The diagnostic hypotheses in the cases of schooldifficulties:

experience in multiprofissional team

Abstract

In the teaching, educational, and clinical practice, the use of terminologies, especially concerning school difficulties, is not straightforward. At the Psycho-Educational Laboratory of UNIDERP, when attending to children and adolescents from public schools for evaluation and/or intervention, the terminologies Learning Disorders (LD), Difficulty in School Learning (DSL), and Specific Disorder of Reading and Writing (DRW) are employed, based on definitions and delimitations proposed in the literature. The objective of the present work was to verify the efficiency of using these terminologies for the diagnostic hypotheses formulated through learning evaluations. All protocols from the cases attended were consulted, and the diagnostic hypotheses from cases in 2006 were analyzed. Among the 40 cases with a confirmed complaint of school difficulty, the majority, 15 (37.5%), had the initial diagnostic hypothesis of DSL; 35% had DRW; and 27.5% had LD. Emotional and/or behavioral components were prominent. The services provided at the Laboratory are clinical, but also incorporate an educational perspective. The terminologies used (LD, DSL, and DRW) generally represented the data set gathered in each studied case and effectively guided the interventions.