Seminar sponsored by the British Educational Research Association Social Justice Special Interest Group in collaboration with the Society for Educational Studies Disadvantaged and Disabled Learners and Social Justice
WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
Interagency collaboration, social justice and learners with disabilities and difficulties Professor Harry Daniels University of Bath
DEMOS Paper Personalisation through participation: A new script for public services Charles Leadbeater The dawn of new ‘capabilities’?
Personalisation The proposal is that clients become coproducers of services and take a central part in the design and formulation of the particular service that is made available. stark contrast to the services that ‘deliver’ a standardised offer to all clients whatever their needs Leadbeater, 2004
CHOICE AND VOICE IN PERSONALISED LEARNING’ SPEECH BY DAVID MILIBAND MP MINISTER OF STATE FOR SCHOOL STANDARDS AT A Df. ES INNOVATION UNIT / DEMOS / OECD CONFERENCE ‘PERSONALISING EDUCATION: THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM’ LONDON, 18 MAY 2004 Aneurin Bevan used to say that the freedom to choose was worthless without the power to choose. This is the power of personalised learning. Not a false dichotomy between choice and voice but an acceptance that if we are to truly revolutionise public services then people need to have both. Because students are not merely educational shoppers in the marketplace; they are creators of their own educational experience; and their voice can help shape provision. Both as a means of engaging students in their own learning – the coproducers of education. And as a means of developing their talents – using their voice to help create choices.
Social Exclusion • Social exclusion which may be typified as loss of access to the most important life chances that a modern society offers, where those chances connect individuals to the mainstream of life in that society. • New ‘life chances’ = new patterns of exclusion?
Changes 1 Interagency Work • Responsive interagency work in these contexts requires a new way of conceptualising collaboration which recognises the construction of constantly changing combinations of people and resources across services, and their distribution over space and time.
• Many services are shaped by their histories and organised for the convenience of the provider not the client (Cabinet Office, 2001). • Audit Commission report (2002 p. 52) suggests that there is a general consensus that agencies need to work more closely together to meet the needs of young people, but different spending priorities, boundaries and cultures make this difficult to achieve in practice • Interagency working of such services tend to 'underlap' rather than overlap and agencies can ignore the complexity their clients present
The 2002 Spending Review • prioritises multiagency support in schools and announces a multiagency behaviour strategy which includes the formation of behaviour and education support teams
The Green Paper, September 2003: Every Child Matters • integrated teams of health and education professionals, social workers and Connexions advisers based in and around schools and Children's Centres; • sweeping away legal, technical and cultural barriers to information sharing so that, for the first time, there can be effective communication between everyone with a responsibility for children; • establish a clear framework of accountability at a national and local level with the appointment of a Children's Director in every local authority responsible for bringing all children's services together as Children's Trusts;
Policy and Inclusion • Current policy on social inclusion is running ahead of conceptualisations of inter-professional collaboration and the learning it requires in a number of fields • Even Personalisation through Participation
A view of the problem from a study of Young People Permanently Excluded from School • Sample 193 young people aged 13 to 16 • PEX in 1999/2000 • Across ten local education authorities in England • Sample over representative of females, ethnic • Minorities and young people in care.
Key Concerns • Lack of ‘joined up’ working • Insufficient attention to needs led planning • Prevalence of service led formulation of need • Relationship between placement and expectations and aspirations • Social capital • Boundary crossing ‘knotworkers’
Working Together • Young people require, but typically are not in receipt of, flexible and responsive interagency service delivery • Professionals need to learn how to work collaboratively. • Collaboration between agencies working for social inclusion also now emphasises collaboration with service users. • Promoting deliberative agency
Development Craft Tacit Knowledge Mass Production Articulated knowledge
Modularisation Linking Mass Customisation Architectural knowledge Process Enhancement Practical Knowledge Development Craft Mass Production Articulated knowledge Tacit Knowledge Renewal
Networking Modularisation Mass Customisation Architectural knowledge Linking Process Enhancement Practical Knowledge Development Craft Mass Production Articulated knowledge Tacit Knowledge Co-configuration Renewal
Co-configuration includes interdependency between multiple producers in a strategic alliance or other pattern of partnership which collaboratively creates and maintains a complex package which integrates products and services and has a long life cycle.
Learning • For co-configuration • In co-configuration • Need to go beyond conventional team work or networking to the practice of knotworking
Changes 2 Knotworking • is a rapidly changing, distributed and partially improvised orchestration of collaborative performance • takes place between otherwise loosely connected actors and their work systems to support clients. • various forms of tying and untying of otherwise separate threads of activity takes place. • Co-configuration in responsive and collaborating services requires flexible knotworking • no single actor has the sole, fixed responsibility and control
Knotworking • requires participants to have a disposition to recognise and engage with the expertise distributed across rapidly shifting professional groupings.
