Learning therapy

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Learning therapy is a special educational-psychological support for people with learning and performance disorders (LLS). Depending on training and personal inclination, the learning therapist integrates elements from conversation, behavioral and gestalt therapy, curative education , occupational therapy and kinesiology , special PC learning programs and methods that are specifically aimed at dealing with the students to be learned in diagnostically based, topic-centered working dialogs Focus content. The variety of approaches is based on the child's learning requirements, needs, difficulties and strengths as well as the goals set. Since learning therapy is a very individual form of teaching and learning from the general approach, it takes place in individual support or in small groups.

The forms of learning therapy offered are a broad field. Many of the methods and approaches cannot be combined with one another and are mutually exclusive - depending on the theoretical and methodological orientation of the institute or the therapeutic practice. Parents and teachers have a special responsibility here to find out exactly which learning therapy is suitable for a specific child and for the particular learning problem (see also: Qualitative diagnostics ).

Differences to tutoring

Tutoring is suitable for students with gaps in knowledge in individual subjects, caused by missed lessons , a "lazy phase" or a change to a higher-performing class. Learning therapy is an extracurricular support for students who have serious difficulties in reading , writing , arithmetic or concentration , or who suffer from AD (H) D. With them, a basic understanding is demonstrably nonexistent or insufficient and can only be built up slowly. There are u. U. the phenomenon, e.g. B. in dyscalculia or dyslexia that children get good grades, but still have no understanding of the content of the material. In such cases, tutoring would have to start all over with each new topic without being able to assume a sound basis. In contrast to tutoring, learning-therapeutic support creates fundamental content-related and psychological requirements for a new beginning in learning . Learning therapy is based on an individual diagnosis that takes up the child's particular difficulties in order to work on them. She does not depend on the current school material, but cooperates with the teachers. Secondary psychoneurotic problems and social integration problems must be taken into account and dealt with in learning therapy - especially in their special connection to learning problems. Only methods that are tailored to the individuality and the special problems of the individual client - including those that go beyond the pure understanding of the subject matter - can be regarded as therapeutic learning, in contrast to tutoring, which is predominantly based on the school subject.

Reimbursement of costs in special cases

If a child suffers from a chronic learning disorder and at the same time is threatened with mental disability and social isolation or has already occurred, a learning therapy can be financed by the youth welfare office on application (§35a SGB VIII). The regulations for each federal state and even within the federal states are heavily dependent on the respective youth welfare office (and processor). These determine which examinations must be carried out for the purpose of processing the application. They also set maximum hourly rates for therapy and, if necessary, refer parents to pedagogical aids. If the legal requirements are met, there is a legal right to financial support from the respective youth welfare office. Health insurance companies have deleted educational measures such as learning therapies from their catalogs since 1998.

Reimbursement of costs by the local youth welfare office is usually only possible with certain therapists known to the youth welfare office. As a rule, the offices have appropriate addresses and pass them on to the applicants. However, the legality of these lists is controversial, as they also distort competition. In the past (as of Oct. 2015), however, demonstrably successful learning institutions in northern Bavaria have repeatedly been commissioned with therapies, as the parents have a fundamental freedom of choice as to who is to perform the therapy. More often, however, learning therapists with academic qualifications, for example pedagogues, psychologists or teachers, are employed. Proof of a special learning therapy qualification going beyond this is not necessarily required.

Assumption of the cost of learning therapy from a learning therapist may be This may only be approved if school support or internal differentiation has already taken place and is assessed as insufficient. A corresponding report is included with the medical report and the application for the assumption of costs. U. to be attached.

For tax deductibility (in the case of private payers), an official medical examination must be carried out before the start of therapy and evidence of the medical necessity of the measure must be provided. Some tax offices waive these strict requirements for deductibility.

