International Studies in Sociology of Education

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Dyslexia and inclusion: Time for a social model of

disability perspective?

Barbara Riddick

To cite this article: Barbara Riddick (2001) Dyslexia and inclusion: Time for a social model
of disability perspective?, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 11:3, 223-236, DOI:
10.1080/09620210100200078

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International Studies in Sociology of Education, Volume 11, Number 3, 2001

Dyslexia and Inclusion:

time for a social model
of disability perspective?
BARBARA RIDDICK
Hammerton Hall, Sunderland, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT Prevailing clinical and educational models of dyslexia have

focused on effective ways of addressing the proposed core deficits such as poor
phonological skills. These models have been helpful in guiding intervention and
bringing about some improvements in children’s literacy performance (Hatcher,
1994). From a social model of disability perspective these models have not
considered sufficiently how cultural factors such as specified school literacy
standards can transform the impairments that some children have into
disabilities. The underlying tenet of inclusion is that the school should adapt its
practice to accommodate the child (Clark et al, 1995; Jenkinson, 1997). This
would suggest that an examination of the social model of disability perspective
may have a role to play in future school policy and practice across Europe in
respect to literacy.

Throughout Europe there is increasing awareness of the problems faced by

children with dyslexia (Salter, 1995). A medical or clinical model of dyslexia
has focused on the underlying cognitive impairments with phonological
difficulties at the forefront (Snowling, 1998). Frith (1999) proposes that a
causal model in which there are three levels of description is the most helpful
way to define and explain dyslexia at present. She argues that at a biological
level there is often a genetic origin, at a cognitive level this appears to lead to
specific processing deficits and in consequence at a behavioural level a child
displays poor reading and writing. She emphasises that there are ‘vast’
differences between biological and behavioural levels of explanation and that
the environment plays a critical mediating role.
Educational models of dyslexia also place importance on the mediating
effects of the environment but usually in terms of some deficiency in the
environment such as inadequate teaching methods, or inadequate exposure
to literacy, which exacerbates the difficulties that children have. In Britain,
for example, dyslexia is often subsumed under the more generic title of
specific learning difficulties, and is thus seen as part of a continuum of special
needs.

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Barbara Riddick

This type of educational model holds up the aim of intervention as

enabling children to reach culturally acceptable standards of literacy (Todd,
2000). To date there appears to have been little examination or questioning
of these ‘standards’ of literacy in relation to dyslexia.
Proponents of a social model of disability (Oliver & Barnes, 1998)
argue that although individuals may have impairments these are only
transformed into disabilities by the negative attitudes of the society they live
in. From this perspective the impairments underlying dyslexia have only
become a major difficulty because of the move towards mass literacy and the
consequent negative connotations attached to being ‘illiterate’. Because mass
literacy was attendant on mass schooling the notions of being ‘educated’ and
being ‘literate’ have become inextricably bound together in many European
cultures.
Interestingly recent research comparing the learning of reading and
spelling in different European languages demonstrates that languages vary in
how much of a problem they pose for individuals with dyslexia. Miles &
Miles (1999) have demonstrated that there is a gradient of difficulty from an
‘easy’ language like Italian which is phonologically transparent to a ‘difficult’
language like English which is not phonologically transparent. From a social
perspective making English as phonologically transparent as Italian would
significantly decrease the difficulties that English speaking dyslexics
encounter.
In the same light the degree to which the underlying impairments of
dyslexia becomes a disability will depend on prevailing cultural norms for
literacy. In the sixteenth century spelling was more flexible and alternative
spellings of many words were acceptable (as witnessed in Shakespeare’s
writing). It is likely that, William Butler Yeats, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian
Andersen and Scott Fitzgerald (West, 1991) would all fail the additional
literacy tests that many trainee teachers in England must pass in order to
become teachers. James Maxwell, Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein are
all documented as very poor spellers (West, 1991) and under current GCSE
regulations in England would all be in danger of having up to 5% deducted
for spelling and punctuation in all subjects including physics.
It is estimated that up to 10% of individuals have dyslexia type
difficulties (Peer, 1996) and that 4-5% (Frith, 1999; Miles & Miles, 1999)
have severe difficulties. In a spirit of inclusion this would suggest that as well
as an intervention model focused on ‘improving’ children’s performance we
need to consider whether a social model which challenges some of our beliefs
and assumptions about literacy is needed.

