INTRODUCTION
Accordingly, proponents Hammond and Hercules (Cited from, 2003) noted that “a dyslexic person has pattern of cognitive abilities which shows areas of strengths and weaknesses” (Cited from, Hammond and Hercules, 2003, p. 9) that may possibly include short-term memory loss, as well as difficulties processing sounds and also misinterpreting words and color sensitivity (Cited from, Hatcher et al., 2002).
Ideally, effective approaches to teaching students has been changing nowadays and that academic institution are then restructuring its education programs and such curriculum guidelines and that there addresses underlying issues of concern pointing towards students having special needs and one common group of these students are dyslexics having in them the notion of what is called by support groups and health providers as ‘dyslexia’ case. For this proposed research study, the interim focus of the study deals to the teaching approaches utilized by England in comparison to the Republic of Ireland here, the one precise method of research to apply is through comparative analysis that can be in the form of case study analysis and or survey interviews or questionnaires that may comprise quantitative research approach. Thus, exploration by descriptive process can also be adopted as a support domain of the technique to be used that can amiably set in qualitative research method. Aside, it is crucial for the research to adopt such balance of paradigm and perspectives through a justifiable connection of primary as well as secondary data resources respectively.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The one objective of this study will be to amicably explore and identify issues of students with dyslexia from within the management of learning support through desirable teaching approaches within England and Ireland institutions that caters to students with diverse needs. Thus, there will highlight the role that, teaching strategies applied by these two countries has supported dyslexic students that can be, in terms of mental and cognitive progress of each student. There is then relevance for teaching programs as composed of students and the teaching staff. Aside, the other ideal objective can be is to basically determine and evaluate critical points towards understanding of various teaching approaches for dyslexic students that England and Ireland can adopt and realize with, adding such worth and value to the education curriculum these countries has been imposing or will be imposing in the future.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In what ways do students with dyslexia receive appropriate teaching approaches? What are some examples of dyslexic learning activities served by such educational institutions? What should the school be doing better to enable further growth in teaching strategies designed for students with special needs? Does visualization technique serves as one of effective teaching approach foe helping out dyslexic students? Why?
The questions mentioned are to be used in order to invite participants to identify and describe issues they perceived as relevant and important to practice. This research will be realized as part of PhD research project investigating teaching approaches in England and Ireland schools, in comparative manner as well as integrating professional learning ascribed for managing certain strategy performance of dyslexic teachers through which such organizing preferences for institution curriculum will then be investigated as well.
INTERIM LITERATURE REVIEW
The International Dyslexia Association (Cited from, 2000) describes the condition as “a language based disability in which the person has trouble understanding words, sentences or paragraphs: both oral and written language are affected” (Cited from, International Dyslexia Association, 2000, p. 4). Understanding dyslexia as disability rather than a medical condition seems to us to offer a platform for intervention, support, program design and practical means of supporting students and those who teach and manage them. Reid and Kirk (Cited from, 2001, p. 21) argue that teachers’ and course managers’ have a duty how best support dyslexic students alongside the efforts of individual students to understand their own needs.
Moreover, Byrne et al. (Cited from, 1999) argued that the use of pictures and visualizations as educational aids is commonly accepted practice. However, while static visualizations can provide student with the essence of how something is laid out, or is constituted, animation appears better able to explain dynamic, evolving process. Aside, Large et al. (Cited from, 1996) conducted study into the effects of animation with regard to enhancing the recall and comprehension of text by primary school students. The study appeared to indicate that animation can improve comprehension in some instances, mainly when some form of motion or movement is described within the text.
In addition, Mayer and Sims (Cited from, 1994) reported that animation helped college students learn about mechanical concepts when measured by creative problem solving post-test. For students with dyslexia it may potentially be beneficial to present an alternative “pictorial” representation of concept or process alongside a standard textual description in order to potentially assist in supporting reading difficulties. However, as Leishman (Cited from, 2004) commented the issue of visualizing and developing an interesting animated on-screen display is a substantial task.
