled.

• This does not match the student’s visual skills. Central vision use would be essential for this intervention.
• This is not the suggested practice from the text: Cortical Visual Impairment: Advanced Principles.
• This was randomly applied with no diagnostic evaluation of the tool as applied to the student.
• The TVI never partnered with the reading specialist who would be the expert about the teaching of reading. That collaboration would be essential.
• There was no data on the effectiveness of this strategy for this unique learner.

Here is just one example of a sentence this poor student is now struggling visually recognize. I couldn’t quickly read it and I have good reading skills already developed.

 

Please:

• Understand your student’s visual behaviors.
• Try promising practices with careful consideration of those visual behaviors.
• Use the strategy as it was meant to be used.
• Collect data on the effectiveness of your trial. (Baseline data then progress data)
• Random application of any strategy is as inaccessible as doing nothing..

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