The Pedagogy of Special Needs Education

Phenomenology of Sameness and Difference

Chizuko Fujita

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000337303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica inclusiva

The Pedagogy of Special Needs Education: Phenomenology of Sameness and Difference outlines how to understand the inner and behavioral lives of children with intellectual disability through the psychology and phenomenology of "stories" derived from the experiences of living with these children.

The book inquires into the meaning of the experiences of children with intellectual developmental disability using a phenomenological method. It examines how the external behaviors of children with special needs may look different from children without these needs but actually do share many similarities at the phenomenological level of lived experience. Themes of difference and sameness are employed for exploring the significances of phenomena such as "finger play, " "eating as selffeeding, " "smiling and turn-taking, " "self-talk, " and "don't touch me." Throughout the narrating and interpreting of the case studies within the book, the author shows the tensional dialectic between individual and collective difference in order to understand what is required to help children with intellectual disability become themselves and form their personal self-identity.

The Pedagogy of Special Needs Education can be used in schools, seminars, and courses related to special education programs and in special needs curricula for children with developmental disabilities. It can also support childcare professionals who carry orthopedagogical responsibilities and who are concerned about the wellbeing of children and their families experiencing special needs. Additionally, this book is valuable to students, researchers, teachers, and others interested in a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to human science, professional practice issues, and qualitative research methods.

1
Lives of Difference

Walking With Ted

I am walking with Ted, a fifteen-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. It is the third day of our summer camp in a country site far from home. Children and staff seem to be relaxed and enjoying this trip through farmyards. It is a nice sunny day, although it might be too hot for Ted, who is, as usual, walking with his face bent down. He looks tired from walking, which I can see because he does not push me from behind, calling my name, nor does he talk to me as he did at the beginning of the walk. A fifteen-minute walk seems to be a great effort for him. Ted and I are far behind the others, the last of whom I can hardly see. “Well, we can enjoy the walk ourselves, can’t we?” I am not sure if I am talking to him or to myself. I try to cheer him up, talking about what I see in the fields, singing his favorite songs, or mentioning how well he has walked all the way, although he does not respond any more.

“Here they are, Ted. Now I can see everybody. Are they taking a rest? Probably. Or have they found something interesting? Let’s go and see what they are doing, Ted. We are almost there.” When we catch up with them, Ted sits down on his heels in the middle of the road. A very typical position. It means either he is too tired to be curious or there is nothing interesting enough to investigate. I sit down beside him and wipe the sweat off his face. He keeps silent. He drops his head. Although his eyes are open, he does not seem to “look” down. Perhaps he needs some time of his own, in whichever way he may spend it. I leave him and walk toward his classroom teacher, who is looking at something with several children. Now I see what interests them: pumpkins on the farm. I join them, touching huge pumpkins, checking on how they grow from runners. A boy shouts excitedly that he has found a dried pumpkin flower. Others walk over to have a look at it. A girl is pulling at a runner, trying to find the end. Several times I look at Ted, who is still in the same position in the same spot that I left him, hardly raising his head. Meanwhile, we find a huge pumpkin, which lies at the edge of the road, some five meters away from Ted. “Come, Ted! Come and see this pumpkin! We’ve found a very big pumpkin, Ted,” I call to him. At first he does not look up. I keep on calling, along with his classroom teacher, several times until he puts his head up and looks towards us. He looks at me. When our gazes meet, his face is filled with a smile, which makes one forget that he had been indifferent to his outer world until only a moment ago.

