New Guidance: What to Look For When Selecting Interventions

Home > Advocacy  > New Guidance: What to Look For When Selecting Interventions

27 Jan New Guidance: What to Look For When Selecting Interventions

Posted at 12:30h in Advocacy by

Dyslexia Ireland is often asked by schools which literacy programmes we would recommend to best support the needs of learners with dyslexia. We very much understand the motivation of such requests, as schools strive to ensure that they are using the best possible resources to support dyslexic needs.

There are however well-known limitations of the research evidence-base in this area, especially a lack of sufficiently controlled studies that allow comparisons between specific programmes, or that adequately look at long-term outcomes. Dyslexia Ireland is therefore not able to act as a ‘clearing house’ that can provide advice on each and every literacy programme that is available to Irish schools.

Despite these challenges, Dyslexia Ireland has been very keen to provide supportive advice to schools and so has created this brand new guidance to help schools when selecting literacy programmes to support dyslexic learners.

The guidance provides a user-friendly tool for teachers and school leaders to help evaluate their existing literacy resources, and also to assist when considering acquiring new programmes. It does this by summarising core features of literacy programmes for dyslexic learners into three categories:

  • Must Have – features that are absolutely essential in any programme.
  • Nice to Have – positive features of good programmes, but not essential.
  • Red Flags – features indicative of programmes that are best avoided.

The guidance is based on a detailed analysis of overall scientific findings as to what works best for children with dyslexia, consistent with the current research on the Science of Reading. It has been created in collaboration with a working group of Irish experts on literacy and dyslexia, and will be reviewed regularly to ensure it remains up-to-date and accurate.

We hope this guidance will serve to give confidence to schools that they are using the best possible resources to optimise the educational outcomes for their dyslexic learners.