Decoding Educational Therapy: Definition, Benefits, and How it Differs from Tutoring

Educational therapy is a specialized intervention designed to support individuals with learning differences, disabilities, and challenges. It goes beyond traditional tutoring by addressing the underlying issues that hinder learning, fostering academic growth, self-confidence, and coping skills.

What is Educational Therapy?

Educational Therapy provides intensive, individualized educational interventions for children and adults with learning disabilities and other learning challenges such as dyslexia, ADHD, language processing problems, poor motivation, low academic self-esteem, performance anxiety and poor social, organizational, and/or study skills. Educational therapists are well versed in formal and informal assessment as well as a wide range of learning methods and strategies.

This form of therapy offers a wide range of intensive interventions that are designed to resolve learners' learning problems. Educational therapy is a personalized approach to guide learners through their academic hurdles. It's not just about subject matter mastery; it's about getting to the heart of learning challenges and crafting strategies that resonate with each individual's unique needs.

Educational therapy is a general term for when an educator works one-on-one with your child, typically outside of school. It combines educational strategies and therapeutic support to foster growth in learners facing academic challenges.

Who Benefits from Educational Therapy?

Educational therapy serves a wide range of learners, typically from early childhood through adulthood, including those who:

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Struggle with Learning Disabilities: Individuals with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and other specific learning disabilities can find tailored strategies to navigate and overcome their challenges.
Face Executive Functioning Issues: For those who struggle with organization, time management, planning, and executing tasks, educational therapy can offer tools and techniques to enhance executive skills.
Experience Emotional and Behavioral Challenges: Educational therapy provides support for learners dealing with anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem that impacts their academic performance.
Have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Strategies to improve focus, attention, and impulse control can be integral parts of the therapeutic process.
Are Gifted and Talented but Underachieving: Sometimes, learners with high potential face unique challenges that hinder their academic progress. Educational therapy can help unlock their full capabilities.
Require Support with Social and Life Skills: For those with autism spectrum disorders or social communication challenges, educational therapy can extend beyond academics to include social skills training.

Educational Therapy vs. Tutoring: Understanding the Key Differences

It's crucial to distinguish educational therapy from traditional tutoring. While both aim to improve academic performance, their approaches and goals differ significantly.

Traditional tutors focus on academics. Educational therapists use a broader approach. And educational therapists may have more experience working with kids with learning and thinking differences. For example, if your child has and math anxiety, a tutor might practice math problems over and over. An educational therapist, on the other hand, might see that your child struggles with number sense. The therapist might teach your child strategies for recognizing basic number facts or suggest . The therapist might also teach your child coping skills for anxiety.

Here's a breakdown of the key distinctions:

Scope: Educational therapy is about strategy. It is about building a toolbox of strategies, how you approach learning, and the classroom environment. Educational therapy is much broader than tutoring. On the other hand, when it comes to tutoring it is really all about tactics rather than strategy. Tutoring is short term. It is about content and classroom curriculum. Tutors teach specific subject matters.
Approach: Educational therapists help build your child’s academic skills and self-confidence. The work they do can be quite varied. And they come from a wide range of professional backgrounds. They may be: General or special education teachers, Reading or math specialists, Social workers, Speech therapists, Counselors who’ve earned additional certifications.
Goals: The main goal of an educational therapy is to no longer need educational therapy. We strive toward independence and autonomy in learning, school, and life for your student. Meanwhile, the goal for tutoring is to give support in a subject area. An educational therapist is constantly working themselves out of a job.
Perspective: An ed therapist is a case manager for the whole team which includes the child, parent, teacher, tutors, psychiatrists, therapists, etc. An ed therapist is interested in supporting the whole child. Usually, a tutor is not going to communicate with the teacher or be a case manager on behalf of the student or the family.
Timeline: Educational therapy is a long-term play. Tutoring is a shorter term solution.
Expertise: While an educational therapist is an expert on learning, a tutor should be an expert in their subject area.
Training: An educational therapist is highly trained usually with a masters degree in special education or learning. As for tutors, they do not have to have formal training. They could be people who are gifted in a content area or simply may have taken the class your child is taking. Tutors may also be teachers within your local area.
Termination: We terminate a relationship with the child when we see that the child is completing work independently and that the student not only knows the strategies but is able to select which strategy to apply in a variety of different situations. This happens slowly but eventually, the student is seamlessly self-selecting how to approach a task and completing successfully without any intervention. We tend to “push kids out” of educational therapy. For tutoring, on the other hand, it ends when the student gets over a hump in the class or at the end of a school year. The student is now understanding the concept or whatever it is they were struggling in that class.
Schedule: Tutoring can end for the summer but educational therapy does not. Educational therapy can continue after the school year ends or during school breaks. The reason we work with students year round is because it is a RELIEF to work on skills and strategies without the pressure of school simultaneously. We don’t want to lose momentum and it is a great way to preview the following school year and/or what is coming up in the near future.
Measurement: In educational therapy, growth is measured by psychoeducational goals that are achieved. The measurement for tutoring is truly just grades.

How Educational Therapy Can Help Kids with Learning and Thinking Differences

Since your child goes to school, it may not be clear to you why you’d need to work with an educational therapist, too. The answer is that the instruction at school may not be enough for your child. There also may be a lack of understanding of your child’s issues. Or the school may not be helping your child with a specific skill, like studying or writing papers.

In these cases, you may want to supplement with outside services. A traditional tutor may not understand your child’s learning and thinking differences. A professional like a doctor or a psychologist isn’t trained to meet academic needs. An educational therapist can fill the gap.