Furthermore, Mayer (Cited from, 1997) and Paivio (Cited from, 1990) supported a dual-coding learning theory that involves verbal and visual stimuli working together cognitively to enhance understanding. They argued that multiple representations of problem help learners understand new concepts and build connections among the representations. Then, Mayer and Moreno (Cited from, 2002) argued that animation and corresponding narration should be displayed simultaneously rather than successively, should be present near to each other on screen and should be personalized to present words in conversational rather than formal style to enable effective multimedia learning.
Consequently, Faraday and Sutcliffe (Cited from, 1997) suggested that for animation to be an effective tool, it must be used to draw learners’ attention to appropriate features of the presentation. Rieber (Cited from, 1990) argued that animation should be incorporated into learning activities only when its attributes are congruent to the learning task. In addition, any animations used for teaching purposes should be of limited complexity (Cited from, Lowe, 1999) and should be small in scope (Cited from, Philpot et al., 2003). Large et al. (Cited from, 1995) commented that ambitious educational claims are often made for multimedia learning approaches, but there is little empirical evidence for their justification. Overall it appears that little if any research has been undertaken with regard to the use of animation to support the teaching of undergraduate students with dyslexia. The original contribution of the research reported in this paper is that it examines in controlled manner the perceived usefulness of animated learning materials compared to traditional static learning materials by undergraduate students with dyslexia.
METHODOLOGY
For this research, two types of data were gathered. These included the primary and secondary data types. The primary data were derived form the answers the participants gave during the survey process. The secondary data on the other hand, were obtained from published documents and literatures that were relevant to the study. With the use of the survey questionnaire and published literatures, this study took on the combined quantitative and qualitative approach of research. By means of employing this combined approach, the researcher was able to obtain the advantages of both quantitative and qualitative approaches and overcome their limitations (Cited from, Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2003). Quantitative approach is useful as it helps the researcher to prevent bias in gathering and presenting research data. Quantitative data collection procedures create epistemological postulations that reality is objective and unitary, which can only be realized by means of transcending individual perspective. The purpose of the quantitative approach is to avoid subjectivity by means of collecting and exploring information which describes the experience being studied (Cited from, Gall, Gall & Borg, 2003).
This research study will explore the proposition that teaching approaches designed for dyslexia then determines the level and support that England as well as Ireland schools, are able to offer to certain dyslexic students. The comparative case study analysis is the core method to be used in this study as well as utilization of several interviews to the education personnel in order to outline actors’ perceptions of dyslexia and how teachers of these students see themselves as trained to support dyslexic students, The purpose here, is to capture emergent ideas and fieldwork hypotheses rather than collect internally valid facts and statistics or to address “what does it mean or why questions”. The research in progress is trying to capture how institutions perceive the disability through teaching approach realization for supporting ideal learning process (Cited from, Oppenheim, 2001, p. 67).
Amiably, by means of comparative ‘Case study’ as good method of choice entailing that when the phenomenon under study is not readily distinguishable from its context is valued (Cited from, Yin, 2003) as the method provide detailed description of such teaching approaches in such underlying phenomenon within its real-life context in which the researcher has little control over behaviors and events. Primarily, the researcher will have to ask members of teaching and non-teaching staff from such institution to undergo such open interview and the research sample will have to consist of five disability specialists, five senior lecturers and five dyslexic specialists’ from England and Ireland institutions respectively. Then, dyslexic students can possibly comment on this research, though helpful in design and interpretive stages in helping people involved to form better perceptions of teaching approaches in support to such students’ views. There will be using of certain structured questions along with informal discussion to the interviewees from which there may be able to comment on various teaching approaches ideal for dyslexia and such assessment procedures of the approach at hand. The research brief are to be based upon viewpoint that this comparative research will attempt to show the context of dyslexic support for academic students and will describe the action nature of promoting effective teaching approaches wherein the teaching staff and students are engaged in true school activities relevant to their daily experience of quality education.
