Child Development and Teaching Pupils with Special Educational Needs

Anne Anderson, Richard Gerrish, Lyn Layton, Jenny Morgan, Christina Tilstone, Anna Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134476176
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

A thought-provoking book which provides a framework for understanding the physical, sensory, emotional, social, linguistic and cognitive development of children with special educational needs. It gives practitioners and students a sound grasp of the theoretical ground needed to fully understand cognitive development and will help them track children's developmental progress in order to optimise learning opportunities.

The authors handle complex topics in a highly accessible manner, explaining how to put theory into practice. In three lucidly argued sections they present:

• an overview of the work of key theorists and thinkers, including Vygotsky, Piaget, Freud, Erikson, Bruner and the Korning theorists
• an evaluation of the educational implications of the work of each theorist, using illustrative case studies
• a consideration of areas of development in learning and teaching children with special educational needs.

This book will be a beacon for teachers, head teachers, educational psychologists and all practitioners involved in special needs education who seek the opportunity to help empower their pupils, and enhance their own understanding.

Chapter 1

Self-advocacy, autonomy and empowerment

What do we mean by empowerment?

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, views on the role of education include an emphasis on creating opportunities for all children to grow into self-determining citizens: people who will make, or contribute to, decisions about their lives and determine their interface with the wider community. Self-advocacy and autonomy are prerequisites to becoming a self-determining or ‘empowered’ citizen. We do not regard ‘empowerment’ as a fixed state, but as a lifelong process and therefore one aim of the current chapters is to provide a framework for conceptualising empowerment through learning that is inclusive of all learners; we will return to this theme later.

Meanwhile in England, the National Curriculum now sets out a framework for promoting personal autonomy through personal, social and health education (PSHE) and citizenship, thus acknowledging the importance of the development of ‘empowerment’ for all pupils (DfEE/QCA, 1999a; 1999b). Whereas the extension of PSHE to the National Curriculum is a relatively new subject area for the vast majority, it has, for some time, been advocated for pupils with significant learning needs by many teachers, academics and researchers (Byers, 1998; Mittler, 1996a, 1996b; Rose et al., 1994; Sebba et al, 1993) as the backbone of their wider learning and an essential element in the gaining of access to the same curriculum as their peers without such needs. However, the notion of including all learners within the same learning curriculum is, in itself, a relatively new phenomenon.

In the past, pupils whose learning needs are now described as complex or severe were considered to be ineducable, and under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 adults and children with difficulties in learning were categorised as ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’. People so labelled were thought to be unable to guard against common physical dangers and were, in their own interests and the interests of the society of the time, placed in institutions. They were ‘cared for’ in a medical regime where they were expected to accept a ‘dependent’ model of care. In addition to being segregated from society, ‘patients’, as they were known, were considered to be ‘sick’ and, consequently, experiences were minimised and expectations of them (by those who cared for them and by society in general) were reduced (Fraser, 1984). Their rights and powers to make decisions of any kind were removed and Stevens (1997) reminds us that ‘doctors ran institutions, nurses controlled patients, and patients were “passive” victims of the staff’ (p.52).

Later the labels of ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’ were replaced under the 1959 Mental Health Act by definitions of ‘subnormality’ and ‘severe subnormality’. Categorisations depended on the result of intelligence quotient (IQ) tests: subnormals were classified on the basis of an IQ between 51 and 75, and severe subnormals, 50 and below. Both groups were regarded as mentally, socially and emotionally immature (Tilstone, 1991). They were denied access to education but were either ‘cared for’ in institutions or ‘trained’ in local health authority centres. It was not until 1971 (under the Education [Handicapped Children] Act, 1970) that their right to education was recognised, they entered the education system and so their potential to learn was given due consideration.

Thirty years have passed since formal education in the UK was extended to children and young people with significant learning difficulties, through schooling. While legislation creates the framework for opportunities, it cannot, of itself, immediately bring about new insights or changes of attitudes towards learners whose educational needs do not match typical profiles. Instead, the process of enhancing the learning experience of this group is ongoing but has been given an added impetus by the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994) that confirmed the right of all children to education and which, in turn, is reflected in the ideals and principles of the revised National Curriculum (England) (DfEE/QCA, 1999a; 1999b). A central theme of the revised curriculum focuses on how, through education, individuals might be empowered, in order to become effective citizens.

Empowerment through learning

The starting point for our deliberations must be a consideration of the early experiences that engage each of us in the acquisition of knowledge, the attainment of skills and the development of understanding. Such experiences are generic for all learning and depend to a great extent on the development of external opportunities such as the promotion of active learning and the identification of key experiences.

The work of the QCA/DfEE (2001) project team pulled together work from researchers engaged with infants and children at early levels of development (Uzgiris and Hunt, 1975; Brown, 1996; McInnes and Treffrey, 1982; Coupe O’Kane and Goldbart, 1998; Aitken and Buultjens, 1992) in an attempt to provide a framework for thinking about individual responses to new learning opportunities. Many of these researchers are concerned with learners who have complex special educational needs and they have therefore taken into account that, although these learners are at early developmental stages or are developmentally immature, they may be chronologically mature; a factor that applies to many pupils with special educational needs in all, or most, areas of their development. The broad bands of responses in the framework below apply to all new learning.