Argument 1 Social world structures thinking Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice or on two planes… It appears first between people as an intermental category, and then within the child as an intramental category
Argument 2 Scientific and spontaneous concepts Concept Scientific concepts Mature concepts Spontaneous Concepts Object • Impose on child logically defined concepts • Scientific concepts move ‘downwards’ towards greater concreteness • Evolve in highly structured and specialized activity of classroom instruction • Concepts emerge from the child’s own reflections of everyday experience • Spontaneous concepts move upwards towards greater abstractness • Develops in child’s everyday learning environment
Argument 3 theories of learning • subject (traditionally an individual, more recently possibly also an organization) • acquires some identifiable knowledge or skills in such a way that a corresponding, relatively lasting change in the behaviour of the subject may be observed. • knowledge or skill to be acquired is itself stable and reasonably well defined. • There is a competent ‘teacher’ who knows what is to be learned.
• People and organizations are all the time learning something that is not stable, not even defined or understood ahead of time. • important transformations -- literally learned as they are being created. • There is no competent teacher.
Activity Theory • Theory • Methodology
1. Prime unit of analysis. • collective, artefact-mediated and object -oriented activity system, seen in its network relations to other activity systems
Mediating Artefacts: Tools and Signs Object Subject Sense Outcome Meaning Rules Community Division of Labour The structure of a human activity system Engestrom 1987 p. 78
• Subject: the individual/subgroup chosen as the point of view in the analysis. Tools: physical or psychological. • • Community: • • • individuals/subgroups who share the same general object. Division of labor: division of tasks between members of the community. Rules: explicit/implicit regulations, norms, conventions that constrains action/interaction Object: “the ‘raw material’ or ‘problem space’ at which the activity is directed and which is molded or transformed into outcomes”
2. Multi-voiced ness of activity systems • division of labour in an activity creates different positions for the participants, the participants carry their own diverse histories, • activity system itself carries multiple layers and strands of history engraved in its artefacts, rules and conventions. • multiplied in networks of interacting activity systems. • source of innovation,
Two interacting activity systems as minimal model for third generation of activity theory -Engestrom 1999 Mediating Artefact Object 1 Object 2 Object 1 Rules Community Division of Labour Object 3 Rules Community Division of Labour
3. Historicity. • needs to be studied as local history of the activity and its objects, and • as history of theoretical ideas and tools that have shaped the activity
4. Contradictions as sources of change and development. • historically accumulating structural tensions within and between activity systems
Contradictions, tensions, conflicts, breakdowns
5. Expansive (cycles) transformations in activity systems • object and motive of the activity are reconceptualized to embrace a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in the previous mode of the activity
Methodology In Activity Theory development is not only an object of study, it is also a general research methodology. The basic research method in Activity Theory is not traditional laboratory experiments but the formative experiment which combines active participation with monitoring of the developmental changes of the study participants. Ethnographic methods that track the history and development of a practice have also become important in recent work.
Expansive learning • capacity to interpret and expand the definition of the object of activity and respond in increasingly enriched ways • produces culturally new patterns of activity • expands understanding and changes practice.
• such learning is evidenced in enhanced analyses of the potential of objects and dispositions of subjects to recognise and engage with distributed expertise in complex work places. • object is the constantly reproduced purpose of a collective activity system that motivates and defines the horizon of possible goals and actions • studying the formation of objects and the learning that takes place in and across complex and rapidly changing activity systems as professionals learn to expand co-construct the objects of their activities.
Change Laboratories Each lasts about two hours. Tensions and dilemmas will be highlighted Alternative ways of working proposed.
1. Work in the Change Laboratory typically starts with the mirror of present problems. 2. It then moves to trace the roots of current trouble by mirroring experiences from the past and by modeling the past activity system. 3. The work then proceeds to model the current activity and its inner contradictions, which enables the participants to focus their transformation efforts on essential sources of trouble. 4. The next step is the envisioning of the future model of the activity, including its concretization by means of identifying 'next-step' partial solutions and tools. 5. Subsequently, the stepwise implementation of the new vision is planned and monitored in the Change Laboratory.
• participants envision and draft proposals for concrete changes. • videotaped for analysis. • professionals involved will be asked to evaluate the acceptability of this way of working.