It always pleases me to see this sudden and dramatic change in his expression from indifference to cheerful smile. And what amazes me more is that this change occurs only when his gaze meets someone else’s. I smile back at him, wave to him and say, “Come Ted, let me show you something. I’m sure you would like it.” Ted stands up and walks to me. He is no longer looking at me, bending his head down, but his face is filled with a smile. When he sits down beside me, he says, “Ms. Maeda.” I put my arm on his shoulder and look into his face. He does not see me but still keeps on smiling, repeating “Ms. Maeda.” “Look, Ted. Look at what we found. What a big pumpkin! See? It’s certainly bigger than your head, isn’t it?” Ted, still smiling, looks down at the ground but not at the pumpkin. “I have never seen such a big pumpkin. Have you?” I continue. “It came here out of the field over there. I wonder how it came here.” Though smiling, he still does not show any response to my words, fingering his shoelaces. “Wouldn’t you like to touch it? This pumpkin is very hard, but it makes a nice sound when you tap it. It sounds very delicious!” After my talking for a while, Ted says, “Pumpkin!” “Yes, Ted, this is a big, big pumpkin, isn’t it?” “Big pumpkin!” he repeats. Even though he utters “pumpkin,” he has not looked at the pumpkin yet. But his smile has not faded, either. I tap the pumpkin and see Ted, still bent down, say, “Big pumpkin!” His classroom teacher, who has been with us and also talked to him, asks, “Why don’t you tap it, Ted? Where is the pumpkin?” Ted reaches his hand forward very slowly, but his hand is not extended toward the pumpkin. His hand stays in the air, as if he has forgotten what he was reaching for. “Yeah, Ted. Where is your pumpkin?” we ask. He puts his hand down on the ground, taps there, and says, “Pumpkin! A big pumpkin!” Then slowly, he returns his hand to his shoe, its most familiar position when he is sitting down on his heels. Although we still talk to him and although he is still smiling, he won’t talk any more, and he won’t move any more.

Grasping Ted’s Experience

What could we say about Ted from this description? What kind of explanation do we seek? What do we feel is missing in this description? What about, for example, his utterance “a big pumpkin”? What could we learn from it? Some might say that we could not say anything about Ted without receiving more information about him. What are his scores of psychological assessment tests? How well (or poorly) can he understand? How many words can he say? Does he have some neurological dysfunction such as epilepsy? Aside from such information, it is quite possible that some might see his utterance as a kind of echolalia;¹ he did not even see the object when he heard the word. He failed to touch the object correctly when asked to do so. Therefore, it seems that he only repeated (echoed) what his teacher said to him without recognizing its meaning. What we as teachers need to do, therefore, is to improve his ability (or compensate for his inability) to match words to objects which are signified by them. Our instruction should be as simple and short as possible so that he will not be confused… .

I remember myself having had two very different feelings. On the one hand, I was somewhat disappointed at his reaction to my talk. Of course, I had not been expecting him to converse with me fluently. But his not having seen a pumpkin, having tapped the ground instead of the pumpkin, made me feel that I had been trying in vain to communicate what I saw and felt. At least at that moment, I also seemed to assume that a word would signify an object, and therefore its use would not be appropriate if it did not signify an object. In other words, I somehow thought that Ted’s use of the words “a big pumpkin!” was inappropriate.

On the other hand, I also felt that something would be left unquestioned if I understood his words that way. I could not conclude that his “a big pumpkin!” was incorrect and meaningless. The blooming smile on his face, the warm and intimate atmosphere among us, his way of saying it: all these things prevented me from thinking so. If his talk was only a reflection of what he heard and did not have meaning, then how could we understand his smile and the intonation of his utterance? What about the time and space we shared? If words are not appropriately used as they are usually supposed to be, are they therefore insignificant or “meaningless”?

I could not, and still cannot, deny that Ted and I had a pleasant time then. Even though he did not show any sign of interest in the pumpkin that was the focus of our talk, his smile and his way of being there told (and tells) me that he had a good time. Probably it was only I, not Ted, who thought that the focus was on the pumpkin. What he was enjoying might not have been the content of our talk but talking itself in that particular situation. And if he experienced the shared situation as pleasant and meaningful, then why do we not listen to his words as the utterance that is full of meaning for him? Why do we tend to evaluate speech in terms of the appropriateness of its contents, independently of the context, his context? Could there not be way(s) of understanding the speech of children with special needs that might lead us closer to them, as they are, situated in the here and now?

It is not only language that triggers those questions. Questions are waiting for us to be asked in everyday, seemingly trivial acts of children with special needs.

Rhea’s Running

“Oh, Rhea!” I murmur, “not again!” It is time for physical education, and all students of three junior high classes are in the school yard, forming two rather meandering lines. We are doing some exercises before we start a ball game. Just then, I see Rhea, an eleven-year-old girl, run away from the line. This is the third time that she has run away, and physical education started only fifteen minutes ago. I look rather desperately at her running toward the far end of the school yard.

