The Intensive Interaction Classroom Guide

Social Communication Learning and Curriculum for Children with Autism, Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties, or Communication Difficulties

Amandine Mourière, Pam Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000440744
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is a practical guide to implementing the Intensive Interaction Approach in a school setting and provides essential technical support to teachers and practitioners from nursery to Post-16 who want to embed it into their classroom practice. Geared mainly towards supporting children with communication and social-communication difficulties arising from autism or learning difficulties, the principles apply equally to students of all levels of cognitive ability who struggle with social situations and emotional or sensory regulation.

The Intensive Interaction Classroom Guide brings together contributions from experienced teachers, teaching assistants, and headteachers, who reflect on their practice and share practical tips to facilitate social-communication development within a nurturing classroom environment. Offering practical advice on curriculum and pedagogy and drawing on case studies, authors address key themes on a practical level, while grounding their discussions theoretically and methodologically.

Filled with practical advice and techniques, this book will be essential to anyone working in classroom settings with students who experience social-communication difficulties or need a nurturing approach to emotional well-being.

1. Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003170839-1

Amandine Mourière and Pam Smith

It is now over 15 years since a book on implementing Intensive Interaction in schools was published (Kellet and Nind, 2003), and since then a lot has happened in the world of education! The importance of children’s mental health and wellbeing has come to the fore and, since September 2020, has been recognised as core within teachers’ safeguarding responsibilities. Relational, play-based approaches and child-centred learning have become the focus for supporting children’s learning and behaviour, replacing more behaviourist philosophies. Intensive Interaction enables learners to access emotional learning and social communication learning. It is not a prescriptive approach though; it does not work as a series of prescribed steps one follows to achieve a wanted goal or target. Instead, Intensive Interaction is a process-central approach, which means that style and techniques drive practice rather than targets and objectives. In a sense, with Intensive Interaction we embrace a whole philosophy in which the child is at the very core, valued and respected.

The idea for this book was born from feedback from professionals in education, who consistently express their struggle in getting Intensive Interaction to be recognised and supported as a substantive and established teaching approach. Whilst many teachers find the approach pertinent to their learners, they often struggle to implement it fully within their classroom settings. This is often due to the mistaken perception of Intensive Interaction as an ‘optional extra’, done during free time or squeezed in between ‘proper’ lessons rather than taking its rightful place as the curricular engine which drives all other learning.

Intensive Interaction is beautifully simple, but sadly it is too often assumed that staff can simply get on with it. This couldn’t be further from the actual truth! Achieving good practice is a process which involves ongoing training, sound understanding of child and social communication development, emotional intelligence, fantastic organisational skills, and the ability to operate as a reflective practitioner to increase awareness and appreciation of Intensive Interaction techniques.

With this book we wanted to bring together contributors who have a deep appreciation of the complex simplicity of Intensive Interaction, and we individually hand-picked them to share their knowledge and offer practical advice on implementing Intensive Interaction within a school or individual classroom. Contributions included by teachers from Denmark and Australia, illustrate that whilst learning priorities for children with social communication difficulties remain the same, challenges around implementing Intensive Interaction may vary according to educational context and culture.

Delivering this book has been such an exciting project and one which has made us feel both humbled and privileged to share in the chapter authors’ work. It is worth bearing in mind that these contributors have written their incredible chapters while continuing to work at the ‘coal face’ – teaching during the day with all the additional pressures upon them, some dealing personally with the impact of COVID-19 upon themselves and their families, whilst managing to write in their spare time! They are owed a huge debt of thanks for doing this against all odds. To find the energy to do so shows just how vital they feel Intensive Interaction is to their students and their classrooms.

As described by Dr Dave Hewett in Chapter 2, Intensive Interaction did start right there, in a classroom. It came about as a result of dedicated school staff who were not satisfied with the teaching methods then available, which felt too rigid, too directive, and most of all did not acknowledge of the developmental reality of their learners. This new way of teaching challenged traditional views on education. Forty years on, it feels as if these views have only just slightly shifted. Talking about the crucial importance of ‘well-being’ and of ‘learning to be social’ is not enough – we must ensure our practice leads the way!

Because this book covers such a broad range of education settings, several terms are used throughout the book by different authors. You will find: ‘children’, ‘students’, ‘pupils’, and ‘learners’; ‘teachers’, ‘teaching assistants’, ‘staff’, ‘practitioners’, and ‘educators’. We hope that you will not be too side-tracked by these different descriptions and recognise that we have allowed authors to use the terms that come naturally to describe themselves, their colleagues, and the youngsters with whom they work. The book includes a glossary of terms to cover any technical language, and we have endeavoured to write in full any acronyms that are later included in the text. Perhaps the most important of these are the use of ‘FoCs’ for the ‘Fundamentals of Communication’ which are at the heart of Intensive Interaction. These are listed and explained in Chapter 3 for anyone new to this approach.

