Section 2
Visual Language and Written Language: Forging Links for Students with Dyslexia Karen Tobias-Green
Karen is a dyslexia specialist teacher at Leeds College of Art and a published fiction writer. She is undertaking research into the attitudes of students with dyslexia to the process and purpose of writing in art and design. She is committed to access to literacy, to the pursuit of academic excellence for all and to the active participation of students in the development of their critical thinking.
This article arose out of a piece of ongoing research: Exploring the attitudes of art and design students with dyslexia to the concept of writing as part of the creative process. Art and design courses, at Higher Education (HE) level in particular, often include large elements of written work and textual analysis. For students with dyslexia, this can be a daunting prospect. This research aims to explore attitudes to writing, promote the concept of writing as part of the creative process and use visual strengths to support and develop writing.
Many of the issues facing dyslexic students are similar to those facing any adult with literacy issues. This can mean that dyslexic students are sometimes mistakenly and unfairly seen as a privileged cohort due to the support they receive. However, students with dyslexia very often experience additional difficulties regarding speed of processing information (affecting reading) and speed and accuracy of reproducing information (affecting writing), as well as issues
with short-term memory, concentration, visual stress and word retrieval.
Dyslexia is no indicator of intelligence, but in a culture which values reading and writing skills it
can present a view of a student's ability which is not commensurate with their actual underlying skills, intellectual ability and intelligence . In
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visual and written language. As a dyslexia specialist tutor at LCA, my work involves encouraging the synthesis of visual and written language into a variety of forms to support student progress on their art degree courses. Sometimes to their initial horror, art students are required to produce quite a lot of written work: analyses of their own and others' work, annotations of sketchbooks, academic essays, reflective and exploratory writing and other more formal, researched work evidencing critical thinking skills.
As part of a wider research project and in order to inform my teaching, I have interviewed 18 undergraduates with dyslexia about their experiences of writing in art and design. For many there is a disparity between the confidence and excitement with which they approach their practical, visual work and the sometimes wary, anxious approach they bring to their writing. In many cases this is partly informed by earlier educational experiences.
However, and again perhaps in contradiction to popular assumptions, there is often a genuine desire to have access to academic conventions and the language of critical thought.
“It gives you a contextual understanding, a platform, a foundation to build your work on. It
addition to the many students with dyslexic traits improves so many skills as far as understanding who remain undiagnosed, a proportion of the students we see here at Leeds College of Art (LCA) are mature students and students who have followed non-linear routes into HE, perhaps
and articulating your ideas goes, being able to communicate them, being able to understand them yourself.” (Lana, Visual Communications student)
after access courses or through returning to education after a prolonged break, and it is important that we do not make assumptions about students' past educational experiences.
My own institution is working hard to address these barriers by converging theory and practice in an exciting way through bringing together
In response to the question, “How and where do you create?” student S responded, “When
making art work I feel that my most creative and energetic moments can be in the evenings.” Responding to the question, “When do you write?” she said,
1. Intellectual ability in this context is a term used by educational psychologists. It is something measurable through a battery of tests and is often used to compare with the speed and accuracy of processing. It can be measured through aptitude with words, but also through aptitude with objects, patterns and visual representations so it doesn't restrict itself simply to language-based tasks. Many students with dyslexia excel at the visuo-spatial tasks. Intelligence is used here to mean the ability to acquire and apply skills and knowledge, and is therefore a much broader term. Students with dyslexia are often very intelligent even if their intellectual ability is compromised through dyslexia.
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