The Case for Confluence and LD Teens

Abstract

LD high school students and teachers share a confluent educational experience that yields positive results for all. Those of us who work with LD adolescents are painfully aware of the dearth of &dquo;age appropriate&dquo; materials dealing with their needs. Confluent education seems to have potential for filling that gap. What is it? Confluent means a flowing together of parts; thus, confluent education integrates cognitive and affective (thinking and feeling) aspects of learners, and views education as a fluid process involving whole people (Brown 1971;Cangelosi 1982). It assumes that learning goes beyond cognitive processes (complex enough in their own right) to consider also the interaction of people's feelings (about themselves, their peers, their teachers) with those cognitive processes. Thus, interactions between teachers and students take on a style which, in the case of the LD high schooler, reflect student needs to feel competent, become independent and initiating, feel accepted by others and focus on learning-all within and appropriate to the school environment. Since teachers are whole people, too, with emotional needs as well as intellectual, it seems to me that the spirit of confluent education mandated thinking about their needs, too. Therefore, I designed a program for a high school LD setting at Harvard Libraries on June 26, 2015 isc.sagepub.com Downloaded from