Learning Disabilities in Primary School. How to Diagnose and Remediate the Difficulties with a Team Approach: The First Results

BACKGROUND: An important problem of our day is the significant increase in the number of learning-disabled pupils all over the world. This has led to the emergence of a new branch of neuropsychology!— “school neuropsychology” or the “Neuropsychology of learning.” OBJECTIVE: This paper analyzes the role and functions of a neuropsychologist in primary schools and the possibilities of his/her collaboration with other specialists in diagnosing children’s problems and organizing remediation for problematic kids. DESIGN: We established four steps for launching neuropsychological work at primary schools: 1) setting up a screening group for neuropsychological assessment of all children entering the first year of school; 2) a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment of the children who showed poor results in the first step of the study; 3)ateam remediation program; and 4) evaluation of the remediation results by a new neuropsychological assessment at the end of the remediation program. RESULTS: The results of the first step of our study showed a very high percentage of children with cognitive problems— 37% of 202 6–8 year-old schoolchildren entering the first year of school. They formed a group at risk for future learning disabilities and maladjustment at school. Age and gender differences, and the structure of cognitive underdevelopment, were discussed in the second step of our study. In the third step, a team of school specialists, including a neuropsychologist, a teacher, a school psychologist, and a school social worker, implemented a remediation program which was created and supervised by a neuropsychologist. CONCLUSION: A comprehensive neuropsychological assessment of the pupils revealed a complex structure of cognitive disturbances which interfere with pupils’ learning abilities in primary school. The team approach can efficiently prevent learning disabilities and help children with cognitive underdevelopment and risks of future unsuccess at school, when this collaboration of school specialists has a common theoretical approach and is based upon comprehensive neuropsychological assessment.