Pedagogical interventions to help schoolchildren with learning difficulties

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Learning difficulties are a global educational and public health issue, particularly worrying in France, with a steady decline in middle school students' math and writing levels observed since 2014.
A study involving nearly 200 students from the middle schools of ORT France, a network of general, technical and vocational education establishments under contract with the French state, has just confirmed the beneficial impact of educational interventions targeting deficits in French and/or mathematics: the skills essential for the future of middle school students improved, even normalized, immediately after intervention and at a distance.
Although larger trials are needed to corroborate them, these results underline the value of pedagogical interventions by trained teachers to remedy learning difficulties in middle school. This finding argues in favor of setting up large-scale programs to remedy the learning difficulties observed in French children.

Specific Language and Learning Disorders (SLLD), now classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder, affect at least 8% of school-age children. As such, they constitute a worldwide educational and public health problem. In France, with a steady decline in middle-schoolers' math and writing levels since 2014, they are a particularly worrying issue. Difficult to categorize due to their heterogeneity, they generally correspond to learning difficulties, which can be identified by a standardized reading (fluency and comprehension), spelling and math test at the start of the school year.

Pioneering educational prevention programs in the USA have set themselves the goal of identifying at-risk or struggling students, and responding to their needs with evidence-based practice. Known as Response-To-Intervention (RTI), this program proposes a 3-stage pedagogy based on students' needs: stage 1 (whole-class teaching), stage 2 (complementary interventions for students in difficulty) and stage 3 in the event of persistent difficulties. In France, national assessments have been introduced to identify students requiring assistance at level 2. The Haute Autorité de Santé guide recognizes the preventive role of pedagogical interventions and describes the management of level 3.

Prof. Arnold Munnich (Institut Imagine, Inserm, AP-HP, Université Paris Cité) and Dr. Catherine Billard (Association pour la Recherche sur les Troubles des Apprentissages, ARTA) and their teams, with the support of ORT France, are evaluating the impact of small-group teaching interventions, compared with no intervention, in a sample of 6th and 5th graders with learning difficulties in French and/or math, over the course of 2021 and 2022. Unlike the majority of reported interventions, this study targeted pupils with learning difficulties at an advanced stage of their schooling, including pupils corresponding to the criteria for SLLD.

The protocol was drawn up and supervised by a multidisciplinary research team comprising a neuropediatrician, a neuropsychologist, a speech therapist and a statistical methodologist, in collaboration with the middle school's teaching team trained in typical and atypical learning.

The results of the study, just published in the journal Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence (Neuropsychiatry of Childhood and Adolescence), clearly show the benefits, in addition to the regular school program, of small-group educational interventions targeting deficits in French and/or mathematics. The main benefits concern reading comprehension, numbering, addition and subtraction. Deficits in spelling and problem-solving are also reduced, though not to the level of the norm. While not all students caught up, dyslexics also benefited from French interventions targeting reading comprehension, as well as mathematical skills with math interventions. The persistence at a distance of the beneficial effect of all types of intervention confirms the positive impact of the program as a whole. This observation, which needs to be confirmed by other, larger and more robust studies, also underlines the fact that certain learning difficulties can be effectively reversed when teachers or coaches are trained in these pedagogical interventions.

This study constitutes an initial pilot experiment, essential for validating the choices of interventions in French and maths. The project is currently being extended by the teaching teams of the experimental middle school, using the compulsory National Assessments to identify students in difficulty, as well as a controlled observational project in the second year at the same school. Further, broader research in other contexts is required before the deployment of RAIs, which can only be gradual and carefully considered. As Caroline Viriot-Goedel, Professor of Education, points out : “While North American researchers and decision-makers continue to work on improving RAI in their schools, it is clear that the implementation of RAI in French schools will require in-depth reflection on the conditions for successful deployment in the French context”.

The study, carried out in schools belonging to the ORT France network, confirms that, if left unchecked, the deficits become more pronounced as the child progresses through secondary school : this finding argues strongly in favor of targeted remedial programs for learning difficulties, and of training teachers to provide these interventions.

 

Reference :

Impact of pedagogical interventions on written language or math learning difficulties in middle schoolers : a nonrandomized controlled study. C Billard et al., Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence, 2025 

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurenf.2025.02.003

Corresponding authors: Catherine Billard and Arnold Munnich (Institut Imagine, UMR 1163)