Inclusive Pedagogy in the Early Years

Phyllis Jones

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135397548
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Is it possible to meet all the needs of a widely diverse group of children in one class?

Based upon the author's own research into this question, this new book invites readers to compare teachers' accounts of their best lessons and provides useful discussion and viewpoints about inclusive pedagogy in a variety of learning contexts.

Inclusive Pedagogy in the Early Years covers:

• structured and signposted case studies to encourage comparison
• examples of children's work to demonstrate how they responded to lessons.

Introduction: Setting the scene

The purposes of this book are many. First and foremost, it is intended as a sharing of examples of good practice in inclusive teaching and learning in the early years. It offers detailed practical scenarios of learning activities that have been planned and executed in order to include the full range of learning needs present in particular groups of children. When I was a deputy head teacher, I had responsibility for the organisation of the professional development opportunities for staff in the school where I worked. It was an exciting and salutary experience to find that staff learned most from each other. As trainers and managers, we can introduce theories, concepts and ideas about teaching and learning and about classroom management. But staff become much more engaged and animated when they listen to each other’s journeys, reflect upon each other’s practice and actually see a colleague translate theory into classroom practice. As a teacher myself, I enjoyed going into colleagues’ classrooms and looking at the displays, the systems for planning and classroom management, and the children’s work. What indeed I was experiencing was theory authenticated in practice. That is why this book, I believe, will appeal to practitioners. Here, we encounter examples of lessons that are authenticated in the real world. Moreover, these examples have been chosen as teachers’ best lessons and, through this, offer a valuable insight into how effective inclusive teaching and learning is being perceived in some of our early years settings today.

The teachers we will meet in this book come from a range of early years settings that span rural, inner-city, segregated and mainstream contexts. You may wonder why segregated special schools are represented in a book about inclusive teaching. Surely, I can hear some of you saying, inclusion should be about mainstreaming children? Indeed, the involvement of special schools has been deliberate. It is a personal attempt ‘not to throw the baby out with the bath water’ in respect of effective teaching and learning strategies. It is intended to show and reinforce the idea that excellent inclusive teaching and learning happens across many different contexts of provision. We have a great deal to learn from each other about effective teaching and learning. We must be willing to enter into dialogue with each other to extend and to develop our understanding and practice of inclusion.

As we learn more about inclusion and inclusive practice, we learn more about its complexity, its challenges and its difficulties. Inclusion is not easy: its challenges confront many of us daily. It can be a relief (and a delight) to share in the good practice of others in this most challenging process. What we do know is that collaboration is a very supportive framework in which to develop our own understanding and skills. It is in this spirit of collaboration that the special schools (along with their good practice) earned their place in this book. Ultimately, in an ideal inclusive world, all our children would be given a challenging and appropriate education in their local community school. The reality of current provision is that we need to learn more about how we can include a diverse range of learners in appropriate and exciting teaching and learning, whatever the context. One of the ways to do this is to listen to, and learn from, the people who are engaging in authentic inclusive teaching and learning now.

The book is structured to enable a similar format to be followed in each teacher’s account of her best inclusive lesson (all of the teachers, through coincidence rather than design, are female). This is done to support cohesion and to promote potential similarities and differences emerging across the range of learning contexts. However, you will see that each teacher emphasises different things. This is a representation of the different styles and strengths of individual teachers, as well as a reflection of the larger differing school contexts in which they work. Chapters 2 and 3 offer an insight into the policy and theoretical issues that impact upon the contexts in which the teachers work. In Chapter 2, the key principles of the SEN Code of Practice (DfES, 2001a) and the Disability Discrimination Act (DHSS, 2001) are discussed in relation to the development of greater inclusive practice. These include individual needs, mainstream or inclusive placement, the views of children, the views of parents and the entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum. Chapter 3 discusses some of the main ideas and concepts that relate to inclusive practice in the early years. It sets out what we mean when we say a child has a special educational need. There follows a discussion of differentiation as an essential component in creating greater inclusive practice. The chapter ends by looking at models of early years organisation and how these may best support further inclusive practice. Chapters 4 through to 7 present the accounts of the teachers’ best lessons. In Chapter 8 the similarities and differences between the accounts of the best lessons are discussed. In doing so, key issues will be highlighted in relation to the nature of inclusive teaching and learning, and the possible lessons we can learn about meeting the teaching and learning needs of diverse groups of early years learners. A glossary of terms used in the book is included, in order to support the shared understanding of terminology.

Teachers were given information at the beginning of their involvement in the book, in order to help them decide upon, prioritise and sort the information they offered for the book. Although the information given to the teachers was simple and clear, they were given the freedom to interpret how they wanted to contribute. No set format for planning was given to the teachers to allow them to present the planning processes that they operated in their different contexts. The different narratives represent how the different teachers are understanding and perceiving inclusive practice. The teachers were free to choose their own ‘best’ lesson, so the accounts that follow are indeed personal to each of the teachers and reflect their own interpretations of ‘best’ practice. It is necessary at this point to consider the following:

• persuasion of the teachers to be part of the book (and indeed the children and other staff in the settings);
• contextual information about the schools and classes where the best lessons take place. This includes the information teachers were asked to provide about the schools, classes, children and adults;
• planning information, documents, etc. that the teachers were asked to provide, and why;
• account of the teaching and learning, including the range of additional material teachers could include to illustrate and exemplify their best lesson accounts; and
• evaluation and reflection by teachers offering an insight into why they felt this was their ‘best’ inclusive lesson.