practitioner will be invited to present an overview of the case -- prepared in a prior meeting. devices and procedures to support the work of these preparatory sessions. include templates of • calendars (to summarise important events in the trajectory), • maps (to depict the key parties involved), and • agreements (to summarise the division of labour amongst the parties). highlight the temporal aspect, the sociospatial aspect, and the relational negotiational aspect of the work
the intellectual work and the practical representational work (writing, drawing, etc. ) of the participants • move between the spaces of the mirror and the model, • stopping occasionally in the middle. these processes move between three layers of time. the discourse moves between the participants and their various voices
Travellers and additional support for learning policy Gwynedd Lloyd & Gillean Mc. Cluskey University of Edinburgh
Gender, social class and school exclusions Jean Kane University of Glasgow
Why are boys over-represented in exclusion statistics? • Nature of the links between certain identities and exclusion from school • Relative influence of schools and wider social factors • Meaning of social justice in this context
Policy background Social justice discourse • Social justice…. . a Scotland where everyone matters (Scottish Executive, 1999) School improvement discourse • Better behaviour, better learning (Scottish Executive Education Department, 2002)
Method • Four secondary schools • Twenty case studies of pupils who had been excluded in that session • Classroom observation, interviews, school and pupil documentation • Focus here on three case studies – Andy, Ross and Davy
Negotiating masculinities – moving towards exclusion 1. Public respect: The teachers do not treat you right. In Primary 7 the teachers treated you with respect. Here they don’t; they treat you like you were dirt, nearly every single teacher ( S 1 pupil)
Negotiating masculinities – moving towards exclusion 2. Power and control Pupils want to be his friend because I think it is the power he has outwith the school, or the perceived power he has outwith school. (Maths teacher)
Negotiating masculinities – moving towards exclusion 3. Maturity Work, girlfriends, social life He is a very bright boy but he is out till 1. 00 or 2. 00 am and he cannot get up in the morning for school. He has a difficult home life but there is a lot of pressure as well with peers. (Home/School link worker)
Negotiating masculinities – moving towards exclusion 4. Abilities and the future I was one of the brightest in my class at primary school. I still am really in most of my classes. I can do the work; but I just don’t do it most of the time. (Ross)
To summarise…… • Boys are negotiating identities in school for their lives outside of school • For some, those negotiations entail behaviour which leads to their exclusion • Limits to what schools can do
What is social justice here? • Continue to exclude? • Alternative curricula? Alternative location? • Develop in-school support systems? • Curriculum flexibility and adaptability? • Recognise impact of inequality on young people in school?
Capability Theory and Disadvantaged and Disabled Learners Lorella Terzi University of London
Educational Equality and Justice Why does educational equality matter? Primarily educational equality matters because it is a fundamental value of justice.
This statement subsumes three important considerations: 1. Reasons for supporting egalitarianism: Intrinsic value of equality Instrumental value of equality ‘Equality is the sovereign virtue of political communities’ (Dworkin, 2000: 1). 2. Important normative role of equality at two interconnected levels in education: The theoretical level, concerned with conceptualisations of values and aims; The level of provision, related to the enactment of these ideals into policies and practice. 3. The importance of conceptualising educational equality in relation to disabled learners.
Conceptualising Educational Equality for Disabled Learners: Equality in Capabilities I maintain that the capability approach helps in conceptualising educational equality by focussing on the fundamental educational capabilities that are essential prerequisites for functioning as an independent person in society. My argument has two interrelated parts. 1. First, I maintain that, in so far as we can, we should educate people in order to develop those educational capabilities that, once secured, will ensure that individuals are not at a disadvantage in society.
2. Second, I argue that seeking equality in the space of fundamental educational capabilities helps substantially in considering the demands of educational equality for disabled learners. More specifically, it allows a conceptualisation of educational equality as equal effective opportunities for educational capabilities, at a level necessary and sufficient for participating as equals in society. The specification of a level of equal participation, as we shall see, entails the distribution of additional resources to disabled learners as a matter of justice.
What is the Capability Approach? The capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen and further articulated by Martha Nussbaum, is a normative framework for the assessment of poverty and inequalities.
Sen’s Capability Approach: key concepts The evaluative space for the assessment of inequality, and conversely, for determining what equality we should seek, is the space of the freedoms to achieve valuable objectives that people have, that is the space of capabilities.
Within this space, Sen distinguishes functionings and capabilities. Functionings are ‘beings and doings constitutive of a person’s being’ (1992: 39). Walking is a functioning, so are reading, being well nourished, being happy or having self-respect. Capabilities are capabilities to function, and represent a person’s substantive freedoms to achieve valuable functionings, or functionings that a person has reasons to value (1992: 40). Capabilities represent ‘various combinations of functionings (beings and doings) that the person can achieve. Capability is, thus, a set of vectors of functionings, reflecting the person’s freedom to lead one type of life or another’ (1992: 40). Example: ‘Fasting as a functioning is not just starving: it is choosing to starve when one does have other options’ (1992: 52).
Sen’s capability approach: key concepts The concept of human diversity The capability approach theorises a space where considerations of personal heterogeneities are relevant for the assessment of equality. Sen maintains that ‘the empirical fact of human diversity’ is crucial in assessing the demands of equality’ (1992: xi). Human diversity is no secondary complication (to be ignored, or to be introduced later on); it is a fundamental aspect of our interest in equality’ (1992: xi).