A Social Model of Disability

Shakespeare & Watson (1998) identified 3 problems with the existing
literature on disabled childhood:
1. Most literature is by non disabled people discussing disabled people.

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2. Most literature is by adults discussing children.

3. Disability is defined as a problem, within a model which is individualistic
and medicalised.
The social model of disability which arose in the 1970s argues that people are
disabled by discrimination and prejudice, not by their impairments.
According to this perspective disability is the social restriction placed on
people with impairments by society. They claim that by putting the emphasis
on impairments the focus is on altering the individual rather than altering
society.
Even with in writing on the social model of disability there is debate
about the relative weight that should be given to individual experience of
impairment within this context (Crow, 1996; Williams, 1996).

The Background to Inclusive Education:

Excellence for all Children (1997) Green Paper
This Paper (DfEE, 1997) sets out the British governments proposals for
special educational needs and inclusive education in the context of general
political concern about creating an inclusive society. Fuchs & Fuchs (1994)
claim that integration is about children fitting into the mainstream school
without any major changes to its curriculum or style of teaching and learning.
Whereas inclusion is about the school changing its style of teaching and
learning to accommodate all pupils:
It goes far beyond integration to focus on new conceptions of ordinary
schooling, not with developing individual programmes for particular
pupils; it is a matter of school reform, not pupil placement. It is about
fitting schools to pupils, not socialising pupils to pre-set norms of
learning and behaviour. (Hegarty, 1991, p. 90)
Critics saw many of these proposals as unrealistic, one of their major
criticisms was that the proposals for curriculum change did not reflect the
growing concern from government and community for higher academic
standards combined with the school effectiveness movement.
The tensions at school level for inclusion and high literacy standards are
also reflected in higher education where the notion of ‘graduateness’ put
forward by the HEQC (Higher Education Quality Control, 1996) includes:
... ancillary qualities that would be expected of a graduate ... would be
likely to include such things as the ability to write in a grammatically
acceptable and correctly spelt English. (Para. 14)
It goes on to say:
There seems to be irresistible arguments that no one should graduate
who lacks such ancillary skills; but there is anecdotal evidence that this
can occur. If this is so it should be condemned and should remedied.
(Para. 15)

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Barbara Riddick

The Warnock Report (1978) and Subsequent 1981 Act

The Warnock Report (for England and Wales) (DES, 1978) proposed the
idea of a continuum of special educational needs and suggested they were
relative to context. Various critics (Tomlinson, 1982) have pointed out that
although Warnock tried to change the conceptualisation of deficiency located
within individual children that special educational needs as a term soon took
on a similar function. So that rather than the school changing radically it was
the individual child who was still seen as in need of remediation. Fraser
(1995) sees this as a constant process of redefining children as deficient.
Fraser claims that in considering social justice we can distinguish
between affirmative and transformative strategies. Affirmative strategies are
about trying to compensate without changing the fundamental social
structures whereas with transformative strategies changes in fundamental
social structures take place. She claims that the present situation is
contradictory in that children have to be identified or labelled as deficient
(cultural discrimination) in order to receive appropriate support. Christensen
(1996) argues that disability is treated in a non problematic manner as
intrinsic to the individual child rather than as socially constructed. She goes
on to argue that for mild disabilities such as specific learning difficulties and
behaviour difficulties this is often the case because school prescribes a narrow
band of acceptable behaviour or learning which does not accommodate the
diversity of student characteristics. Some would argue that IEPs (individual
education plans) although they were intended to address curriculum
adaptation have focused on remediating the individual child and in doing so
have perpetuated the notion of the deficient child.
Disability theorists like Oliver (1986) claim that we need to view
disability as a form of social oppression and not as an individual personal
tragedy. They argue that ‘impairment’ refers to any physical difference or
defect and that disability is the consequent restriction placed on them by the
way that society is organised. This raises important issues for dyslexia. Under
this conceptualisation a phonological impairment could lead to disability
because of society and particularly school’s attitudes to literacy. A particular
dilemma for not evident disabilities is that individuals often have to fight hard
to have them recognised before they are in a position to challenge the society
that has helped to produce them. Howe (1996) suggests that some disabled
groups may not want compensation because of the negative costs to their
identity and in some cases it might be fruitless. Norman Kunc (1992) has
cerebral palsy and points out that no amount of physiotherapy will enable a
child with severe cerebral palsy to walk or talk normally. This is not to deny
the importance of support or compensation. The key issue is where the line is
drawn:
Should we expect all children with dyslexia to become perfect spellers?
Should we expect all children with dyslexia to become fluent and accurate
at reading aloud?

