Educational Therapy

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Educational Therapy is a method of working with children and adults who struggle with learning. It is a technique that combines psychoanalytic, neuropsychological, and educational insight and techniques.

Educational Therapy offers children and adults with learning disabilities and other learning challenges a wide range of intensive, individualized interventions designed to remediate learning problems. It demystifies learning problems and stimulates clients’ awareness of their strengths so they can use those strengths to best advantage to overcome or compensate for areas of weakness.

Children in school can experience difficulties, which may prevent them from accessing the curriculum and managing in class. A better understanding of the complex issues underlying these problems helps teachers to find new ways of thinking about children and strategies for helping them both therapeutically and by preventing difficulties from developing.

It benefits children and young people with:-

• Learning and communication difficulties
  
• Poor social behaviour in school
  
• Poor social relationships
  
• The threat of school exclusion
  
• Children who have experienced separations, accidents, bereavement, mental or physical illness in the family, violence, sexual abuse or emotional deprivation and are unable to concentrate and learn in school.
  

These pupils are often identified early in their school career and given additional support to which they do not fully respond. Educational therapy can be offered as a preventive intervention at this stage.

The child or young person meets with the therapist, usually for one session a week for 50 minutes. Treatment takes place during school term time and may last for four terms or more. The use of stories, drawings, educational activities, games and play provide experiences which help the child make sense of their difficulties and gain the confidence necessary to become a learner. Regular interviews are held parents/carers and with teachers. Educational therapy can also take place in groups.

The purpose of Educational Therapy is:

• To develop a relationship which enables the child or young person to feel more settled in the classroom
  
• To explore and resolve the emotional difficulties which are holding back learning
  
• To encourage the child to make emotional and social progress.
  

The Association of Educational Therapists (AET) is the national professional association for educational therapists. AET is dedicated to defining the professional practice of educational therapy, setting standards for ethical practice, and promoting state-of-the-art service delivery through on-going professional development and training programs. AET provides information to the public about educational therapy and facilitates access to educational therapy services.

Educational Therapist

An educational therapist is a professional who works with young children, adolescents and adults for the evaluation and treatment of learning problems. These problems may include, but are not limited to, dyslexia; attention deficit disorder; reading, writing, language or math problems; academic self-esteem and motivation; social skills; organization and study skills; school and college placement; and job performance. As special education legislation and services change and the demands of society grow, the role of the educational therapist is becoming increasingly valuable.

Educational therapists create and implement an Individualized_Education_Program (IEP) that utilizes information from a variety of sources including the child’s social, emotional, psychoeducational, and neuropsychological context.

Educational therapists can also provide case management including communicating with teachers, the school counselor and/or learning specialist, speech and language therapist, occupational therapist, psychologist, social worker, or psychiatrist who may work with the child in order to coordinate services and facilitate better understanding of the child’s learning needs and development. An educational therapist often assists in developing more effective IEP and 504 plans.

A 504 plan is a legal document that outlines a plan of instructional services for students in the general education setting. Child with ADHD often have a 504 plan. While not an IEP, the document usually describes the types of accommodations that will be made for a child in school. This section contains articles that provide helpful information about 504s and various types of accommodations.

Educational therapy is a career choice for classroom teachers; resource specialists; special education teachers; speech/language specialists; education specialists in community agencies, hospitals, or clinics; and counselors and social workers. It is also a means for trained therapists (MFTs) to broaden their expertise and therapy skill set, allowing them to work effectively with clients who exhibit learning differences.

Prerequisites/Professional Requirements

While a master's degree in a related field is highly recommended, it is not a prerequisite for admission. Required is appropriate professional experience in classroom or resource teaching, special education, counseling, psychology, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, or social work.

UK Information

In the UK Educational Therapy is considered an appropriate mental health and educational provision. It may be recommended by educational psychologists at later stages of the UK Code of Practice in a Statement of Special Educational Needs. Training as an educational therapist is available to teachers and educational psychologists through a UK charity called Caspari. whose web site is http://www.caspari.org.uk.

US Information

The Association of Educational Therapists (AET) is a national professional organization first formed in California in 1979 to meet the needs of a subgroup of special educators whose work melded the clinical with the educational models of intervention. This clinical teaching model, brought to America from Europe in the 1940s by pioneers like Marianne Frostig, Katrina DeHirsch and others, was inspired by the work, called heilpedagogie, of August Aichorn in Vienna. Many of these practitioners, in preparing for this unique pedagogy, had independently trained themselves from the course offerings of two or more disciplines, from fields such as special education, psychology, speech/language, and child development.

Because of the lack of specific university training programs offering this sort of multidisciplinary curriculum, as well as uncertainty in America about the definition and domain of the practice of educational therapy, AET was established as a professional organization to formally define educational therapy and to establish principles of practice and standards for academic and experiential training needed for such practice.

AET defines an educational therapist as a professional who combines both educational and therapeutic approaches for evaluation, remediation, case management, and communication/advocacy on behalf of individuals of all ages with learning disabilities or learning problems.

Standards of practice and ethics were codified by AET and have become the foundation for professional membership. Supervision and continuing education provided by the association offer both neophytes and experienced practitioners alike the opportunity to supplement and expand training in those areas most needed.

AET has worked in partnership with several major universities and colleges to develop training programs specific to the needs of educational therapists. These model programs have been refined so that they can be implemented throughout the country as well as provide curriculum for delivery through Distance Learning over the Internet. The goal has been to assure that educational therapists have skills in the following psychoeducational therapeutic processes:

1) formal and informal educational assessment;
2) synthesis of information from other specialists;
3) understanding the client's psychosocial context of family/school/-community/ culture;
4) development and implementation of appropriate remedial programs for school-related learning and behavior problems;
5) strategy training for addressing social and emotional as well as academic aspects of learning problems;
6) formation of supportive relationships with the individual and with those involved in his educational development;
7) facilitation of communication between the individual, the family, the school, and involved professionals.

AET web site is http://www.aetonline.org.

See also

• Art therapy
• Music therapy
• Psychoeducation
• Psychotherapy
• Remedial education
• Schooll counselling
• Special education

References

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