Human diversity is addressed as the interrelation of personal and circumstantial factors. According to this view, human beings are diverse in three fundamental ways: 1. Firstly, they are different with respect to their personal, internal characteristics, such as gender, age, physical and mental abilities, talents, proneness to illness and so forth. 2. Secondly, different individuals are different with respect to external circumstances, like inherited wealth and assets, environmental factors, including climatic differences and social and cultural arrangements (1992: 1, 20, 27 -28). 3. Thirdly, a further and important diversity relates to differences in the conversion of resources into freedoms, that is it relates to different individual abilities to convert commodities and resources into valuable ends (1992: 85).
Elements of a fundamental educational entitlement The Capability approach allows a conceptualisation of a fundamental educational entitlement in terms of the equal effective opportunities to levels of educational capabilities necessary and sufficient to function and to participate effectively in society. The fundamental educational capabilities form the necessary and sufficient enabling conditions that, once achieved, allow individuals to function effectively in their dominant social framework. In so far as we can, we should provide people with equal effective opportunities for fundamental educational capabilities and the relative achieved functionings, which constitute the transformational resources necessary to functioning and participating effectively in society.
Elements of a Fundamental Educational Entitlement for Disabled Learners Two components: a level of definitions and conceptualisations of disability and special educational needs, and a level of provision. 1. A capability perspective on impairment, disability and special educational needs • Disability and special educational needs as inherently relational, or, more specifically, as emerging from the interlocking of individual characteristics with social and circumstantial elements. • They are conceptualised as functionings and capabilities limitations and hence evaluated in terms of vertical inequalities.
Example: dyslexia Dyslexia is considered a difference, which, in affecting functionings, constitutes an identifiable disadvantage. It is relational to both impairment and the design of educational institutions. The capability approach evaluates dyslexia as a vertical inequality and highlights how additional and appropriate provision in any case of restriction of functioning and capability becomes a matter of justice.
Elements of a Fundamental Educational Entitlement for Disabled Learners 2. A fundamental educational entitlement, an educational minimum for disabled learners consists in levels of opportunities and resources required to allow learners to achieve those basic educational functionings that are prerequisites for en effective participation in the dominant framework. In this sense, therefore, a dyslexic child is entitled to additional opportunities and resources that will allow her to achieve reading and writing functionings appropriate to participate effectively in her social framework.
Problems and Limits 1. Possible element of ‘reductionism’. Why should we propose an educational minimum based on certain capabilities necessary to an effective functioning in society, when certain impairments restrict functionings in such substantial ways that the actual well-being of the individual is better promoted through fostering other, non-basic capabilities? 2. The possible discriminatory use of a threshold level. Why not proposing the promotion of capabilities and functionings achievements and abandon any idea of threshold level?
Conclusions The Capability approach helps in answering one of the hardest normative questions related to educational equality: What and how much educational resources should be devoted to disabled learners? It suggest an understanding of educational equality in terms of equal opportunities to fundamental educational capabilities at levels necessary to function and participate effectively in society. This leads to the requirement, as a matter of justice, of additional opportunities and resources for disabled learners. This view does not represent a theory of educational equality, rather, it presents an exploration of its complexities and a possible answer within the capability approach.
Questions
The Social Construction of Dyslexia in Higher Education Shelia Riddell & Elisabet Weedon University of Edinburgh
Focus of Paper Construction of dyslexia in higher education and negotiations between students, lecturers and academic institutions over diagnosis and support. Draws on social constructionist thinking to highlight ways in which individuals use category of disability to make sense of experience.
Parallels approaches used to make sense of other ‘new’ disabilities e. g. AD(H)D ADHD as a category has established itself within schooling, and in this sense is both a social fact and a resource that is actively used for dealing with problems. It has implications for the manner in which teaching is organised and for the use of limited resources. It will also have consequences for the student’s educational career, and obviously, a neuropsychiatric diagnosis, indicative of a brain injury, will play a critical role identity formation of young people. (Hjorne and Saljo, 2004: 7)
Structure of Paper • Construction of dyslexia in scientific literature • Incidence of dyslexia in higher education. • Case studies of dyslexic students to illustrate a) understandings of students and university staff b) institutional responses with regard to curricular and pedagogical approaches c) resource allocation issues
The research project Data drawn from ESRC funded study: Disabled Students and Multiple Policy Innovations in Higher Education Conducted jointly by researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow between 2000 and 2003. Range of methods: • analysis of HESA data • questionnaire survey of institutional practices • in-depth case studies of forty eight students in eight HEIs in England Scotland. Case studies: • Interviews with students, lecturers and support staff • Observations of individualised anticipatory adjustments