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Educational therapists teach skills and strategies that help kids manage their issues and improve their schoolwork. They can help kids with almost any learning or thinking difference.

The specific strategies and treatments used by an educational therapist will vary. It depends on your child’s issues. Here are just a few examples of what therapists may do:

Help identify behavior issues that may be caused by underlying learning and thinking differences
Teach strategies to improve focus and work habits
Teach time management and organization skills
Develop an educational plan by giving assessments, tracking progress, and adjusting as needed
Provide a safe environment for your child to talk about school and learn how to self-advocate
Act as a link between home and school

An educational therapist can also act as a case manager. The therapist can help coordinate with tutors, specialists, and teachers.

Educational therapists can also review services the school is providing through an IEP or a 504 plan. They can help ensure that what’s happening outside of school complements in-school services.

Finding a Qualified Educational Therapist

Educational therapy isn’t usually available in public schools. Therapists mainly work in private practice or in learning centers. But some therapists may have a day job in a school. They may practice therapy part-time or on the side.

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Insurance typically doesn’t cover educational therapy, so you’ll have to pay out of pocket. Your child might have therapy once a week or more often depending on your child’s needs. This can get expensive.

If you decide to move forward with educational therapy for your child, you’ll need to take time to look for the right therapist. A common way to find one is through a referral from one of your child’s specialists. You can also ask other parents for recommendations or research online.

The Role of the Association of Educational Therapists (AET)

The Association of Educational Therapists (AET) is the national professional organization dedicated to defining the professional practice of educational therapy, setting standards for ethical practice, and promoting state-of-the-art service delivery through on-going professional development and training programs. The AET sets the standard for the ethical practice of educational therapy. The AET ensures that educational therapists are well-equipped to meet diverse learning needs by providing resources, continuing education, and a certification process. The Association is also valuable for families and educators seeking to understand educational therapy and find qualified professionals. Find more information about AET here.

AET offers a certification program. To become an AET member, a professional must complete specific training in special education. They must also meet continuing education requirements. Because educational therapy can be so broad, it’s important to look at a therapist’s qualifications. The therapist should meet your child’s needs and have the right training.

A qualified educational therapist will:

Be familiar with learning challenges
Know how to work with kids with learning and thinking differences
Have expertise in an academic subject area or skill, like reading, math, or organization
Understand how emotional and behavioral issues can impact a child in school

Academic Language Therapy: An Alternative Approach

Academic language denotes that services offered to clients are educational and emphasize the teaching of reading, spelling, handwriting, and written expression. The Academic Language Therapy Association (ALTA) certifies academic language therapists. Certified Academic Language Therapists (CALT) have completed accredited courses of study that provide extensive training and practicum experiences in multisensory structured language teaching (Structured Literacy). Academic Language Therapists have knowledge of the logic and structure of English language systems: phonology, phonics, orthography, morphology-etymology, semantics, and syntax.

Teaching begins with the basics and rebuilds the learning continuum step-by-step. Academic language therapy starts from ground zero so that no gaps remain in the student’s understanding of language structure. Students’ successes and challenges during one lesson inform the planning of subsequent lessons. Academic language therapy is cumulative, systematic, structured instruction that is written and planned for a particular student, or group of students, and is delivered by an educator with comprehensive training.

The Importance of Individualized Instruction

Educational therapy considers the impact of school, family, and community in the client’s learning, fosters communication with all significant members of the client’s environment, and attends to socio-emotional goals as well as academic goals.

The term tutor is used in both general and specific ways to refer to volunteers and professionals with a broad range of skills and qualifications, so it is very important to ask and be clear about how the term is used with regard to the instruction your child receives. Tutors who lack the training described within IDA’s Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading will lack the depth necessary to understand and address the needs of students with specific language-based learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

Most of us are familiar with the general use of the term tutor-an instructor hired to work with individual students or small groups. These tutors typically use traditional teaching methods to help with completing homework or projects in specific subject or curriculum areas that are causing them problems. Tutors may also be skilled at teaching time management, task completion, and study skills.

Qualified multisensory structured language professionals sometimes refer to themselves as instructors or tutors, such as Certified Structured Literacy Teacher or Therapist, Certified Orton-Gillingham Instructor or Wilson Certified Tutor. These individuals have completed extensive accredited coursework and practicum experiences in multisensory structured language teaching. They have in-depth knowledge of the structure of English language and deliver language instruction using simultaneous multisensory teaching strategies.

Potential Downsides of Tutoring

Ed therapy and tutoring can actually work in tandem with each other with the educational therapist being the leader of the team and the tutor supporting learning by using the strategies that the educational therapist is providing to the student. This is when tutoring is very helpful. It is supporting the mission of independence and autonomy.

We are very careful about tutoring because it has the potential of becoming the reason that students learn how to be a little helpless. In tutoring, learned helplessness can arise in a variety of ways. One way is that the child learns to lean on someone else to do something for them because either they just don’t want to do it or because it is too hard. In the case of the student who struggles in math, for example, learned helplessness is when he/she waits for the tutor to come to start an assignment or goes back to school the next day with question marks on all of the problems without even trying to do it on their own.

When Tutoring is Appropriate

Tutoring is much more appropriate when your child does not understand a specific concept or subject area. Your child likely has strategies in place for how to find the answers but still is not quite able to put the pieces together on their own. We both frequently make the recommendation for tutors because we see its benefit! It is something that works in tandem with what we do. It certainly does not run the whole gamut of what educational therapy offers.

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