Revealing Minds Assessing to Understand and

Revealing Minds is a practical, hands-on guide to assessing learning problems, based on the approach of All Kinds of Minds, the groundbreaking nonprofit institute co-founded by Mel Levine. Whereas most assessments of struggling learners focus on what is "broken" within a student and needs to be fixed, All Kinds of Minds has adopted a more positive and comprehensive approach to the process. Rather than labeling children or categorizing them into certain pre-defined groups, their optimistic and helpful path creates a complete picture (or "profile") of each student, outlining the child's assets along with any weaknesses, and identifying specific breakdown points that lead to problems at school.The process of assessment should be able to answer a question such as, "Why is my son struggling with reading?" with a better answer than, "Because he has a reading disability." Revealing Minds shows how to discover hidden factors-such as language functioning, memory ability, or attention control-that are impeding a student's learning. It goes beyond labels and categories to help readers understand whata??s really going on with their students and create useful learning plans.Providing scores of real-life examples, definitions of key terms, helpful diagrams, tables, and sample assessments, Pohlman offers a useful roadmap for educators, psychologists, and other professionals to implement the All Kinds of Minds approach in their own assessments.

Craig Pohlman, Ph.D., NCSP, is a licensed psychologist at All Kinds of Minds, a nonprofit institute helping struggling learners improve their success in school and in life. He has conducted and supervised thousands of assessments of students from kindergarten through college.

Assessing to understand	p. 1
The case for phenomenology	p. 2
Profiles as tools for understanding students	p. 2
Answering the question why? (and why that matters)	p. 5
Identifying assets (and why they matter)	p. 7
Neurodevelopmental variation as normal variation	p. 9
Why the focus on assessment	p. 9
The approach of this book	p. 10
My perspective and background	p. 12
Assessment is both complex and simple	p. 13
The need for a framework	p. 15
The prepared mind	p. 15
The pitfalls of being atheoretical	p. 17
Conceptual correctness	p. 18
Theoretical frameworks for understanding learning	p. 20
A neurodevelopmental framework	p. 23
Other factors that may impede learning	p. 27
Selecting a framework : a choice for the professional	p. 29
The art of task-analysis	p. 31
Two types of reasoning	p. 32
Analysis of academic skills	p. 33
Analysis of assessment tasks	p. 36
Constructing learning plans	p. 38
Task-analysis as an assessment tool	p. 40
Making linkages	p. 41
Functions versus skills	p. 41
Linkages	p. 43
Why linkages matter	p. 44
Major linkages between skill deficits and neurodevelopmental functions	p. 47
Assessing from multiple angles	p. 55
Assessment and testing	p. 55
Multi-method assessment	p. 56
Qualitative and quantitative findings	p. 58
Dynamic and standardized techniques	p. 62
Limit testing	p. 64
What history can reveal	p. 65
Assets and affinities	p. 68
The case for teamwork	p. 70
Assessment as a process	p. 71
Comparing and contrasting angles	p. 72
A better use of the discrepancy concept	p. 73
Clinical contrasts	p. 74
Academic task to academic task	p. 76
Neurodevelopmental task to neurodevelopmental task	p. 79
Neurodevelopmental task to academic task	p. 87
Clinical branching logic	p. 93
Contrasts in history reports	p. 99
A tool for better understanding	p. 100
Searching for recurring themes	p. 101
Making the case	p. 101
Examples of recurring themes	p. 104
Potential hazards in the search for recurring themes	p. 108
Tactics for organizing findings	p. 109
Change in course	p. 112
Assessing attention	p. 115
The construct of attention	p. 115
Some important distinctions	p. 119
General assessment considerations	p. 122
Tasks designed to assess aspects of attention	p. 125
Task-analysis for attention	p. 132
Attention signs and symptoms	p. 135
Secondary attention deficits	p. 139
Assessing memory	p. 143
The construct of memory	p. 144
Some important distinctions	p. 145
General assessment considerations	p. 147
Tasks designed to assess types of memory	p. 150
Task-analysis for memory	p. 159
Memory signs and symptoms	p. 162
Assessing language	p. 167
The construct of language	p. 167
Some important distinctions	p. 171
General assessment considerations	p. 175
Tasks designed to assess components of language	p. 177
Task-analysis for language	p. 185
Language signs and symptoms	p. 188
Other neurodevelopmental factors to consider	p. 195
Spatial ordering	p. 195
Temporal-sequential ordering	p. 202
Neuromotor function	p. 203
Conceptualization	p. 207
Reasoning and Logic	p. 210
Creativity	p. 213
Social cognition	p. 214
Cross-construct phenomena	p. 216
Degree of context	p. 218
Other factors that can affect learning	p. 219
Organization	p. 221
Turning the corner	p. 223
Telling the story	p. 225
Importance of demystification	p. 225
Guidelines for written reports	p. 230
Communicating outside the box	p. 232
Understanding to assess	p. 237
Having new eyes	p. 237
Making the case	p. 238
The virtues of splitting	p. 239
Framing the work	p. 240
Preparing the mind	p. 241
Passionate curiosity	p. 242
Talking the talk and walking the walk	p. 243
Supporting research for a neurodevelopmental framework
Assessment task-analysis guide
Index of potential findings
Tests and batteries for neurodevelopmental assessment
Learning plan resources
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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Revealing Minds Assessing to Understand and Support Struggling Learners

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

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