The book is designed both to be read cover to cover or for readers to be able to pick stand-alone chapters that are of direct relevance to their teaching situation (and hopefully then return to read the rest!). They are written in quite different styles, and we hope that adds to the book’s pace and interest. Each chapter includes boxes with highlighted teaching points for easy reference.

The chapters focus upon different areas – working from Early Years Foundation Stages to Post-16 provision, including describing the use of Intensive Interaction throughout an all-age school, and management issues around its implementation. They explore the approach with autistic students, pupils with complex needs, severe learning difficulties, and profound and multiple learning disabilities. The key importance of Intensive Interaction for all students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and the teaching and learning theories it encompasses are discussed. There are chapters which explore Intensive Interaction and play; considerations around touch; and using Intensive Interaction as a way of developing an individualised, process-central curriculum and integrating the approach into an established holistic curriculum. Excellent guidance and examples of good practice are included for writing Intensive Interaction into Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans, Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) and recording. While the chapters are diverse, common themes repeat and run through the whole book like a golden thread. We are hoping that this book will highlight that everyone involved in educating SEND students is key in changing the educational and social ecology around the child to thus prioritise and enable social communication learning. Within this group we warmly include numerous, dedicated and indefatigable home educators for whom Intensive Interaction forms the bedrock of their children’s learning. The Intensive Interaction Institute offers both training and the support of like-minded professionals to help with this journey.

Let’s be clear here . .. our mission with Intensive Interaction is not just the kind of progress a child can make in a term or in a year. In reality, this is a long-term investment for their whole future. Embracing the Intensive Interaction philosophy and ensuring it is at the heart of practice in schools will benefit the individual in the long-term and have profound and positive life-changing effects.

Reference

• Kellet, M. and Nind, M. (2003). Implementing Intensive Interaction in Schools: Guidance for Practitioners, Managers and Co-ordinators. Abingdon: David Fulton.

2 The Story of Intensive Interaction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003170839-2

Dave Hewett

In the beginning

Intensive Interaction started in classrooms. It started because we did not know what to teach. Actually, we realised later that we also did not know how to teach. We did not know what to teach to students who did not speak and were mostly seeming to be not motivated to relate much, or they simply did not seem to know how to be meaningfully social. Many clearly found the prospect of being social to be excruciatingly threatening. Quite a few of them were severely withdrawn into their own world of often rhythmical, persistent behaviour. They were all still operating at very early levels of development in every respect – cognitively, emotionally, psychologically, and of course, communicatively. Many, maybe most of them, had received diagnoses of autism. Many of them, many, were also – understandably, given their circumstances – capable of what we consider to be the most severely challenging behaviour. Some of them were people detained in secure accommodation under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act.

So, this was a very special, special school. It was nominally a usual local authority–administered school for children with severe learning difficulties but placed within the campus of a large, learning disability long-stay hospital in Hertfordshire, just outside London. These places mostly no longer exist.

There was a diminishing number of children left in the hospital then, 1981–1982, when I started there as Deputy Headteacher. I became the Headteacher in 1983. The school had therefore actually become an informal further education establishment, working with teenagers and young adults. During the 1980s, national policy gradually turned against admitting children to these institutions as far as possible, but the hospital and the education authority made an agreement to maintain our service. We had evolved into specialists in working with people who may display ‘challenging behaviours’, or at least, specialists in managing to survive working with them, on the whole.

Thus, the majority of our students were physically active adult people who could be difficult to be around, or actually, they found it difficult to be around us – and each other. When they had their oh so frequent difficult times, being fully grown people, naturally, life became interesting for all of us. In my early days, I remember our team had a reasonable presence at the local casualty department. We also had several students with complex needs in a classroom in a quiet building in another part of the hospital. However, they too, of course, shared many of the same educational needs as our more active and volatile people – still at early levels of development in every respect. Our main building was the former hospital tuberculosis ward; it was dilapidated, draughty, and serviced with dank, uncomfortable bathrooms at each end of a long corridor, bathrooms which, of course, were in frequent use. The building leaked, the heating broke down frequently, and we were poorly financed to replace the regularly smashed furniture.

