Teachers' Knowledge about Students with Dyslexia and Professional Development

Abstract

Ensuring a quality educational process requires competent teachers who are able to recognize the individual characteristics of students with dyslexia and provide them with appropriate support. This study on a sample of speech and language therapists (N = 18) and elementary school teachers (N = 431) had the following aims: (1) to determine the content validity of the Teachers' Knowledge about Dyslexia Scale, (2) to explore teachers' knowledge about students with dyslexia, and (3) to determine differences in teachers' knowledge about students with dyslexia according to their participation in different forms of professional development activities (pre-service, in-service, and self-directed learning). The constructed measuring instrument contains 29 statements about etiology, characteristics, and teaching strategies for students with dyslexia. The content validity was verified using the Delphi method in three rounds until a consensus of 90 % was reached by SLT experts. The Teachers' Knowledge about Students with Dyslexia Scale was applied to a sample of Croatian elementary school teachers of first-to eighth-grade students, who had experience in teaching students with dyslexia in the last three years. The results show that most teachers know some specific strategies for teaching students with dyslexia and, to a lesser extent, the causes of dyslexia. Most of the misconceptions regarding students with dyslexia are related to its causes and specific characteristics. A higher level of knowledge about dyslexia is possessed by teachers who have received professional training in teaching students with dyslexia through pre-service, inservice, and self-directed learning. A similar pattern of insufficient deep knowledge of the etiology and symptoms of dyslexia among the teachers was confirmed, clearly indicating the need for significant improvements in teacher competencies in all forms of professional development.