Diagnosing dyslexia in multilingual learners, with Francisco Usero-González
As we continue our miniseries on English learners and multilingual learners, Francisco Usero-González, Ph.D., guest, a renowned expert in bilingual education and dyslexia intervention, joins Susan Lambert to discuss diagnosing dyslexia in multilingual learners and the intersectional understanding it requires. To accurately approach observation and assessment, educators need all the different parts of their own identity to create a complete picture. Usero-González discusses how moving from Spain to the United States led him to champion professional development that teaches educators to have a linguistic, cognitive, and cultural understanding of students. Together, Susan and Usero-González also touch on the ways in which symptoms of dyslexia and the natural process of language acquisition can be confused, how to diagnose dyslexia in multilingual learners, what dyslexia looks like across languages, and how translanguaging is especially helpful for multilingual learners with dyslexia.