Thus, we were the end of the line. Most of our students had gravitated to the hospital due to their behaviour. They were then accommodated in a lino, formica, and gloss paint environment of the hospital ward dormitories and looked after by an insufficient number of people wearing uniforms. If they were fortunate, they could receive education in our school, within a building unfit for use. We, the staff, were thus working within this terrible physical environment, with some of the most difficult people there are to be around. I loved it. Most of the team loved it. You had to.

There were some lovely, thoughtful, and reflective people in the team – both teachers and teaching assistants. I would emphasise here that all through this story, I will be describing what I consider to be a profound and meaningful educational initiative that came about due to the innovative work of the team – and that includes the teaching assistants. We were blessed with some wonderful personalities as the team evolved throughout that decade. The teaching assistants were just as important, just as innovative, just as reflective within a team that gradually learnt the skills of reflection influencing development. The teaching assistants too wrote records, came up with ideas, and offered challenging questions.

In the early days of 1981–1982, most of the workings of the curriculum were centred on the then common traditions of behaviourist approaches. One of the best known of the behaviourist scientists was B.F. Skinner, who developed the principles of ‘operant conditioning’ in experiments on rats and pigeons, starting in the 1930s. It is the work of Skinner that has had perhaps the greatest influence in special needs work, in its use to modify unwanted behaviours, in its application to attempt to train a person to adopt the behaviours of new skills using a rewards system. The well-known symbols approach called PECs, for instance, if applied as recommended, employs operant conditioning principles. There are many objections to the application of ‘Skinnerite’ principles. Indeed, an aspect of the motivation on my part for our work on Intensive Interaction was a desire to move away from the perception of a person as a behaviour mechanism which can be ‘tweaked’ by an observing and intervening authority. I, we, gradually desired to present more natural, collaborative, and joyful teaching and learning to people who are at very early levels of development which results in the growth of abilities, concepts, and attitudes.

Behavioural approaches owe their heritage to the work of early psychologists such as John B. Watson in the 1910s–1920s, who desired that this very new field of psychology be accepted by the scientific community. Since the physical sciences mostly express their findings, the new ‘facts’, numerically, with statistics, the thinking of some of the early psychologists went in this direction. If you think about it, the only aspect of human experience that can reliably be observed and counted is external behaviour. Thus, the behaviourist branch of the then developing field of psychology started to focus more or less exclusively on observable, countable behaviours and ways in which the environment around a person might be ‘tweaked’ to change or modify the count of those behaviours. Now, of course, many of us these days find it incredible that a field of psychology should focus only on visible behaviour and have little interest in things like thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, but that is what happened.

So, in the beginning, our curriculum was, well, dour, serious, uninspired. We attempted to be controlling. We used behaviour modification to try to change behaviours we did not want, rather than do clever things to help the person change by developing. There was an overall focus on the training of new ‘skills’ using operant conditioning principles. We desired that our students would sit on chairs at tables and do ‘cognitive’ activities – inset puzzles, posting toys, stacking things, matching, and sorting. All these activities can bring somewhat useful achievements, but we started to question whether these were the priorities for people who did not know how to relate meaningfully and might have problems with a member of staff sitting near them. Indeed, many of our students were not at a stage of development where they could be relied upon to sit still on a chair for long – they had not yet found the motivation nor the purpose of the function of sitting at a table.

Developmental reality and teaching priorities

Many of us in the team started having difficult but honest discussions. It started in the staffroom over our Tupperware boxes of sandwiches. Why do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The story of Intensive Interaction
• 3 What do students with autism and learning disabilities need to learn?
• 4 Intensive Interaction as a teaching and learning approach
• 5 My journey to Intensive Interaction in the Early Years Foundation Stage
• 6 Developing a whole-school approach to using Intensive Interaction to promote social communication and well-being
• 7 Intensive Interaction within the general communication curriculum
• 8 Intensive Interaction within our holistic and child-centred approach at Brøndagerskolen
• 9 Developing the Fundamentals of Communication through free-flow play
• 10 Intensive Interaction and the birth of process-central curriculum access
• 11 Touch: the cement that binds us
• 12 Management issues: ensuring a school is Intensive Interaction friendly
• 13 Ensuring access to Intensive Interaction through Education, Health and Care Plans
• 14 Getting it right with recording Intensive Interaction
• Appendix 1: Video observation sheet
• Appendix 2: Summary of observations
• Appendix 3: A value charter for schools
• Appendix 4: Intensive Interaction: new development form
• Appendix 5: Style/technique list
• Glossary
• Index