Identifying Critical Aspects from Learners' Perspective

This paper discusses what it takes to identify critical aspects from learners' perspectives. The critical aspect is a vital component of variation theory, and can be described as "a particular way of seeing something... defined by the aspects discerned, that is, the critical features of what is seen" [1]. In order to experience reading, for example, you have to discern all the aspects in reading, such as the shapes of letters, the sounds in different contexts, the meaning of a word and the direction of a text as well as the semantic value of a word. Without discerning these aspects of the phenomenon 'reading', it is not possible to experience reading. That is made possible by discerning aspects when they vary, like letters that in a way are similar, but yet have different shapes. For someone with impaired reading, all aspects are not discerned. The difference between aspects and critical aspects is that the latter are those needed to develop learning. In the current study, respondents with dyslexia describe what they experience when they read. From this data as well as from earlier studies using variation theory, the focus turns to whether it is possible to identify each person's potential critical aspects. In this study the object of learning is reading ability. The questions the paper responds to are: How do the respondents themselves explain their reading deficit? What potential critical aspects could be found by analyzing what the respondents already have discerned?