Anti-discrimination legislation and the construction of ‘reasonable adjustments’ • Over two decades, higher education transformed from elite to mass system • Growth of new public management (RAE, TQA) • Also increase in equalities legislation • DDA Part 4 : requires individualised & anticipatory adjustments • Adjustment to curriculum, pedagogy & assessment contentious – raises issue of standards
Disability, categorisation and identity Early writing in disability studies – drew distinction between impairment & disability. Disability seen as socially relative But writers like Abberley saw impairment as an undeniable ‘bedrock’ Post-modern writing – emphasises mutability & contingency Disability shifting category – tensions with fixed administrative categories Categories like AD(H)D and dyslexia reveal live struggles between different interest groups
Constructions of dyslexia Recent reviews criticise fundamental research informing practitioner action Findings seen as ‘tentative, speculative and controversial’ Standard diagnostic criteria cast much too wide a net
Differences between bodies over definition British Dyslexia Association & Dyslexia Institute promote definitions based on physiological/neurological/genetic differences British Psychological Society adopts more inclusive definition: Dyslexia is evident when accurate and fluent word reading and/or spelling develops incompletely or with great difficulty. (BPS, 1999) Voluntary organisations & parents claim dyslexia is discrete category Educationists see it as part of continuum of learning difficulties
The incidence of dyslexia in higher education Advantages of label for individual: • Access to the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) • Reasonable adjustments, including alternative ways of demonstrating learning outcomes and extra time in exams. • Possible lower entry requirements Advantages of label for institution: • Premium funding • Boost to numbers reported to HESA But level of resourcing supports standardised, rather than specialised, adjustments
Table 1. Students in higher education with a known disability (first degree programmes) Number of students Total known to have disability Percentage 1994 - 95 323011 11162 3. 5% 2002 - 03 351805 21285 6% Year
Table 2. Categories of disability used by HESA and percentages of undergraduates in each category in 1994/95 and 2002/3 1994/95 2002/03 Dyslexia 15% 49% Blind/partially sighted 4% 3% Deaf/hard of hearing 6% 4% Wheelchair/mobility difficulties 6% 3% Personal care support 0. 1% Mental health difficulties 2% 3% An unseen disability 53% 23% Multiple disabilities 5% 4% Other disability 10% 11% Type of disability
Table 3. Male and female students self-identifying as dyslexic (first degree entrants 2002 -2003, full-time) Total number male students* 146240 (9905) Total number of male students with dyslexia % 5535 Total number of female students 3. 8 (56) 169910 (9705) Total number of female students with dyslexia % 4390 2. 6 (45)
• Incidence of dyslexia has increased in both male and female students • Dyslexic students socially advantaged group • Significantly more likely to be male and middle class.
Negotiating the meaning of dyslexia: three case studies Liam Assessment : likelihood of positive diagnosis: I think you have to pay £ 200, but the disability officer said “You can get that back if you are dyslexic and we haven’t had anyone yet who has been tested who hasn’t been and I’m pretty confident you will get it back so I never had to pay the £ 200. (Liam, ancient Scottish university)
But not necessarily a guarantee of adjustments: You know I went to one guy, in fact the first guy I saw, and said, “Look, I’ve been diagnosed as having dyslexia’ and I was about to say, ‘Who can I go to discuss essays with? ” and he said, “Oh, you know in my experience dyslexics don’t spell any worse than the other students”. Afterwards, when I left, and this says everything about the guy, he just said, “Don’t hassle me”. I thought, this guy, he’s supposed to be teaching English Literature and doesn’t even have a basic grasp of what dyslexia is. (Liam)
Idiosyncratic institutional responses: You know if there was an essay from a dyslexic student I tend to try and ignore the kind of structural difficulties and try and see what they are saying and so I tend to mark them on the ideas rather than the actual presentation. But that’s totally improvised, that’s not because of anything. (Lecturer, ancient Scottish university)
But reservations on grounds of equality: I felt that in a sense Liam was disadvantaged by his dyslexia but also he was getting all this kind of special attention which I was happy to give. I don’t think it was proportional to the attention I had given to other students with dyslexia. So I feel quite uneasy about that as well. (Lecturer, ancient Scottish university)
Student discontent with institutional treatment: I applied for funding from the Students Awards Agency for Scotland for a Ph. D and they said “Sorry, you don’t get funding because you didn’t get a first”. And I’m thinking, “If I was black, this would be racism, blatant racism, but I’ve possibly missed out on £ 20, 000 worth of funding which everyone says I’m capable of because the system was weighted against me and I was misinformed at the time. (Liam)
Maurice Early educational experience I went through school – everything was never fine – I was always slow. Always from the start of primary school, my mother and father would have been brought in because my reading wasn’t very good, my reading was always very slow. Both my parents were teachers, so I think what really happened was that they sort of worked with me a bit. Nothing was ever diagnosed except that ‘Maurice’s a bit slow’, do you know what I mean, and I must have just muddled through school to be honest. English was never a strong point and I don’t know if that was why I went down the science route, because it wasn’t structured essays, factual learning. It was understanding, and I was always better with diagrams and thing like that. (Maurice)
Response to diagnosis at university: Initially my diagnosis was “You are dyslexic” and at that time that was a relief to me. I didn’t take it to heart, I didn’t think I was retarded or something like that. I think some people do take it to heart. I thought, “Well, that’s quite a relief” and I was quite happy with the position that the university was going to give me some extra time in exams and I thought, “Oh that’s good, it will take a bit of the pressure off me a bit more in writing essays”.