Persuasion of the teachers to be part of the book

All of the teachers in the book work in the north east of England. The teachers involved had a reputation at my university as effective early years teachers, who were including a range of different learners in their teaching. The focus of the book demanded that such a reputation was important to reflect best practice. Understandings and perceptions about what is best practice may differ, but what the teachers in this book share is a willingness to include children who learn differently. There is a keenness to want to be responsive to the individual needs of children and to help all the children in their class to be successful as learners. The teachers in this book share all of these traits and have a reputation for being successful in their endeavours.

As soon as individual teachers were approached it became obvious that, due to the nature of early years provision, we were not talking about one individual early educator, but a team of adults who worked collaboratively in the classes. Initially, the project was presented to the head teacher or manager of the provision, and once permission had been gained, individual team leaders (who were indeed the teachers of the class) were approached. The busy context of an early years class does not make one keen to take on extra work, so it was important to demonstrate to each teacher the potential value of the book and offer clear guidance concerning the level of their contribution. Following a discussion, a brief information sheet about the project and the extent of their participation was prepared and left with the teacher. She then went to the team to ask for their thoughts and to ascertain their willingness to participate in the project. The teams of adults in the classes varied, and this will be further described in the forthcoming chapters. Once initial interest was shown, appropriate permission was sought from the parents and children of the settings. Some schools already had whole class permission to be involved in a range of university or action research projects. Some parents chose not to have their children included. These children participated in the lessons as usual, but we did not include them in the retelling of the account. Everyone was assured that names would be changed to protect anonymity and confidentiality.

Contextual Information

In the very early planning stages of the book, it was considered important to try to represent the range of early years classes we may encounter in practice. Therefore, it became important to aim to represent a diverse range of provision for children in the early years. This was achieved by careful consideration of the context of the school. It was decided to use a mixture of segregated, mainstream, rural and inner-city settings to present a manageable but substantially varied range of provision. Clearly, this does not represent all of the different types of early years contexts, but it does offer a mixture varied enough for us to appreciate the nature of differences in practice. The best lesson accounts we will hear about range from early years day nurseries (funded through Early Years Childcare Partnerships) through to Reception classes. The range of early years classes in the book is illustrated in Table 1.1.

Classroom 1 is known as Summerfield Glade School. It is a nursery or Reception class within a segregated rural special school. The school caters for pupils aged four to nineteen years with severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties. Owing to small numbers of children overall in the school, it is not uncommon in the segregated sector to find children of wide age differences (four to six years) in the same class. This particular class has a wide age range, spanning from early nursery to late Reception.

Table 1.1 The range of early years classes

	Rural	Inner city	Nursery	Reception
Segregated	Classroom 1: Summerfield Glade School	Classroom 3: Blackberry Hill School	Classroom 1: Summerfield Glade School	Classroom 1: Summerfield Glade School
			Classroom 3: Blackberry Hill School	Classroom 3: Blackberry Hill School
Mainstream	Classroom 2: Springfield First School	Classroom 4: Riverview Primary School	Classroom 2: Springfield First School	Classroom 4: Riverview Primary School

Classroom 2 is known as Springfield First School. It is a part-time nursery within a small rural primary school.

Classroom 3 is known as Blackberry Hill School. It is a nursery reception class within an inner-city segregated special school. The school caters for pupils aged four to eleven years with learning difficulties. Again, the spread of ages in one class is greater than in a mainstream setting. The school is situated on the outskirts of a large city and takes children from across the borough.

Classroom 4 is known as Riverview Primary School. It is a Reception class in a large inner-city primary school. The school is situated towards the centre of a large city and takes children from a small catchment area which has a low socio-economic profile. A high percentage of all the children attending the school are on free school meals. The Reception class is a county-funded, additionally resourced provision to support children with speech and language difficulties.

In addition to the profiles of the range of classes offered in Table 1.1, each teacher’s account of her best lesson includes more details about settings in which she teaches. This includes the larger professional context in which the chosen classes operate. Therefore, general information about the school was included; this information comes from school booklets, profiles, Ofsted reports, etc. The focus of the contextual information then moves to the class itself. The classroom or nursery context is described. Information about staff qualifications and experience is presented to show the nature of the adult experience in the class. Contextual information about the children themselves is then described. In some cases, this is on an individual basis, and in others it is general information about the class of children and then more specific information about individual children. This may include the stage of the Code of Practice the child is on, and brief information about their strengths and different learning needs

Planning

To reflect on the accounts of the ‘best lessons’, it is important for the lessons themselves to be set out in relation to long-, medium- and short-term planning processes adopted. The longer- and medium-term planning offers a curriculum context for the more immediate shorter-term planning. The shorter-term planning demonstrates how curriculum demands and individual needs are going to be engaged with in the lesson through the stated aims and objectives of the lesson. The planning material ranges across appropriate elements in the Foundation Curriculum, Early Learning Goals, school and class schemes of work, activity plans and Individual Education Plans (IEPs).

Accounts of the ‘best’ lesson

All teachers were asked to give a simple and clear descriptive account of the lesson, an account that anyone could read and obtain a feel for what actually happened in the lesson. Such a description needed to paint a picture of the best lesson from beginning to end. Teachers were encouraged to exemplify this with photographs of the children in the lesson or examples of children’s work.

Evaluation of the lesson

All teachers were asked to provide an evaluation of the lesson. They were e...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Also available:
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• 1 Introduction: Setting the scene
• 2 Principles of the Code of Practice
• 3 Key issues in the literature and research
• 4 ‘Jungle Journey’ at Summerfield Glade School
• 5 ‘Musical Melodies’ at Springfield First School
• 6 ‘Fantastic Fruit’ at Blackberry Hill School
• 7 Mrs Mopple’s Washing Line at Riverview Primary School
• 8 Reflections: the importance of positive attitudes, procedures and strategies
• Glossary
• References
• Index