Framework for New Learning

Encounter

Here the learner is introduced to an experience or an activity. At this point it is unlikely that there will be a learning outcome. It is only by presenting the same activity or experience over a period of time that a reaction is established.

Awareness

The learner shows an awareness that something is happening when either engaged in an activity or taking part in an experience. Such an awareness may be fleeting.

Attention and response

The learner begins to respond, although not always consistently, to an object, event or a person.

Engagement

In this area the learner will attend for longer periods and make a greater response to stimuli.

Participation

Learners engage in turn taking and begin to anticipate familiar sequences of events.

Involvement

Learners actively join in some experience or activity. They may become involved in a range of different ways, which includes reaching out, or communicating in some way about what is going on.

Gaining skills and understanding

Learners use the activity or experience to demonstrate some knowledge, skills or understanding about it. They then strengthen and build upon their knowledge and skill base and generalise their learning to other areas.

(adapted from QCA/DfEE 200I, p. 17)

The members of the project team who designed this framework were quick to point out that children will move through the early learning process in both hierarchical and linear ways. Children may, for example, move fairly rapidly hierarchically from encounter to awareness in the learning of a skill or the acquisition of new knowledge or understanding. They may, however, need to encounter experiences many times (in a linear way) when learning other skills or when acquiring new knowledge in order to establish a base for further development. We propose, however, that these processes are not restricted to children who are developmentally young, or who have special educational needs, but can be seen whenever any learner (at whatever age) is presented with something new. Consequently, all learners will move through this framework at different rates and in different ways and, therefore, we refer to it throughout this book as the Framework for New Learning. In the following example one of us describes her own learning in these terms.

Learning something new

‘Working with computers? Yes, I must have encountered computers earlier but only became aware of them as something that impacted minimally on my own work during the late 1960s. My attention was drawn to computers during the 1970s when my undergraduate assignments were computer-marked, but I had no way of distinguishing between the different types or functions of computers, so it would not be true to say that I had much knowledge of them. At the same time, learning at the awareness level was extended because I was made more aware of the potential of computers as they further infiltrated everyday life and there was talk of a new Industrial Revolution, To some extent I engaged with the idea of the computer age as I read about computers and their potential and encountered more contexts where they were used. When I returned to paid work in the early 1980s I made limited use of word-processors, thus I participated in computer use. For example, I followed instructions about starting up the computer and saving documents but my participation was limited to applications with which I had become familiar and I was at a loss if, for example, the start-up programme did not follow its anticipated course. I did not become involved with them until the late 1980s when I had access to a computer for word-processing. From that time I have made regular use of increasingly sophisticated computers and gained more skills, for example a facility for e-mail usage. I have also generalised my word-processing skills to gain an understanding of, for example, how to edit texts for publication and even to cope with the erratic responses of some computer programmes.’

Empowering the learner

Contemporary perspectives on learning are increasingly likely to reflect the view that learning is essentially a ‘shared social activity’ (Watson, 2001, p. 140). In pedagogic terms the perspectives are represented in social constructivist approaches which emphasise learners’ active role in constructing and re-constructing their knowledge and understanding in a social context. This immediately places the learner in a position of power, at the centre of the teaching-learning experience. The teacher’s role focuses on facilitating the construction of knowledge, by, for example:

• assessing the learner’s baseline level of understanding;

• analysing the task or body of knowledge that is the learning objective;

• providing opportunities for exploring the area of knowledge in line with the learner’s preferred learning style or personal learning resources.

Clive

Clive was 25 years old with specific learning difficulties. When he enlisted for help at his local Adult Education Centre he could not spell or write anything apart from his name, and his reading was restricted to a few social sight words such as ‘Toilets’, ‘Exit’ and ‘Bus Stop’. His ambition was to become a long-distance lorry driver but he had not yet attained a driving licence for any vehicle because he was unable to read the Highway Code, although, mercifully, it was not necessary at that time for him to take a written test. His teacher developed resources based on the content and presentation of the Highway Code in order to make use of Clive’s good visual memory for shapes and to help him to memorise sufficient content to pass the test. She decided that there was little point in adopting an approach that sought to establish spelling rules or other written language conventions. Instead, she tried to establish Clive’s self-concept as an able learner through building on his road knowledge, acquired as a pedestrian and car passenger, in order for him to gain access to the necessary information about road-usage to become a competent driver.

This example contrasts with a didactic approach to teaching whereby knowledge and power reside with the teacher who dispenses or delivers a body of knowledge to passive learners. A substantial body of literature (see, for example, Brooks and Brookes, 1993; Littledyke and Huxford, 1998) provides support for adopting a social constructivist approach with all learners, but the theoretical perspectives analysed in this book will build on Watson’s work (Watson, 1999, 2000, 2001).

It is important to remember that the perspectives emphasising a dynamic relationship between learners and their environments will necessarily recognise the significance of a learner’s membership of an ethnic minority group. If we conceptualise learning needs as those arising when a learner, with his or her own profile of skills, abilities and life history, encounters a specified curriculum of learning, it is clear that issues relating to ethnicity assume importance and we draw attention to such factors later in the book.

Social constructivism is a philosophical perspective on teaching and learning that can be used to analyse any encounter in which an individual extends his or her knowledge, skills or understanding. In rela...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Self-advocacy, autonomy and empowerment
• PART I The theorists
• PART II The educational implications
• PART III Areas of development
• Index