Entry requirements
Master’s students Psychology with specialisation Child and Adolescent Psychology
Description
This course will be especially useful for students who intend to work in a school setting (e.g. schools advisory services).The topics of this course are learning difficulties and remedial teaching. Learning difficulties often go hand in hand with cognitive and social-emotional developmental disorders. Conversely, developmental disorders (e.g. a slow intellectual development or ADHD) may impede learning processes and eventually crystallize out into a learning difficulty. Developmental and educational psychologists in various institutions should have basic knowledge of the nature, the assessment, and the re-mediation of learning difficulties. This course covers practice-based literature and examples, and offers (hands-on) experience with in-depth process analysis of learning difficulties.
Two topics are emphasized:
Learning to detect learning difficulties through cognitive process diagnosis. This means that a cognitive task analysis must first be performed, through which the prerequisite knowledge and skills for performing the task are identified. The impact of motivational and social-emotional processes must also be recognized; do they support or hinder the learning process? The information from the task analysis can be used as a template to better understand the student’s learning behaviour, in order to detect specific failures in the student’s knowledge and skills at both the cognitive and affective level.
Remedial teaching pertains to the knowledge and evaluation of effective intervention methods (for different domains like reading, writing, and maths), based on the information that has been gathered from the process diagnosis of specific learning difficulties.
Course objectives
On completion of this course it is expected that students will have acquired:
Knowledge about learning difficulties;
Elementary, practical skills for process diagnosis of those difficulties; and
Knowledge about how to undertake remedial intervention and to evaluate the effects of those interventions.
Timetable
For the timetables of your lectures, work groups and exams, please select your study programme in:
Psychology timetables
Registration
Course
Students need to enroll for lectures and work group sessions.
Master’s course registration
Examination
Students are not automatically enrolled for an examination. They can register via uSis from 100 to 10 calendar days before the date. Students who are not registered will not be permitted to take the examination.
Registering for exams
Mode of instruction
1 plenary lecture, introducing the theory and principles of process diagnosis of learning difficulties
3 work group sessions facilitating training in the application of assessment materials and remedial teaching techniques for dyslexia
3 work group sessions facilitating training in the application of assessment materials and remedial teaching techniques for math problems.
Assessment method
Examination with essay questions
Written individual reports
The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences has instituted that instructors use a software programme for the systematic detection of plagiarism in students’ written work. In case of fraud disciplinary actions will be taken. Please see the information concerning fraud.
Reading list
Shaywitz, S. (2005). Hulpgids dyslexie. Amsterdam: Nieuwezijds. (or the English version: Shaywitz, S. (2003). Overcoming dyslexia. New York: Vintage Books.)
Reader with a broad range of articles.
Contact information
Femke Stad, MSc
f.e.stad@fsw.leidenuniv.nl