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Should we expect all children with dyslexia to have legible handwriting?

To some extent information technology has helped us side step this issue. As
children get older they can learn to word process their work and spell check
it.
Spellcheckers may help in as little as 40% of misspellings (MacArthur et
al, 1996) and the worse someone’s spelling the more problematic they find
using a spell checker. Despite advancing technology at present individuals
with dyslexia report having to spend significantly longer on a variety of
literacy tasks. Riddick et al (1997) carried out semi-structured interviews
with 16 university students identified as dyslexic. One of the students was
asked if he would make use of the new literacy support centre that had just
opened. He replied ‘no’, on the grounds that he had spent the whole of his
life having to spend extra time on literacy tasks and that he had decided he
was no longer willing to pay this price and that from now on he wanted to
spend his spare time or more positive activities.
Another student questioned the prevailing cultural attitudes to spelling:
I’d spell things phonetically instead of how they should have been and I
still don’t see that as a difficulty. Language has been evolving and
changing with what is best but now it has stopped evolving and
changing because everyone has tied down the rules. So unfortunately
through evolution we can’t get rid of stupid words we will always have
‘k’ on the front of knife. In the old days nobody would have bothered
putting the ‘k’ infront, there is no reason for it at all, n.i.f.e. would do
perfectly well it wouldn’t clash with any other words. (Riddick et al,
1997, p. 148)
Mark Twain suggested that poor spelling was partly the result of what he
called the ‘non-fonetic’ nature of English.
This issue of English being phonetically irregular has been highlighted
by recent cross cultural research comparing the difficulties posed by different
languages for children learning to read and spell. Some languages are more
transparent than English in that there is a more direct relationship between
phoneme and grapheme these include Italian, Spanish, German, Finish,
Turkish and Welsh. English had its roots in German phonology but when it
was written down Latin letters were used to represent Old German sounds,
in some cases the correspondence between the Latin letters and the German
sounds was poor. The Norman invasion then added French words so that
more irregularities were introduced. In Shakespeare’s time spelling was more
flexible with alternative spellings of the same word tolerated. Elmes (1999)
points out that in the late middle English of Chaucer there were over 500
different recorded ways of spelling ‘through’.
There is growing evidence that more ‘transparent’ languages (although
not without their difficulties) are generally easier for beginning readers. Oney
& Goldman (1986) found for example that first grade Turkish children
generally outperformed third grade American children on a 4-, 6- and 8-letter

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word reading task. Interestingly Turkish was radically reformed in the 1920s
to simplify spelling.
Landerl et al (1997) compared the reading of English and German
dyslexic children and found that once they went beyond short high frequency
words that the differences between English and German children were
considerable.
They noted that:
English dyslexic children suffered far more severe impairments in
reading than German dyslexic children ... The differences between the
English and the German dyslexic children were comparatively small for
the short high frequency words. For all other conditions however the
differences were enormous. (p. 328)
All these researchers conclude that dyslexic children can be identified in all
languages but English as one of the most irregular and complex languages
researched to date gives such children considerably more difficulty. Spencer
(2000) argues that we should make English speaking children aware that they
are learning a difficult written language and that any deficiencies lie in the
language rather than in themselves. He suggests that reform of the language
should be considered and that if we do not go down this road we have to
acknowledge that we are seriously disadvantaging dyslexic children by not
doing so. If we make a crude analogy with physical and sensory impairments
this can perhaps be seen as an access issue.
Although the two are inextricably linked the other major issue for all
people with impairments is the attitudes and particularly the prejudices of the
dominant society. In the case of impairments like dyslexia or specific leaning
difficulties these attitudes focus primarily on their literacy skills.

Attitudes to Literacy
West (1991) argues that too often language is treated as a unitary construct
and this leads to the surprise that people express when someone who is
perceived as highly literate is found to be a poor speller. He cites the example
of William Butler Yeats who in West’s opinion was clearly dyslexic. The
editor of Yeats’s memoirs commented:
Handwriting is difficult ... As for spelling and punctuation, Yeats never
mastered those skills. If Yeats’ bad handwriting has one virtue it is that
it disguises his even worse spelling.
The editor also commented on Yeats’s letter of application for the Chair of
English at Trinity College, Dublin:
Unhappily the eager aspirant to a Chair of English contrives to spell the
sought after office ‘proffership’.

