Guiding Principles

I just love Dr. Roman-Lantzy’s Guiding Principles for working with children with CVI!  They highlight professional practice, the need for assessment, the need to have the highest expectation for improvement, the need for precise planning and the ultimate respect for children!

Precision:

• You must use the CVI assessment to accurately  provide the environmental and learning supports to build visual skills.

Intentionality

• With assessment you must understand where the student is functioning and where you expect them to function next.  Dr. Roman says not understanding where you are going with your instruction is like a couple of people lost while driving: “Yes, we are lost but we’re making good time”.

Reciprocity

• Observation is of the ultimate importance. You must respond to the child’s cues.  Put yourself in the child’s shoes and always consider the environment.  When a child is unable to use their vision ask: How is the environment effecting this child’s visual functioning.

Expectation of Change

• CVI skills improve.  This is a central concept to your teaching.  Assessment must be accurate, interventions must match to the CVI assessment and the environment must support vision use.  As you reassess, make changes to encourage further building of vision skills.

Attention to the Total Environment

• Complexity of the environment is the major reason that visual skills are poor.  Provide the needed support so the child has access to the instruction at all times.

 

Understand CVI and CVI Assessment

I run into many parents, classroom teachers or teacher of students with visual impairments who ask me for ideas about educational programming for their children with CVI. The very first question is “Has a comprehensive CVI assessment been completed?” This would include the ocular assessment to rule out any ocular problems or to identify any refractive errors that might require glasses. Again and again the answer is “no”. Random supports are being used with children with no assessment, no planning and no focus.

This CVI Range Assessment is one assessment for the visual skills in children with CVI. It is not used as diagnostic criteria for CVI but as one important component to identify some important functional vision areas. Dr. Gordon Dutton has the CVI Inventory to look at the visual behaviors of CVI. The TEACH CVI Screenings provide three screening protocols for looking at visual difficulties of children with CVI.

Teachers of students with visual impairments who are serving children with CVI need training in CVI and need to join the path of continued learning about CVI. That valuable training should include understanding the brain, CVI assessments and how to create educational programming for a child with CVI to help with visual access, to build visual attention and to build visual recognition. Would a TVI serve a child with ocular visual impairment without understanding the function of the eye? With out understating how that eye problem impacts the functional vision?  Never! We couldn’t possibly make suggestions for educational programming when we don’t understand the child’s visual skills. How could we ever measure the possible improvements in a child’s visual attention and a child’s visual recognition? How could we ever create appropriate environmental and learning material supports? To not understand or assess these unique issues of brain based visual impairments is to not understand the visual needs of the child.

Doing an ocular assessment only, serves to give false information to the team and false information about the child’s visual skills.

If you are a TVI and you don’t understand how to do a CVI assessment, find out! I am teaching an online class at UMASS Boston about CVI that includes an overview the brain, of assessment of the visual behaviors of CVI and discusses some of today’s promising practices to support students with CVI. To set you on the path in learning, purchase these two books : Vision and the Brain by Dr. Gordon Dutton and Cortical Visual Impairment: An Approach to Assessment and Intervention by Christine Roman-Lantzy.