Jabu's Referral

Jabu is 10 years old. He is currently repeating Grade 3. He lives with his Granny who doesn't speak any English. Jabu hasn't seen his mom and dad since he was in Grade 2 and doesn't know why he never sees them anymore. Gran is frustrated with Jabu he never finishes his work and is constantly busy. At home he is a real chatterbox, and she feels he is always under her feet. She feels tired much of the time as she has to work two jobs to keep food on the table. She sometimes misses payments for school fees and then Jabu has to stay at home. She can't help him with his homework as she can't read or write. Jabu only has one little friend at school who is much younger than him in the Grade 1 class.

Jabu's teachers find him to be 'uncontrollable' in the classroom. He never sits still, and he never finishes his work. He has had 3 different teachers just this year due to changes at the school and one of his teachers (his favourite) is going on maternity leave soon.Despite being in Grade 3 for the second time, his teacher reports that his reading & writing are poor and he is not doing well in math. There is concern that he may have ADHD and/or that he may have learning and/or cognitive difficulties. The school requested an assessment, but have asked for a shortened assessment as the school can only afford a much-reduced fee. The school manages contact with the family and the psychologist only works with the child and interviews the teacher. A classroom observation is offered but the teacher declines.

Jabu's Assessment:

Jabu is very quiet initially. He speaks only when spoken to and tends to keep his head down staring at his shoes and playing with his fingers. The psychologist manages to build rapport and spends time talking to Jabu about why he is there. Jabu thought he was in trouble. The psychologist takes time to chat to Jabu and explains the purpose of the activities that they will be doing together. The psychologist targets this engagement at his level explaining that our brains are all different. It is important to know what type of things our brains like and what type of things they don't like so that we can figure out how to help our brains learn more easily. Jabu was then invited to be a co-learning detective. His job was to give everything a good go and to tell the psychologist about what he liked to do and what he was unsure about.

Jabu was eager to please and worked very carefully and neatly. When writing he tended to write slowly so that each letter was beautiful and perfect. He carefully erased mistakes to make sure everything was correct. Test results indicated that his spelling was actually grade appropriate.

He found the timed tasks difficult as he felt it is more important to get the answer correct than to finish quickly.

He really enjoyed the math activities and surprised himself by how much he was able to accomplish. He did well with problem solving, but had to use strategies to work out the solutions to calculations.

When an activity was harder than he thought it would be, it often caught him off guard. He stared at the activity intently (he didn't want to let the tester know he didn't know the answer). He never asked for clarity when he was unsure of the instructions. He kept going through the task to see if he could find an answer himself. He was very hesitant to guess. He found it difficult to change a strategy that was not working. In later sessions, he tried to manage his difficulty in completing the activity by telling the tester a story about something that happened earlier to try and make the tester laugh or to show that he was good or kind etc.

Assessment Results

Results show that Jabu has quite a few gaps in his knowledge and vocabulary, but that there is clear learning potential. His reading was below his grade level, but his comprehension was only slightly below average. His cognitive ability on the standardised IQ measure scored him in the low average to average range.

Emotional assessments revealed that he worries constantly about whether or not he is loved/liked. He doesn't always feel safe in his community, and wishes that people knew that he was actually a good little boy. He is very concerned about his performance. There are indicators that Jabu is at risk for depression.

Is the score on the cognitive assessment valid based on observations

What are the guiding principles or factors that need to be taken into consideration when doing the feedback of results for Jabu? (Be sure to highlight who should be given feedback and when and what would be some important guidelines for the feedback itself, also give a sense of how it should manage Jabu's teacher who has quite a negative impression of Jabu's ability).