Since Rhea is a student in my class, and since another teacher is in charge of the whole class in physical education, it is my job to go after her and catch her. We are not very strict, of course, so we sometimes just leave her to roam around for a while, hoping that she may come back to us. And even when I go after her, I try to let her go back to the group on her own rather than dragging her forcibly against her will. But that principle makes my job even harder, since it is much easier to tug her back than to persuade her to join the group. Though full of energy, Rhea is eleven years old and not big for her age.

As I walk toward Rhea, I see her looking at me with a big smile on her face. She knows that usually somebody will come to get her. As a matter of fact, she probably ran away expecting someone to chase her. However, that is not always the case. Sometimes, like the last time only a couple of minutes ago, she slipped away and jumped around playfully at the corner of the school yard, paying no attention to us. She had not noticed me until I spoke to her from only a few meters away. On those occasions, she gets upset when we try to take her back to the group. Once in a while, she sits on the ground with her serious or expressionless face turned down. That means she is determined not to go back to other students. She looks as though she were a tough, stubborn girl. It is hard to imagine, when she is in such a disposition, that she is an extremely well-behaved student in other classroom activities.

I approach Rhea slowly. I do not rush to her, because if I do, she will run further away from me. She is waiting for me to chase her. In fact, that is what her running away is all about this time: to play come-and-get-me. “Okay, Rhea. Let’s go back,” I say to her. “No,” she replies, giggling. “Oh yes, you go back to the others with me.” “No, I don’t want to.” Still giggling, she is ready to run away from me as soon as I make a move. “All right, then, if you say so. But we are waiting for you.” I turn around and start walking slowly to the group. After several steps I feel Rhea sneaking behind me. When she is very close to me, she hits me on my back, then runs away several meters. Now she is laughing at a high pitch.

“Ouch!” I cry and sit on the spot, pretending that her push was so painful that I cannot move. She senses my pretense and watches me for a while, still giggling. But gradually she walks toward me, probably because she thinks it was too long for me to pretend, or because she abandoned the idea of my chasing her. “Are you all right?” she asks. As I keep silent, she comes even closer, bends a little forward, and touches my shoulder. “I got you!” I cry and put my hands around her. Caught by surprise, she laughs loudly. She still shows some effort to slip away from me; however, that effort seems to be a mere gesture that adds more playfulness to the game.

After a while, I no longer need to hold her tightly. Yet still holding her hand a little more strongly than usual just to make sure she would not run away, I say, “Okay, now, let’s go back and do some exercises.” She says, “No, I don’t want to,” but the tone of her voice, the way she says it, and the lack of resistance in her hand make it obvious that she does not mean what she says. “Oh, yes, we go back right now.” I assume the guise of a strict teacher with a firm tone of voice, yet trying to show her that I am only pretending. She laughs again. As I take her back to the group, she does not shake her hand loose from mine, which she could do so easily because I am not holding her hand tightly any more. We walk back hand in hand, rather than my taking her back.

Rhea finally settles in the group, only to run away again after several minutes when I finally take my eyes off her. I see her run. This time I feel helpless. In a resigned way, I watch the way she moves. That may be because I feel so helpless that I have come to the point of being detached from the whole situation. In any case, I watch her move away from us.

Rhea seems to be running away happily this time also. I can see it by the way she moves. Although I used the words “run away,” she does not really run when she leaves us. Her movement is not fast enough to be called “running” to begin with. She does not go straight from where she was to where she wants to go, either, as people usually do when they run. She has several favorite spots to go to when she leaves the group—at a corner of the school yard, beneath a big tree, a sand box, and the like. But she does not go straight to one of those places. This time, she seems to be heading for the big tree under which there is a covering of a thick carpet of dead leaves. Yet she is not moving straight toward the tree. But I can see that she is heading there, because I know she likes the spot and because of the overall direction of her winding path.

