What is Conductive Education

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What is Conductive Education?

The Conductive Education program is an intensive therapeutic training program that is offered to physically and mentally disabled children and to adults who have suffered from stroke or other brain injury.

Conductive Education is a unique system of teaching and learning for children with motor disorders such as cerebral palsy. It is designed to improve mental and motor skills and motivation, and increase independence of many aspects of common living. It is not a cure, but a method of exercises that are broken down into basic functional movements. The exercises are performed intensively (6 hours per day, 5 days per week) in small groups which promotes interactivity. Conductive Education is a repetitive teaching program where basic skills are taught over and over until the child can master the basic skill. Conductive Education was developed by Dr. Andras Peto at the State Institute for Motor Disorders in Hungary over 40 years ago and has now been widely established in Hungary, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Germany, Norway, Israel, and many other countries.

Conductive Education as the name suggests, is an educational approach to habilitation for children with developmental motor disorders (and rehabilitation for relevant adults). Its aim is to help children and adults with motor disorders learn to overcome problems of movement as a way of enabling them to live more active and independent lives. Specially trained professionals teach children the movements required to sit, crawl, stand, walk, use stairs, feed, dress, toilet, etc. These are basic living skills required for a person to become mobile and independent.

Conductive Education is a form of developmental habilitation for children and adults with motor disorders. It is appropriate for conditions where disease or damage to the central nervous system affects the ability to control movement. In childhood these conditions include cerebral palsy and dyspraxia, and in adulthood, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and those who have had a stroke or head injury.

Conductive Education (more properly ‘conductive pedagogy’ or ‘conductive upbringing’) has been chiefly directed towards what it terms ‘motor disorders’, that is problems of coordinating and controlling movements, resulting from disease or damage to the central nervous system. It may be provided, in age-appropriate adaptations, for people of all ages and whatever the age at which the condition began, from the first years of life right across the age-span to the frailty of old age.

The fundamental tenet of conductive pedagogy for motor disorders is to address problems that may arise from motor disorders as problems of learning, coupled with an underlying assumption that everyone is capable of learning if appropriately taught; problems of learning are then construed as problems of teaching. There may be potentially many pedagogies through which to address such problems: conductive pedagogy is a developed example that has currently gained footholds in most of the advanced economies, part of a worldwide conductive movement.

In adulthood Conductive Education is provided for people who have experienced a range of conditions, including Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and the after-effects of head injuries and strokes. In childhood, the most commonly served conditions are the cerebral palsies.

Conductive Education is not a cure. However, it does allow the disabled person the opportunity to reach for their full potential.