Institutional scepticism: I came to enquire about it and they were a bit standoffish about the whole dyslexic thing. …Their point of view is that they see it as an excuse and they say, “Why do you want extra time in an exam? You wouldn’t get extra time during a surgery or extra time in rescuss”. I know it is better being dyslexic, I can feel my medical friends saying “And how did you fail that test Maurice? ”. There a few people think that.
Concealed identity: There’s about three other people in my year who are dyslexic in medicine and I’ve bumped into them as we’ve arrived at the exam hall 25 minutes early, you can work it out, but that’s the only way. Sometimes it comes up in the conversation, “Where were you? ” “Seeing the special needs adviser”. “Oh, what’s that about? ” It never gets brought up in conversation with any academic members of staff.
Reluctance to self-categorise as disabled: I don’t like thinking of myself as disabled, I don’t even like, when you started talking, I don’t even like that you almost put me in the category with someone in a wheelchair. I almost find that offensive. No. I mean, God, I’m glad I’m not and it’s almost a relief that I don’t have to deal with a physical or other disability. I really don’t like holding it up or shouting about it at all. I like that it’s been identified and I’m not stupid, I rather look on it like that. (Maurice)
Pragmatic use of category in job application: I wouldn’t, I would not tick the disabled box – I think maybe I did actually reign in my pride and tick the disability box and I rang them and said, “I’m dyslexic and if I’m coming to your centre then I need access to a word processor”. So yeah, I think in that instance I made it work for me and then I thought, well, damn it, why should I handicap myself? . In other instances I haven’t because I’m very suspicious, despite the fact that the Disability Discrimination Act exists. I’m very suspicious of people making a judgement about who you are depending on whether you tick a box or you don’t. Because I think people don’t understand that you can have dyslexia and be completely, perfectly affable, perfectly bright person who just has a few problems in these areas over here. (Sheena)
Lecturers’ accounts of dyslexia Concerns about ‘dumbing down’ I think the issues [of academic standards] will come to the fore when we have a lot more students who fall into the disabled group and what we will get is the student who is disabled and a bad student. A student who is disabled and is a bit lazy, and I think people are not quite sure what to do because of the PC nature of it. These are the cases that will be difficult because the question arises, is the student using their disability as an excuse for being lazy? But most of the people we have had so far are here because it isn't yet mainstream and they have struggled so hard to get here and they are willing. As I say in the past it’s been a case of asking the lecturer, ‘Can I have this extra thing, can I tape the lecture and go away and re-write it? ’. So they are going through all this extra work so they tend to be the students who are motivated. (lecturer, ancient university)
Conclusion • Social constructionist thinking provides insight into struggles over categorisation of disability over time • Rapid expansion in number of students with diagnosis of dyslexia • Expansion of disabled students largely explained by increase in the number of dyslexic students. • Relatively socially advantaged group.
• Students describe struggle to have dyslexia formally recognised (although negative assessments rare). • Identification of dyslexia welcomed - but institutional response often slow • Dyslexia is not without stigma – but preferred to category of disability
• Resistance at institutional level linked to struggle over resources • Individual academics express scepticism about validity of category • Seen as ‘dumbing down’ & linked to pathologising of normal experience.
Reforming Teaching: is there such a thing as a special pedagogy? Lani Florian University of Cambridge
Pedagogy “the broad cluster of decisions and actions taken in classroom settings that aim to promote school learning” Lewis and Norwich, 2005 p. 7
What is special education? • USA Specially designed instruction. . . to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability • England Special education provision means. . . educational provision which is additional to, or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children of their age in schools maintained by the LEA, other than special schools, in the area • Scotland A child or young person has additional support needs (ASN) where, for whatever reason, the child or young person is, or is likely to be, unable without the provision of additional support to benefit from school education provided or to be provided for the child or young person
Previous work on specialist pedagogy Lewis and Norwich (1999) interested in whether differences between learners (by particular SEN group) could be identified and systematically linked with learners' needs for differential teaching general differences - "needs which are specific or distinctive to a group that shares distinctive characteristics” unique differences - "are informed only by common and individual needs, general specific needs are not recognised"
Previous work on specialist pedagogy Two central findings • the available evidence does not support the general difference position and • while it does not fully endorse the unique differences position there was some support for the argument that works for most pupils works for all pupils, though there might be differences in application for various types of difficulties. 'continua of teaching or pedagogic approaches'
Meta-analyses of special education practices • Considered useful answering questions about what works in special education – Kavale review. • Attempts to define what is special about special education have failed to show anything distinctive. • It is when research which investigates the teachinglearning process in general is 'interpreted' for special education that significant effect sizes are obtained. • SPECIAL education • special EDUCATION
Teaching strategies and approaches for pupils with special educational needs: a scoping study. AIM: to map out and assess the effectiveness of the different approaches and strategies used to teach pupils with the full range of special educational needs • • language and communication cognition and learning physical and sensory emotional and behavioural difficulties
Findings • Certain teaching strategies and approaches are associated with, but not necessarily related directly to specific categories of SEN. • These were not sufficiently differentiated from those which are used to teach all children to justify a distinctive SEN pedagogy. • Sound practices in teaching and learning in both mainstream and special education literatures were often informed by the same basic research. • Some teaching strategies developed for one purpose can be used with particular groups of children for other purposes (e. g. co-operative learning). • There is a growing need to move away from the belief that one model of learning informs and justifies one model of teaching. Thus, the findings of the scoping study led to focus more broadly on the question of pedagogy.