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A reviewer of Yeats’s first volume of letters published in 1986 was so

horrified by Yeats’s spelling that he included a small sample of them in a
spoof sentence:
The subtile and gorgious origonality of these vigerus Keltic letters shows
such scholorship as to leave the reader fealing decideldy exausted.
Yeats did not know his alphabet at the age of 8 and was considered ‘mentally
lacking’ by relatives. Yeats’s father wrote in a letter that his aunts and uncles
saw him as ‘unsuccessful and therefore wicked’.
Two points are raised by these comments about Yeats. One is the
degree of scorn and outrage expressed towards someone who cannot spell.
This seems particularly strong where someone is perceived to be an academic
or thinker of some note. The implicit assumption underlying this appears to
be that scholarship or deep thought is incompatible with poor spelling. The
person is therefore seen as either bogus or arrogant and lazy in flouting the
rules of spelling.
Related to this is a second point that this scorn and contempt from
others gives some children the message that they are unworthy or even ‘bad’:
As a child I was very withdrawn, after I was assessed (late teens) I
realised there was a problem, and it was all linked with being stupid,
but also linked with not being a terribly good person because of being
stupid. (Dyslexic Student, quoted in Riddick et al, 1997, p. 39)

When I was a child I thought I had done something dreadfully bad and
that I was being punished and there was some god or gods playing with
my little life just to torment me. (Dyslexic Student, quoted in Riddick et
al, 1997, p. 65)
The first models or conceptualisations of dyslexia were ‘medical’ ones in that
they were suggested by clinicians such as Hinshelwood (1917), an eye
surgeon working in Glasgow, and Orton (1937), a neurologist working in the
USA. Hinshelwood characterised dyslexia as ‘congenital word blindness’.
Orton maintained, although there were visual difficulties, that the term ‘word
blindness’ was misleading as there was no ‘blindness’ in the conventional
sense of the word but that visual distortions and reversals of letters and words
seemed to be at the route of the problem. These models therefore saw
specific (often inherited) organic impairments as the basis of dyslexia. These
medical models of dyslexia in alliance with educational notions of
remediation formed the basis for some of the early interventions at places like
the ‘Word Blind Institute’ in Copenhagen and the ‘Word Blind Centre’ in
London. From a social model of disability perspective they were operating on
a deficit model of dyslexia with the aim of correcting or lessening these
deficits. Over the last 30 years the focus on visual difficulties as the basis of
dyslexia has been supplanted by the emphasis on language processing
difficulties and more particularly difficulties in ‘phonology’ in other words
processing speech sounds. Although there is still debate over the underlying

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basis of dyslexia these approaches like the older ones still focus on the
apparent underlying deficits or deficiencies that produce dyslexia. This large
body of cognitive research evidence has been important in validating the
construct of dyslexia and providing ‘evidence’ in the face of disbelief and
hostility. It raises interesting questions about what is considered as valid
evidence and the importance of what is considered ‘objective ‘evidence rather
than personal evidence in arguing a case. Such evidence has also been
important in informing the kinds of intervention that will be most effective in
remediating literacy difficulties.

Educational Models
Perhaps because dyslexia was seen as emanating from a medical model, and
was not an obvious impairment like a physical or sensory one, there was
strong scepticism towards it from many educationalists. Tonnessen (1999)
suggests that in the 1950s and 1960s difficulties with reading and writing
were commonly attributed to poor or incomplete education.
Miles & Miles (1990) commenting on attitudes to dyslexia in Britain
note that:
In the 1970’s the reaction of the educational establishment to the concept
of dyslexia was largely hostile and in some quarters it continues to be so,
even though, overall, this hostility is becoming less.
Paradoxically it may have been partly because educationalists in the ’60s and
’70s were uncomfortable with a deficit model that that they were so reluctant
to accept the construct of dyslexia. The unfortunate side effect of this for
many children was that mis-attributions were made about their reading and
writing difficulties which were often put down to lack of intellectual capacity
or lack of motivation or a poor home environment with attendant emotional
difficulties. So for many children a more inaccurate and damning deficit
model was applied that offered little hope of effective support.
From the 1980s onwards an increasing proportion of educationalists in
Britain have moved towards accepting the construct of dyslexia or specific
learning difficulties
Within schools a model of dyslexia prevails which sees underlying
processing difficulties especially in phonology as the root cause (British
Psychological Society, 1999). Various early interventions like reading
recovery aim to improve phonological and other deficiencies. It could be
argued that the considerable body of research emphasising the importance of
phonology to reading and spelling has influenced the National Literacy
Strategy which incorporates systematic phonological teaching within its
framework. Piotrowski & Reason (2000) suggest that the influence of special
education on the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) has been underestimated.
They point out that there are many commonalties between special
programmes and materials for children with dyslexia type difficulties and