So, I see Rhea drift away from us. As I wrote before, the speed is not fast enough to be called “running.” Yet her movement gives me an impression of swiftness. “She is like a butterfly,” I think to myself. Like a butterfly that flies from one flower to another. It does not flutter straight, it drifts slowly. Yet, because of its light movement, it gives an impression of swiftness. Rhea appears to be enjoying each of her movements. She looks happy when she gradually drifts away, slowly yet lightly.

As I keep watching Rhea, I wonder if I should again go after her and catch her. Why does she run away from physical education? In the classroom, she is considered almost a perfect student, not because she can do all the tasks given to her but because she does not deviate from rules. She is a rather bright girl, of course, and that is why she is in our junior high class, having skipped the last school year of the elementary class. But what is more impressive in the classroom is her attitude. Among other students who leave their seats, who look out through the window most of the time, or who abruptly talk to me about something completely irrelevant to what we are doing, Rhea is an exception. She is a good (well-behaved) girl—almost too good, as a matter of fact. She sits in her spot quietly and does what she is asked to but with few signs of enthusiasm. It is sometimes very difficult to detect a trace of emotions on her stiffened face. That worries me, because she looks as if she is too afraid of making mistakes to relax.

This contrast in her behavior between the classroom and the school yard makes me wonder. Why does she run away only during physical education? Why does she not do the same during other activities? What is the source of this difference? Above all, why does she look much happier when she runs away than she does in the classroom?

I stand up and start walking slowly toward Rhea. Realizing the happiness and liveliness that Rhea does not express in the classroom, I am nevertheless obliged to bring her back to the group. While many unanswered questions are still puzzling me, I try to focus my mind on how I am going to take her back this time.

Deviancy of Behavior

Running away is a daily happening that we, teachers of special needs education, witness every so often. As a matter of fact, it is so ordinary that we do not even pay much attention to it. Or rather, since running away usually disturbs ongoing activities, it is mostly seen as an undesirable, deviant behavior. Inappropriate though it might be, Ted’s utterance “a big pumpkin!” remains just his problem, while Rhea’s running away affects the entire class. Therefore, it is not only inappropriate but also problematic, disturbing, and deviant. The focus of our attention, therefore, tends to be on how to eliminate, or at least limit, this behavior. In other words, running away is taken as a deviant behavior altogether and is not pondered upon any further. And that was one of the main reasons I ran after Rhea to bring her back to the group. Somehow, I also share the unreflected opinion that running away is wrong, that Rhea should join the group activity.

At the same time, however, there also is an unsettled wondering if I am doing the right thing by catching and bringing her back to the class, which makes me uneasy about what I was trying to do. Running away from the physical education class is not the correct thing to do, of course. It is certainly not desirable for us teachers who are expected to teach the whole class of children at the same time. It is undesirable, disturbing to the teachers, and therefore something to be corrected. That is our perception of students’ running away from the class in general. Running away seems to have only negative, if any, significance. It hardly has any meaning to be reflected upon. That is our perception in our sense-making as grown-ups and teachers. But what is the significance of the experience of running away for children? For Rhea? Is it also undesirable, inappropriate, and wrong for Rhea? Is it meaningless for her? When it is said that running away is a deviant behavior, the behavior is seen collectively, and those who do run away become anonymous. But it is the person Rhea who is running away. It is Rhea’s running away that I am attentive to.

Shifting our focus from the behavior of running away to Rhea, we come to notice distinctive characteristics in her running away: she runs away from the class only during the physical education class; she has two ways of running away. On some occasions, she leaves the class slowly and heavily. She does not smile, she does not jump around; she simply sits and does not accept any interaction from others. She looks inaccessible. On other occasions, however, she floats away from the class like a butterfly. She may expect someone to come and get her and try to attract others’ attention. She smiles, sometimes at others, sometimes at herself, as if she is enjoying every moment and every movemen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Lives of Difference
• 2 What Is Special in Special Needs Education?
• 3 How to Examine Special Needs Education?
• 4 Finger Play
• 5 Eating As Self-Feeding
• 6 Smiling and Turn-Taking
• 7 Self-Talk
• 8 Don’t Touch Me
• 9 Seeing and Listening
• 10 Reflections
• References
• Index