Pedagogy what one needs to know, and the skills one needs to command, in order to make and justify the many different kinds of decisions of which teaching is constituted. . . [including] • children: their characteristics, development and upbringing • learning: how it can best be motivated, achieved, identified, assessed and built upon • teaching: its planning, execution and evaluation, and • curriculum: “the various ways of knowing, understanding, doing, creating, investigating and making sense which it is desirable for children to encounter, and how these are most appropriately translated and structured for teaching” ( Alexander, 2004).
Pedagogy • It is not the differences among children, their characteristics or upbringing that is problematic but when the magnitude of these differences exceeds what schools can accommodate that children are considered to have special educational needs. • this process of making accommodations does not constitute pedagogy but is an element of it. • questions about a separate special education pedagogy are unhelpful. • the more important agenda is about how to develop a pedagogy that is inclusive of all learners. • SEN Code of Practice areas of need are important elements of human development for all learners.
Pedagogy Moreover these elements interact in ways that produce individual differences which make it difficult to prescribe a course of action to remedy a particular problem. Special education knowledge - an essential component of pedagogy. Necessary but not sufficient conditions: • • • an opportunity for pupil participation in decision-making processes a positive attitude about the learning abilities of all pupils teacher knowledge about learning difficulties and other special educational needs skilled use of specific teaching methods parent and teacher support
Transitions for Young People with Special Educational Needs Alan Dyson University of Manchester
The Issues • Model of social inclusion dependent on • • Progression to EET Employability in a globalised labour market ‘One way of being’ Support structures & interventions for those at risk of exclusion • Young people with difficulties which make this model problematic
The Study • Longitudinal study of YPs identified at school as having SEN • Wave 2 captures YPs at age 17 • Main survey supplemented by 16 case studies • Cases weighted towards those where interventions might have most effect • Interviews with YPs, parents/carers, providers
Themes • Deferred transitions for some • preordained tracks • waiting for maturation • Disrupted transitions • churning & lack of progression • Variable support 7 planning at school & beyond • Dependence on parental intervention • an under-utilised resource
Themes II • Variable outcomes • Social difficulties • Lack of independent living • Lack of rational planning
Some implications • All may yet be well, but… • The linear transition model appears not to apply here • Personal limitations and inadequate support send young people ‘off-track’ • No obvious entitlement • Maybe stronger support is needed…or a different paradigm
Adult Basic Education and Social Inclusion Lyn Tett University of Edinburgh
Social Inclusion • The excluded do not constitute a defined group in the population: there is no single clear-cut definition of ‘social exclusion’. Categories such as the ‘unskilled’ ‘ethnic minorities’ ‘the unemployed’ cover a range of circumstances. …. So ‘exclusion’ does not bring a precise target into view but a range of associated issues (OECD, 1999: 15 -16). • The goal of policy is now to change behaviour in civil society (individuals and organisations) rather than simply provide a service. • The new language of exclusion implies that government’s task is to promote “inclusion” into the existing social order’ (Field, 2000: 108).
Literacy and numeracy • Being literate and numerate is generally equated with success in life, with notions of a person being ‘educated’, obtaining a job and having access to the ‘goods’ and trappings of well being that are valued highly in society. • An earlier discourse of economic egalitarianism has given way to a new emphasis on individual responsibility. Extremes of income and wealth are no longer presented as undesirable in themselves. The only undesirable element is that they may lock certain members of society into an inability to take care of themselves. The state then has a responsibility to ensure that opportunities for self-advancement are made equally available to every citizen, an obvious responsibility in relation to education and training (Phillips, 1999: 13).
Employment and ‘basic skills’ • A number of quantitative studies have shown that literacy and numeracy skills are significant both in gaining employment and also in retaining and progressing in it. • The findings of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) are based on a particular discourse that assumes that literacy and numeracy skills are neutral that takes no account of the ways in which literacy and numeracy are used in specific communities. In this discourse literacy skills are viewed as a set of technical skills which, once acquired, usually lead to positive employment outcomes. • In contrast ethnographic studies of literacy and numeracy practices reveal the role of social networks where people act as ‘mediators’ or ‘brokers’ in assisting others.
