Dyslexia: Implications for Chemistry Teaching

Abstract

Dyslexia is probably the best-known specific learning difficulty. For many people it is simply known as a reading disorder, even though it is a much more complex problem. It usually has a noticeable negative impact on pupils' school performance, although many dyslexics can have excellent space imagination and ability to solve complex problems. Many publications have been written about dyslexia. The most of them deal with its medical and psychological aspects or they are trying to help dyslexics to read. A significantly smaller number of scientific papers is focused on help with specific school subjects. Among them, the predominant effort is to help the pupils with foreign languages study. Only extremely small number of studies is focused on dyslexia and science subjects (for instance chemistry). The aim of our article was to create an overview of information published in scientific literature, focused on dyslexia and teaching chemistry. Our hypothesis, based on our study of scientific articles on dyslexia and on our experience with a very limited number of cooperating pupils/students with dyslexia, or with their teachers, is as follows: dyslexia is usually found during the initial reading practice. However, reading can usually be gradually practiced to an acceptable level. That is why some teachers think incorrectly that 14 years old pupils have already "overcome dyslexia" and that they can work within science subjects in the same way as the other pupils. However, dyslexics might differ from the population in the way how they work with their memory. They might need much longer time to memorize. For example, a "simple" memorizing the symbols and names of chemical elements can be an extremely difficult and time-consuming task for them. The dyslexics might greatly appreciate visualizations (experiments, pictures, showing real chemical substances, models, videos). The reason might be not the reading problem itself, but the way of thinking (the need of a "translation" from words into reality). They might profit from a clearly structured explanation including clear output requirements. On the other hand, many of them are creative and have a good (even above average) ability to solve complex problems. Techniques that help dyslexics help all pupils/students.