CONLUSION
Truly then, the main goal and essence of this research study is to examine the such teaching approaches geared towards dyslexic students in England and Ireland as the core focus of the research investigation as executed by comparative type of method and that there should be ample support as well as related discussions from certain relevant literature review and studies. The research outcome of this study will be helpful for such educational schools or institutions catering to students with disabilities or special needs as well as in helping out the academic world be aware of the issues and its reality and to understand why there can be to recognize the importance of having such distinctive and effective teaching approach or strategy designed for the two countries as mention above. Thus, the research will be beneficial not only to those people in education setting but also to the society, to the community wherein parents and guardians of those type of students will be given detailed knowledge on how their children receive such teaching approach and incur positive position towards the school curriculum in general and allow the teachers to integrate effective teaching strategies in handling students with dyslexia.
RESEARCH TIMETABLE
The Activity
22/1
05/2
19/2
05/3
19/3
02/4
16/4
30/4
14/5
Writing research proposal
Reading literature
Finalize objectives
Draft literature review
Devise research approach
Draft research strategy and method
Review secondary data
Organize the interviews
Develop interviews questions
Conducting interviews
Analyse data
Develop questionnaire
Pilot test and revise questionnaire
REFERENCES
Byrne, M., Catrambone, R., Stasko, T. (1999), “Evaluating animations as student aids in learning computer algorithms”, Computers and Education, Vol. 33 No.4, pp.253-78
Faraday, P., Sutcliffe, A. (1997), “Designing effective multimedia presentations”, Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI 1997 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp.272-8
Hammond, J., Hercules, F. (2003), Understanding Dyslexia: An Introduction for Dyslexic Students in Higher Education, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow
Hatcher, H., Snowling, M.J., Griffiths, Y.M. (2002), “Cognitive assessment of dyslexic students in higher education”, British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 2
International Dyslexia Association (2000), “Literacy: a capital idea”, paper presented at the 51st Annual Conference, November 8-11, Washington, DC
Large, A., Beheshti, J., Breuleux, A., Renaud, A. (1995), “Multimedia and comprehension: the relationship among text, animation and captions”, Journal of the American Society for Information, Vol. 46 No.5, pp.340-7
Large, A., Beheshti, J., Breuleux, A., Renaud, A. (1996), “Effect of animation in enhancing descriptive and procedural texts in a multimedia learning environment”, Journal of the American Society for Information, Vol. 47 No.6, pp.437-48
Leishman, D. (2004), “Visual literacy and learning: finding some online territories for the slow learner”, On the Horizon, Vol. 12 No.1, pp.26-30
Lowe, R. (1999), “Extracting information from an animation during complex visual learning”, European Journal of Psychology in Education, Vol. 14 No.2, pp.225-44
Mayer, R. (1997), “Multimedia learning: are we asking the right questions?”, Educational Psychologist, Vol. 32 No.1, pp.1-19
Mayer, R., Moreno, R. (2002), “Animation as an aid to multimedia learning”, Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 14 No.1, pp.87-99
Mayer, R., Sims, V. (1994), “For whom is a picture worth a thousand words? Extensions of a dual-coding theory of multimedia learning”, Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 86 No.3, pp.389-401
Oppenheim, A.N. (2001), Questionnaire Design, Interviewing and Attitude Measurement, Continuum, London
Paivio, A. (1990), Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach, Oxford University Press, New York, NY
Philpot, T., Hall, R., Hubing, N., Flori, R., Oglesby, D., Vikas, Y. (2003), “Animated instructional media for stress transformations in a mechanics of materials course”, Computer Applications in Engineering, Vol. 11 No.1, pp.40-52
Rieber, L. (1990), “Animation in computer-based instruction”, Educational Technology Research and Development, Vol. 38 No.1, pp.77-87
Reid, G., Kirk, J. (2001), Dyslexia in Adults, Education and Employment, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester
Saunders, M., Lewis, P., Thronhill, A., (2003). Research Methods for Business Students 3rd Edition. Prentice Hall
Yin, R.K. (2003), Case Study Research Design and Methods, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA
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