Qualification of therapists

Qualified learning therapists should have extensive knowledge in their specialist field (dyslexia / reading and spelling weaknesses, dyscalculia, AD (H) S, etc.) and should regularly take part in various training courses at qualified institutes and universities even after their training. This also includes ensuring external supervision.

The therapeutic methods to be used are to be applied according to an individual diagnosis. The benchmark for content and progress is the learning disorder of the respective client. A good learning therapist recognizes when further help is required from other specialists (pediatrician, psychotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and others) and consults them or refers them to them.

The term “learning therapist” is not legally protected in Germany. Serious learning therapists are therefore compelled from the outset to prove through their arguments in the matter, their appearance, their authentic self-presentation and their work that they work appropriately and successfully. For the clients of the learning therapists or for the parents of the clients, there is also the permanent requirement to constantly assess and weigh up the arguments of the learning therapists before and at the start and during the therapy in order to avoid failures and disappointments.

Diagnose, or where learning therapists themselves treat diseases or disorders, they need to § 1 Heilpraktikergesetz an approval or a medicine permission after Heilpraktikergesetz.

Accompanying school measures

Temporary measures, which are differentiated by the school depending on the individual case, to support extracurricular support, are: suspension of the certificate grade or educational grade, exemption from class work or corresponding internal differentiation, relief from oral participation and homework as well ideally, adaptation of the requirements in the classroom to the individual level of learning. It would be ideal if the findings of a learning status analysis (in the sense of individual support diagnostics) are implemented and not simply practiced at a lower level.

For the success of extracurricular support, it is often crucial that students are not given ratings (grades, praise and criticism) in school and are committed to a purely result-oriented work (e.g. in the case of dyscalculia), although they do not have a basis for understanding for the required services. In the therapy, the point of view of understanding should be anchored and transferred to learning progress in terms of content. To be able to initiate this process, consideration by the school is required in many cases. An obligation to learn and perform with assessments but without a basis for understanding, on the other hand, usually leads to an aggravation of the learning disorder. Psychoneurotic secondary effects and social disintegration are also observed. Learning therapists recommend here to exhaust the legal framework as much as possible. The therapists should give advice where there is a need for advice from the school. Almost all school laws and especially the regulations for the support of pupils with educational needs contain approaches and formulations in order to be able to take accompanying measures if there are reasonable pedagogical arguments for this.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.rechenschwaecheinstitut-volxheim.de/eltern.html My child may be arithmetic - what now? (Parent guide)

literature

  • A. Metzger: Learning therapy in theory and practice Haupt Verlag, ISBN 978-3-258-07293-7 .
  • A. Metzger (Ed.): Learning therapy. Ways out of the learning blockade - a concept. Haupt Verlag, ISBN 3-258-06400-8 .
  • Ruth Sutter: Learning Therapy in Practice. Haupt Verlag, ISBN 3-258-06609-4 .
  • Ulrich Hain: Family dynamics when stressed by specific learning and performance disorders. Family conditions for coping with dyscalculatory developmental disorders in girls and boys. 1st edition. V&R unipress Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89971-457-9 .
  • S. Galonska, B. Stelzer: INTERDIKK - interdisciplinary diagnostic card for children. 2017, ISBN 978-3-947265-11-4 .
  • B. Rollett: Learning therapy as an integration field of psychology and pedagogy: a new pedagogical-psychological professional field. In: R. Olechowski, B. Rollett (Ed.): Theory and Practice - Aspects of Empirical-Pedagogical Research. Lang Verlag, Frankfurt 1994, pp. 126-137.
  • B. Rollett: Learning Therapy. In: H. Schiefele, A. Krapp (Hrsg.): Handlexikon zur Pedagogical Psychologie. Ehrenwirth Verlag, 1981, pp. 243–245.
  • B. Rollett: On the concept of learning diagnosis and learning therapy. In: WH Tack (Hrsg.): Report on the 30th congress of the DGfP in Regensburg 1976. Hogrefe Verlag, Göttingen 1977, p. 236.

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