It simply never occurred to people that autism might 'look' different in e.g. females, BAME communities, older people, males who don't present in typically male ways, etc./
How many people know they're autistic, so far.
These are the studies from various countries and teams.
England & Scotland data taken from the official school records.
The problem is, not everyone knows they're autistic.
The tests & assessments tend to find white males/
It simply never occurred to people that autism might 'look' different in e.g. females, BAME communities, older people, males who don't present in typically male ways, etc./
Why do I suspect this? From conversation with diagnostic professionals who are updating their info and having 'oh heck!' moments.
From parents struggling to get their daughters diagnosed, whereas the son was easy/
And so many with identical presentations who are still struggling to get diagnosed/
It's simply a reality that the tools they were given were designed to pick white men.
Let's look at some examples:/
This can be cultural. It might be immensely rude to look an adult in the eye, in some cultures.
What about their hobbies? Oh she plays with dolls? Great.
Oh, he plays with toy trains? Autism!
Even though the 50 dolls are lined up/
Are they a male that shows sudden changes in mood/angry anxiety? Autism!
Repeating, many diagnostic teams are good.../
So, when I see prevalence statistics saying it's 4:1 boys/
I think it's far closer.
Colleagues from BAME communities talk of societal and cultural barriers to even thinking about getting a child diagnosed, also/
More from Education
An appallingly tardy response to such an important element of reading - apologies. The growing recognition of fluency as the crucial developmental area for primary education is certainly encouraging helping us move away from the obsession with reading comprehension tests.
It is, as you suggest, a nuanced pedagogy with the tripartite algorithm of rate, accuracy and prosody at times conflating the landscape and often leading to an educational shrug of the shoulders, a convenient abdication of responsibility and a return to comprehension 'skills'.
Taking each element separately (but not hierarchically) may be helpful but always remembering that for fluency they occur simultaneously (not dissimilar to sentence structure, text structure and rhetoric in fluent writing).
Rate, or words-read-per-minute, is the easiest. Faster reading speeds are EVIDENCE of fluency development but attempting to 'teach' children(or anyone) to read faster is fallacious (Carver, 1985) and will result in processing deficit which in young readers will be catastrophic.
Reading rate is dependent upon eye-movements and cognitive processing development along with orthographic development (more on this later).
Sorry - a bit of a brain dump post - but I'd appreciate any responses and/or directions towards any applicable research.@Suchmo83 @Mr_AlmondED @TimRasinski1 @ReadingShanahan @mrspennyslater @TheReadingApe @PieCorbett @ReadingRockets @teach_well
— Mr Leyshon (@RyonWLeyshon) February 4, 2021
It is, as you suggest, a nuanced pedagogy with the tripartite algorithm of rate, accuracy and prosody at times conflating the landscape and often leading to an educational shrug of the shoulders, a convenient abdication of responsibility and a return to comprehension 'skills'.
Taking each element separately (but not hierarchically) may be helpful but always remembering that for fluency they occur simultaneously (not dissimilar to sentence structure, text structure and rhetoric in fluent writing).
Rate, or words-read-per-minute, is the easiest. Faster reading speeds are EVIDENCE of fluency development but attempting to 'teach' children(or anyone) to read faster is fallacious (Carver, 1985) and will result in processing deficit which in young readers will be catastrophic.
Reading rate is dependent upon eye-movements and cognitive processing development along with orthographic development (more on this later).
