Clinical Teaching 1.3

Clinical Teaching

            Clinical teaching is teaching that involves assessment and instruction together and continuously. A clinical teacher assesses the current level of a student, designs instruction, teaches, evaluates, and makes adjustments based on the data.  Clinical teaching is a continuous cycle that requires flexibility, readjustment, instruction that focuses on the unique needs of the student, and can be accomplished in a variety of settings. Clinical teaching is a method of strategies to teach student with learning disabilities.

            So how does the clinical teacher teach students with varied backgrounds, skills and interests all in the same class?  Differentiated instruction allows a teacher to use a student’s strengths and weaknesses to find the best way to help a student be successful in the classroom while still having high expectations. Differentiated instruction involves flexibility, a multitude of strategies, and an array of instructional approaches. The three approaches discussed are cognitive processing, direct instruction and mastery learning, and psychotherapeutic teaching. 

            Cognitive processing involves the processes of the brain. The seven processes are fluid intelligence and how one dealing with a new task, crystallized intelligence and how one uses their general knowledge, short term memory and the ability to remember current information, long-term memory and the ability to store and retrieve information, visual and auditory processing involving the ability to process visual and auditory stimuli, and processing speed and how well one can perform tasks automatically and fluently. A cognitive approach involves understanding a student’s cognitive processing difficulties and designing strategies to compensate for those weaknesses.

            The direct instruction and mastery learning approach is a step by step approach of the curriculum, where each step is taught and mastered before moving to the next step. Continuous monitoring and feedback is given to the student along the way. Clear goals are set, and time is given for instruction and mastery.  This approach is most often used for basic skills where the previous step is necessary for the next step to be successful while leading to master of the task.

            Psychotherapeutic teaching involves the student’s feelings and a strong positive relationship with the teacher.  This approach must also focus on teaching the needed skills and curriculum while building self-confidence. 

            While the teacher can do little about factors linked to a learning disability the teacher needs to use a variety of teaching approaches, accommodate the student and modify with in the classroom.  One way to accommodate a student is by adjusting the reading difficulty level. Students may fail a task because the skill level is too high.  A teacher may need to modify the student space by using screens and quiet corners for removing distractions or adjusting the paper size and desk size for poor fine motor skills. Time can be adjusted by shortening a lesson, breaking it into smaller steps or providing frequent breaks.  Assignments can be shortened or extra time given to complete the task.  The teacher may need to adjust his/her language by speaking slower, repeating themselves, and using fewer words and less complex sentences.

            Students with learning disabilities often have poor self-esteem and motivation after years of failure.  Clinical teaching involves building strong relationships that are sincere, providing activities that involve student interests, and creating activities that provide for success while giving continuous praise and positive reinforcement. Students with disabilities are motivated like any other child.  Eight areas that motivate children are the need to know, to have independence, to be important, the need to assert themselves, to have friends, to belong, to control, and to be recognized. Judith Halden, Parents Perspective: The Social and Emotional World of Children with LD from the National Center for Learning Disabilities spoke on how often the social isolation and social struggles of a child with learning disabilities is harder for a parent to take than academic failure.  Children with LD have less classroom successes that help foster social acceptance and that some of the same skills they are lacking academically such as slow processing make it difficult to keep up with the demands of a conversation or to understand a joke. Ms. Halden stated children with LD needed to be encouraged to socialize and preferably in activities they do well in and in non-competitive situations.  It also helps to practice doing different things and to teach figures of speech so that they can understand what they mean and participate successfully in conversations with their peers.

            Additional instruction strategies for general education may include peer tutoring involving same-age or cross age tutoring, explicit teaching where the teacher clearly states what is to be done and provides a model; active learning where the student is actively involved in the learning environment, the materials and the learning; scaffolding where the teacher provides support at the initial stages as the task is learned then slowly pulls back.  To scaffold, the student must have some prior knowledge and understanding of the material. Reciprocal teaching involves social interaction with the students where the teacher models the strategies by summarizing, asking questions, and predicting outcomes.  The student then responds out loud demonstrating the steps on their own. Learning strategies instruction teaches the student to be successful by teaching students how to study, how to use new materials, how to monitor their own learning and how to problem solve and how to predict outcomes. Teaching executive functioning helps students learn to organized, plan, and prioritize tasks and to evaluate themselves along the way.

            Clinical teaching involves differentiated instruction, varied teaching approaches,

accommodating and modifying where needed, building self-esteem and motivation, and using instructional strategies in the general education classroom. Clinical teachers are effective teachers who are sensitive and enthusiastic about teaching all children by providing situations and activities for the unique needs of each child.

Resources

Learner, J.W. & Johns, B.H. (2009). Clinical Teaching.  In Learning disabilities and related mild disabilities. (12^th ed., pp75-107).  Belmont:Wadworth.

Halden, J. (2010). Parents perspective: The social and emotional world of children.  On National center for learning disabilities [recorded]. Retrieved from http://www.leadcolorado.org.