ABSTRACT
In thinking about the experience of living with dyslexia it is useful to consider three main spheres of influence, namely the home, the school and wider society, and how they might interact with each other. Bronfenbrenner (1979), when examining the influences on children’s development, stressed the importance of bringing together psychological, sociological, economic, educational and political factors and considering them with an ecological perspective. He termed relatively closed systems such as the family or the classroom ‘micro-systems’ and the interaction between them ‘meso-systems’. These meso-systems were affected by what he termed the exo-system, in other words factors that impinged on how parents or teachers carried out their role such as the training that teachers received. Finally all these systems interacted with the wider socio-cultural context or what Bronfenbrenner termed the macro-system. Bronfenbrenner and his followers have revised this model over time; however, the fundamental point that we need a comprehensive and interactional model to fully understand a child’s development still remains. Shakespeare (2006) in writing about disability argues that a bio-psycho-social model is needed that does justice to the intricacies of people’s lives. Truss (2008) comments on the sparse literature on the perspectives of parents and children with SENs and the need for a whole system perspective which transcends the rather narrow educational perspective in which they are often viewed.