A social practice approach to learning • Rather than seeing literacy and numeracy as the decontextualised, mechanical, manipulation of letters, words and figures instead literacies are located within the social, emotional and linguistic contexts that give them meaning. • Thus reading and writing are complex cognitive activities that integrate feelings, values, routines, skills, understandings, and activities and depend on a great deal of contextual (i. e. social) knowledge and intention
A social practice approach to learning community learning as doing Learning learning as belonging identity practice learning as becoming meaning learning as experience From Etienne Wenger (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press
Learners’ Views from the workplace • ‘I’ve got the practical skills to work out how much paint it’s going to take to cover a room from doing it over the years so I don’t really need to measure it all out. The young guys in my firm know how to do all that and we work together because they can learn from me but they also know things that I don’t’. • ‘I speak up a lot more now. When they tried to change our schedules at work I said it wasn’t right and we got together and they changed it back. Before I came to the programme I would never have done that because I didn’t want to make trouble’. • ‘I basically know what I’m talking about now. I’m confident and capable and know I can achieve things’.
Learners’ Views continued • ‘It’s making me realise that I’m not stupid’. • ‘It made a whole lot of difference to how I feel about myself since I learned to read better. You feel better when you learn to do a lot of things for yourself you know’. • ‘I’m not afraid to voice my opinion now, even if I’m wrong’. • ‘I’m being taken more seriously at work now. I’m not just a woman who left school and then had lots of kids’.
Education and Learning • ‘Even a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It causes a smouldering discontent that may flame into active rebellion against a low level of life, and produces a demand, however stammering, for more interests and chances. Where we see ferment there has been some of the yeast of education’ (Margaret Davies, 1913).
Social Practices approach and Social Inclusion 1 • Literacy and numeracy being organised within specific social, emotional and linguistic contexts that integrate feelings, values, routines, skills, understandings, and activities. • Purposeful learning that builds on learners’ prior knowledge and experience to shape and construct new knowledge but also challenges them to take risks; • Developing a curriculum that helps students to recognise that they have the capacity to learn and to generate new knowledge that will be really useful to them;
Social Practices approach and Social Inclusion 2 • Working on both increasing skills and developing people’s critical awareness of why they might not have these skills in the first place; • Developing the awareness of employers, policy makers and other decision-makers about the value of using a social practices, rather than a deficit, approach to literacy and numeracy • Maximising the strengths of people’s spiky profiles of skills, knowledge and understanding through working collaboratively in their communities of practice.
Disabled Learners and Social Justice: A Swedish Comparative Perspective Eva Hjorne & Lisa Asp-Onsjo Goteborg University
”A school for all” • The idea is 200 years old • Political goal and ambition • Not everyone fits in • A dilemma solved by differentiating/segregating strategies
The arguments have changed… • Protect the ”normal” child • For the child’s own best • Beneficial for everyone – implies differentiating pupils into homogeneous special classes • Meet the individual pupil’s needs – implies entitlement or right to special support
Categories used have changed… • Poor, unintelligent – short period of schooling • Moron, imbecile – remedial class • Intellectually retarded, maladjusted, immature, CP – 8 different classes in the curriculum • Neuropsychiatric impairments (diagnosises) – special teaching groups i. e. ADHD-group
For example in 1962 • • Remedial class Special class for maladjusted children Class for children with impaired hearing Class for children with visual impairments Remedial reading class Open-air and health class School readiness class Class for children with cerebral palsy (CP)
Goal- and result oriented school • Local school regulates the details and distributes resources • Categorization – a sensitive issue • Equal access to school • Entitled to special support if needed • Medicalisation and the use of neuropsychiatric categories -10% - ADHD and 21% NPF
Swedish Compulsory School • 1. 1 million pupils (65. 000 pupils in independent schools) • 1, 5 % classical impairments: visual - hearing impairments (0. 1%) and mental retardation (1. 4%) • Increasing number (50%) pupils in special school for mentally retarded: 10. 000 (1999) → 15. 000 (2004) • ~21% in need of special support • Trend: increasing number of special teaching groups; groups for reading, maths, disciplinary problems, ADHD, Aspergers
How the political goal of having ”a school for all” turn out in praxis
Pupil Welfare Team – the institutional mechanism • • • Local responsibility – focus on the professionals Define pupils in need of special support Gender balance 3: 1 Consensus in the multiprofessional team Children’s difficulties seen as a consequence of pupil characteristics - diagnosises • Normalising school practices • No pupil’s perspectives • Attempts of joining-up thinking
IEP – an institutional tool • IEP - a legal obligation for the school and an entitlement for pupils and parents • Designed by school staff in negotiation with parents and pupils
The case of Angie • ”Desired situation” - special school for mentally retarded • IEP as a force of pressure on the parents • Resulted in placing Angie in the category ”mentally retarded” • Solution seems unaviodable
Diagnosises solve the dilemma but a diagnostic culture undermines ”a school for all”
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