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aspects of the NLS framework. The NLS operates under the same tension as
education overall in its desire to attain high literacy standards and high levels
of inclusion. An approach designed to improve all children’s literacy through
balanced and systematic teaching is to be applauded. But it is important that
those children who struggle to attain targets are not made to feel deficient
and demoralised. Smith et al (2001) in a survey of teachers experiences of the
Literacy hour found that whereas it benefitted the majority of children for
those with severe literacy difficulties neither the structure or the learning
objectives of the literacy hour were deemed appropriate. A review of outcome
studies on the NLS (Lingard, 2000) concludes that it has had little impact on
those children with the lowest literacy attainments.
One of the major distinctions that can be made is between what
Goffman (1968 ) terms ‘evident’ and ‘not evident’ disabilities. An evident
disability like a physical or visual impairment is one that is usually obvious to
an onlooker whereas a not evident disability like autism or dyslexia is one that
is not immediately obvious to an onlooker. It may be that labels are
particularly important for non evident disabilities in that they can mediate
between the individual and their cultural context and explain certain
difficulties that they have and thus help to prevent inaccurate or negative
attributions.
Andy, the dyslexic student with probably the severest impairments in
the Riddick et al (1997) study, talked about the problems of having a not
evident disability:
There are times in the library if I had a white stick and a guide dog I
wouldn’t feel so bad. Sometimes I can’t find something and I can’t find
it for looking for it, and everything is blending in to one another ...
Then I go and ask the librarian and on several occasions they have been
really rude and said it is on the shelf all you have to do is look for it.
(p. 38)
A 13-year-old dyslexic boy commented on his frustration at being told by
teachers that he must ‘try harder’ to spell correctly. He pointed out that they
wouldn’t tell the child with partial sight in his class that he must ‘try harder’
to see.
The most common informal label that children and students perceived
they had been given at school was that they were ‘thick’, ‘stupid’, ‘lazy’ or
‘careless’:
They thought I was this idiotic moron.
This student in common with others reported that he internalised this
message or informal label:
I truly thought I was thick and just couldn’t do it.
Like other children and students he reported that an important part of having
a formal label was that it countered the negative view of himself generated by
the informal labelling process:

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Barbara Riddick

Once I got the assessment it was like one of the greatest days of my life,
it was like yes I’m not thick.
Peter a mature student who was not identified until his mid 30s had very
negative experiences at school and strongly objected to the school’s notion
that he was careless and lazy:
I think it’s the person who dismisses it that’s being lazy.
From a social model of disability perspective it appears that it has to be
demonstrated that individuals with dyslexia have a legitimate impairment
before it is possible to consider how cultural practices and norms have added
to the degree of disability.
West (1991) wonders if the move away from apprenticeship training
and the academic nature of nearly all learning has exacerbated the difficulties
that dyslexics face:
While it is good that specific remedial help is now available for those
with learning disabilities we ought not too forget the great advantage of
being able to work and pay one’s own way using one’s strengths, while
one is slowly dealing with areas of weakness and difficulty. (p. 55)
Although there is still debate several authors including West (1991) and
Singleton (1999) are suggesting that dyslexics may have cognitive strengths
as well as weaknesses:
The deficit model of dyslexia is now steadily giving way to one in which
dyslexia is increasingly recognised as a difference in cognition and
learning.(Singleton, 1999, p. 27)
From a disability rights perspective it is important that dyslexia does not bar
individuals from educational and vocational opportunities that they are
otherwise qualified for. The report on Dyslexia in Higher Education (Singleton
1999) found that 7 institutions explicitly stated that they did not admit
students with dyslexia to teacher training courses. In an update to this report
Singleton (2001) found that the situation had not improved and he
highlighted this as an area of particular concern. Feedback from trainee
teachers and would be trainee teachers with dyslexia suggests that many more
departments informally bar them or are reluctant to admit them sometimes
without interviewing them or looking at their pattern of strengths and
weaknesses. This reluctance on the part of departments is partly because of
the governments stringent literacy and numeracy standards for trainee
teachers in all subject areas. Teacher training departments like schools
seemed to be caught between the opposing forces for inclusion and higher
academic standards.
In a recent study by the author (Riddick, 2001) semi-structured
interviews were carried out with seven dyslexic teachers and five dyslexic
trainee teachers. Out of the five trainee teachers, two did not declare their
dyslexia when they applied for training because of previous discrimination.

