Education through the 1960s and 70s
§ Behavioural therapy – rewards, token economy
§ Reject medical model
§ Responsibility was with the teacher
§ Behavioural therapy effective
§ Self-help skills in particular, but not so useful for more complex understanding
§ Neo-behaviourists trying to improve behaviourism
§ Allow concept of ‘cognitive mediation’
o Memory of failure inhibits reading of words (Learned helplessness)
o Adolescents could get embarrassed at praise
o Emotions taken into account, but main emphasis is on reward
§ Positive reinforcement can be counterproductive
§ Mainstreaming
Warnock Report
Recent education reform
§ Education act of 1993
§ Inclusion approach
§ SENCO (SEN Co-ordinator)
§ Every school
§ Sixth Form and FE Colleges
Evaluation
Disadvantages
§ Medical model is dehumanising; treating people like objects
§ Medical model groups vague symptoms together
§ Everybody in category can be treated in the same way
§ (Lewis 1999)
§ Bailey (1998) – scientific and rigorous
§ More objective
Definitions of learning difficulties
Practical
implications for schools
o Stage 1 as before needs met in class – differentiated curriculum, smart targets, tracking through assessment, parental involvement
o Stage 2 similar – ‘school action’ – 1-3 hours per week SEN attention within the classroom, not individual.
o Stage 3 ‘school action plus’ – outside agencies (ed psych, etc), 3-5 hrs support within classroom, not individual. IEPs twice a year for School action (SA) and 3 times a year for ‘school action plus’ (SA+). Added to the IEP form is a space for ‘Long term objectives’ and an evaluation section.
o Stage 4 ‘statutory assessment’ – as before
o Stage 5 ‘statement of educational needs’ – support up to 25 hrs per week. Mainly in class. Annual review. Parents, pupils and staff involved.
IEPs
Dyslexia
Ellis’ model of reading (1993)
Dyslexia is defined as a discrepancy between overall intelligence and reading and spelling ability. Students who are poor at most tasks will not be defined as dyslexic.
Aaron et al (1988) developmental dyslexia is poor grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) decoding skills. Reading delay is due to poor comprehension. Best to give help with specific problem rather than to label child as dyslexic.
Effects of dyslexia
No Good job
Form filling
Reading bills
Legal documents
Etc
At school national curriculum demands high level of reading skills.
Teachers could label the child as lazy
Child labels himself or herself as stupid
Lower levels of self-esteem
Disruptive behaviour
Early diagnosis therefore important
Written language programme
1. letters
2. sound/symbol correspondence
3. blends (combining sounds)
4. regular words
5. polysyllabic words and syllabic division
Multi-sensory techniques
Phonics using interrelationships between sensory modalities
Auditory hear ‘cat’
Visual see word ‘cat’
Kinaesthetic write ‘cat’
Tactile touch wooden letters
Weakness in one modality compensated for by using other modalities (Thomson 1990)
Look in a mirror – see lip and tongue movements – good for ‘f’ and ‘th’ confusion.
Trace letter on table, in sand, in air, on someone’s back – gets hand and arm movements coordinated
Eyes shut child holds a wooden letter
Running around big letters in the playground – whole body feel
Further suggestions
(Hardwick 1997)
Own tapes of words to learn how to spell. Hear ‘eat’ on tape. Write ‘eat’. Hear ‘spelling’, etc.
Flashcards
Write on one side ‘my’
Child writes on other side a meaningful sentence with ‘my’ in it
Draw a picture
Research findings –
factors that lead to successful teaching for dyslexic children
· Multi-sensory techniques
· Individual instruction
· Small groups
· Early identification
· Understanding and encouragement
· Structured approach based on phonics
· Teach to strengths and offer help with weaknesses
· Mnemonics
· Help with organisational skills
· Exciting classroom experiences and constructive support
Students with dyslexia do
not improve with:
Much depends upon the individual child when deciding the most appropriate method.
Problem: what do you teach to? The strengths or the weaknesses?
e.g. child can not convert graphemes into phonemes. So do you just use the whole word method? (teach to strength) or teach the child the grapheme phoneme correspondence rules?
Brooks (1995) case study of 11year old boy
Dyslexia
RG has reading age of 7years 6 months
Spelling age of 7 years 5 months
Weaknesses in phonological skills and auditory memory.
Teaching strategies used:
· Look and say
· Tracing
· Simultaneous oral spelling
· Word in words
· Phonics
· Rules
· Baseline
Some worked better than others
For RG Look and say, Tracing, word in words and rules.
Word in words produced the maximum number of words
Played to child’s strength. E.g. ‘damaged’. RG can not do this d-a-m-a-g-e-d (convert each letter) but RG can recognise whole words so can find ‘dam’ and ‘age’ in the word ‘damage’.
So in conclusion you cannot use a structured approach for everybody you have to determine what method works best for each student (Brooks 1995).
Kathleen Kelly’s approach to screening for dyslexia (TES 1999)
Children stand on one leg.
Dyslexic children have problems with automatic tasks such as balancing.
210 11 year olds. 98% accurate in detecting dyslexics
takes 10 minutes
used on 8 year olds plus
‘wobble factor’ as child counts standing on one leg.
Evaluation of
inclusion (mainstreaming)
· Marston (1996) students taken out of class and taught in special groups for some activities did better than those supported in class.
· Focuses on process of education, rather than outcome and on the curriculum of mainstream rather than of SEN (Hornby 1999).
· Majority of parents support inclusion provided there are the resources.
· 47% parents of mainstreamed SEN children were happy compared with 92% of parents with SEN children placed in units within mainstream schools (Hornby 1999).
· Social integration – integration in leisure time (e.g. break and lunch)
· Functional integration – mainstreamed
· Locational integration – special unit on site (Child 1997)
· Mainstreaming works at the expense of the other children, who do not get a good and appropriate education.
o Extra attention from teacher
o Child could be disruptive
· But other children benefit as mainstreaming helps to remove stereotypes.
· Separate education helps the SEN child as they would get support from other SEN children.
· Concentrates specialist staff and equipment in one place
· Harder for separately educated SEN children to integrate into society.
· Easier and cheaper to train a few specialist teachers rather than every teacher in SEN educational techniques.
· Need to combat negative attitudes of teachers towards SEN children.
· SEN children have been integrated on the cheap and have not had an appropriate education.
Advantages of Mainstreaming
o Removes stereotypes
o SEN children integrate into society better
o Experience mainstream curriculum
o Cheap if not done properly
o Poorer educational attainment
o Other children lose out
o Lack of social support from other children
o Specialist staff and equipment thinly spread
o Teacher training expensive
o Negative attitude of most teachers
o Integrated on the cheap (not done properly)