Educational counselling is the process of giving learners specialist help to improve their academic performance.
To help a pupil and their parents professionally with weak or falling grades, or with getting on better with classmates and primary- and secondary-school staff, an educational counsellor uses particular principles, methods and tools. To that end, they may need to do one or more of the following:
– Build an accurate developmental picture of the pupil, from before birth to the present, from a specialist interview with the parents.
– Measure the client’s intelligence with suitable tools and assess it accurately.
– Refer the client to the relevant medical specialist for a precise assessment of the sensory organs and neurological functions involved in learning, and use the results in assessing the client.
– Examine carefully the cognitive processes involved in learning (such as concentration, attention, memorising, recall, association, imagery, imagination, analysis, mental synthesis, integrating sensory–motor information and so on).
– Carefully assess the client’s emotional development and stability.
– Check the client’s sensory–motor development against what is expected for their age.
– Assess general problem-solving skills and the ability to resolve conflicts with others.
– Assess the level of self-knowledge (the ability to experience and understand inner feelings, needs and wishes).
– Identify the current level of learning and the missing links in earlier learning (earlier topics and material that are needed for the current content but were not learned well).
– Examine and identify environmental barriers to learning (family problems, a crowded home, daily duties and responsibilities that reduce learning).
– Look into physical illnesses (through the health record or by consulting a doctor) and psychological disorders that affect learning, and use the findings in assessing the client.
How children’s and adolescents’ educational problems are treated:
Where assessment confirms signs of underlying problems in the child — such as neurological or psychiatric illness, behavioural disorders, delayed intellectual development, neurological disease, sensory–motor disabilities or other emotional disorders — help should also be pursued through referral to a child and adolescent psychiatrist, special-education psychologists, neurologists, child and adolescent counsellors and other relevant specialists.
Finally, using the results of these assessments, and in consultation and cooperation with the parents and with the school’s help (if needed), the counsellor designs an intervention plan. They carry out the psychological counselling parts of the plan themselves, and oversee the parts that other specialists must carry out (for example special-education specialists, social workers, school psychologists and remedial teachers). Sometimes educational counselling calls for referring the parents to a psychotherapist or psychiatrist, so that any behavioural or personality difficulties of theirs that affect the child can also be managed or treated.
What makes an educational counsellor
An educational counsellor holds at least a master’s degree in educational counselling or educational psychology, has completed supervised placements under qualified teachers, and holds a practising licence from the Psychology and Counselling Organization.
Dr Bahman Bahmani, PhD in counselling, associate professor and faculty member, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences
Learning difficulties
A learning disorder is any disorder in which a pupil’s achievement, measured by standard tests of reading, writing and arithmetic, is well below what would be expected given their age, schooling and intelligence.
Put more simply, a child with a learning disorder is a child who has no particular medical problem, is receiving the teaching they need, has intelligence more or less in the normal range, speaks well, plays like other children and relates to others like their peers — yet cannot cope with schoolwork. They struggle with spelling tests and leave out words, for example; they cannot read a text suited to their age; they cannot learn maths; or they have all of these difficulties at once. Sometimes parents even take them to a centre for intelligence testing, and are surprised to find that their intelligence is in the normal range or even above it. So how can a child who copes with the questions on these tests struggle with spelling, reading or learning maths? In many cases, even at this stage, nobody recognises the child’s problem. The family hire a private tutor, change the child’s school, and the psychological pressure on the child grows — but the underlying problem is not resolved.
Learning disabilities are found at every level and in every year, from pre-school to university. Timely diagnosis speeds recovery, which is why attention in the primary years, especially the first and second grades, matters so much.
Do all learning disorders show up in the first grade?
No. Sometimes a child with high intellectual ability compensates for a learning problem with their intelligence, and the problem does not show until the third or fourth grade. But as they move up and lessons become harder, high intelligence can no longer make up for the underlying problem, and the learning disorder shows itself. Here too parents and teachers are surprised, and wonder how, if the child has a problem, they have been a successful pupil with no difficulties until now. And again, instead of treating the real cause, they put the problem down to side issues such as an inexperienced teacher, a crowded class, unsuitable friends and classmates, and so on.
Why does assessing learning disorders matter?
Early childhood is a decisive time for every child. If parents or teachers do not notice a learning disorder in time, the child struggles to progress and learn, cannot achieve what they are capable of, and this can even change the course of their life. In many cases they are labelled as having low intelligence, hyperactivity or attention and concentration deficit. When they cannot show their abilities among their peers, they feel inferior and gradually lose confidence. Having lost confidence, they become anxious when answering in class and may even become depressed. A problem that could have been diagnosed and treated early in school, or even before it began, turns into problems that are not easily treated; the course of the child’s life changes, their own and their family’s expectations of them fall below their abilities, and sometimes they are drawn into harmful paths such as addiction to cope with the resulting anxiety and depression.
Why must learning disorders be treated?
Left untreated, learning disorders leave a pupil performing below their brain’s and intelligence’s potential and struggling to learn. The higher they go, the harder the lessons become — and since they did not properly understand the lessons of earlier years, their academic weakness grows, until they fall far below their real level and cannot take their true place in society. And because the pupil is aware of this inability to learn, it may harm their social relationships. They gradually lose confidence and develop signs such as aggression, anxiety, loss of interest in study and depression, and may turn to particular behaviours to get attention. Parents are then struggling not only with the child’s schoolwork but also with risky behaviour, disorder, aggression, resistance to rules and extreme attention-seeking; in effect, the child’s learning problem falls to second place, and the parents become exhausted and worried by these behaviours.
To assess pupils’ learning disorders, Moeen Counselling Centre offers the following services:
– Assessing the causes of attention and concentration deficit and hyperactivity in children and adolescents.
– Assessing the causes of learning disorders (spelling and maths) and looking into educational problems.
– Intelligence and personality tests for children and adults.
– Pupils’ difficulties adjusting at school and at home.
– Specialist treatment of anxiety, weak short-term memory and learning disorders with neurofeedback and biofeedback.
Prepared by Dr Shadi Nowruzali
Counselling for schools
Children are their parents’ greatest treasure, and every family hopes for a healthy, successful child. Many families have children who seem entirely typical: their physical growth, height and weight show they are developing normally. Their intelligence is normal. They speak well, play like other children and get on reasonably well with others. At home they do the tasks their parents give them well, and their behaviour and temperament are ordinary. But when they go to school and try to learn to read, write and do arithmetic, serious problems appear.
A learning disorder is any disorder in which a pupil’s achievement, measured by standard tests of reading, writing and arithmetic, is well below what would be expected given their age, schooling and intelligence.
At Moeen Counselling Centre, educational counselling and the assessment of pupils’ learning disorders are provided by experienced specialists.