Theme page 25. The DSB, the TSB and learning

Enough care and support at home and favorable external circumstances in school together with a learner's internal factors: relatively good general intelligence and learning facility, alertness, attention, motivation, earlier knowledge and skills, influence positively the learning process and the achievements. However, despite many positive factors, learning may be troublesome and the results don't correspond to the effort and the learner's abilities. This may cause an uneven achievement profile where one or two subjects have considerably lower marks than the others.

The DSB may have a bad effect on almost all the internal factors of a learner. The titles of some chapters can sum up this: chronic muscular tension, the stress of the senses and stress in the body and the brain. They may cause delays in a child's speech, social and/or motor development and predispose to difficulties in attention and learning (e.g. the basic skills of reading, writing, mathematics and/or expressive and social skills).

The treatment of the sense of balance can help the learner's efforts in at least two ways: if it's started early enough the learning facility develops without too much delay. Secondly, the learner can maintain good concentration and achieve results that correspond to his/her abilities because the brain isn't disturbed by inaccurate, distorted information by the disturbed senses.

Sufficient support (smaller groups, peaceful studying environments), enough time, the clarity of materials and methods and explicit instruction help especially those who have e.g. oversensitive perception of the senses disturbed by the DSB. All students can be helped by using as many senses as possible in teaching, studying and assessing their achievements.

The following chapter Theme page 26. The DSB, the TSB and dyslexia, dysphasia, AD/HD, autism, Asperger, Tourette and slight developmental handicaps