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The three trainees who did declare their dyslexia, when applying, all
encountered negative attitudes and comments about their dyslexia, “When I
said I’d got dyslexic some places wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole”.
The teachers ranged in experience from one newly qualified teacher to
teachers with over 30 years’ experience. In role they covered primary and
secondary, mainstream and special school and ranged from class teachers to a
head of department and a head teacher. Both the teachers and trainee
teachers were able to describe the effective coping strategies that they used to
overcome any literacy difficulties they had in the classroom. All of them
stressed the importance of planning and preparing ahead with experienced
teachers feeling less need to do this than newly qualified and trainee teachers.
All of them felt on balance that being dyslexic was an advantage to them as a
teacher because it made them more empathic towards children who were
struggling. Those who had been given specific support for their dyslexia felt
they were able to utilise these strategies in supporting children and suggesting
methods of support to their teaching colleagues. The trainee teachers
generally felt that although they coped well on their teaching placements that
they were frightened of being ‘found out’ and would have welcomed more
support on developing their coping strategies. Most teachers and trainee
teachers were selective about who at school they told about their dyslexia,
usually confining it to trusted colleagues because of fear that it would be seen
as incompatible with being a competent teacher:
I feel like I sometimes scraped by because sometimes you cover it up and
nobody knows. (Dyslexic teacher)
Goffman (1968) uses the term ‘passing’ to describe these kind of strategies
where a person tries to hide some aspect of his or her self for which they
think they might be stigmatised.
One trainee who decided to tell her teaching practice school of her
dyslexia was told:
There will be zero tolerance of spelling errors.
An experienced dyslexic teacher commented on the impact the current
emphasis on high literacy standards was having in her school:
Enormous pressure. There are a number of staff where it’s not tolerated.
Teachers were therefore in the contradictory position of feeling their
disability enhanced their teaching performance but might discredit them in
the eyes of the wider educational establishment. In the current climate of
inclusion it seems ironic that many dyslexic teachers and especially trainee
teachers still do not feel fully accepted by the educational establishment when
it could be argued that they have an important role in helping schools to
develop a better understanding of the experiences of children with special
needs. Vogt (1997) argues that tolerance in education is crucial because it
can prevent negative beliefs and attitudes from becoming actions. It was
noted by Bowe et al (1992) that educational policies are an expression of

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Barbara Riddick

values and how they should be implemented. They suggest that a particular
dilemma is how to foster a degree of ‘tolerance without latitude’.
The cognitive impairment model has served us well in developing
effective identification and intervention for individuals with dyslexia.
However there are concerns or limitations to this perspective. Snowling
(2000) in a review of intervention studies noted that even one of the most
successful recent studies reported that 20-25 % of children were still poor
readers at the end of the study. Several studies (Felton & Wood, 1989;
Bruck, 1990; Snowling et al, 1997) have found that underlying impairments
in cognitive skills such as rapid naming, verbal short term memory, and
phonological awareness persist into adulthood for individuals with dyslexia.
This kind of evidence suggests that an approach focused solely on
remediating difficulties will not always be sufficient and that at some point a
social model of disability perspective, which questions current assumptions,
norms and practices in relation to literacy, needs to be included. One of the
experienced teachers with dyslexia whilst upholding the need for high literacy
standards commented:
I mean it’s very political (language and spelling)... very elitist ... and
it’s about power.
The current attempts to improve levels of adult and school literacy are
commendable The issue is how to do this without increasing intolerance
towards those with specific literacy difficulties. A social model of disability
perspective which challenges peoples negative assumptions and mis-
attributions towards children and adults with specific literacy difficulties may
have an important role to play in achieving both high literacy standards and
high tolerance.

Correspondence
Barbara Riddick, School of Education, Hammerton Hall, Gray Road,
Sunderland SR2 8JB, United Kingdom (barbara.riddick@sunderland.ac.uk).

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