Any experts on here?

[BuntyB]

Hi,

I have been given a choice of assignments to write for Uni, one of which is to assess the advantages and the er...disadvantages of inclusive education for special needs! (Thought you'd like that one )

 

Before I decide though, I am just wondering if in the course of your travels you have come across any good books, articles etc which could be used as references?

 

If not I will be having a load of smilies, quotes from 'my friends' and a Bibliography that looks like this:

 

http://www.asd-forum.org.uk/forum/index.ph...do=new_post&f=7

[phasmid]

I could send you lots. A lot depends on the age group you are looking at as to whether or not what I have will be of any use.

[jen]

you have to look at cost, training, resources, attitudes of staff.

 

You could look at the number of people who go to tribunal it lists the numbers per area and state within some LEA inculsion appears to work better because of less appeals to SENDIST. But on the other hand you can say there are no offical statistics for advantages or disadvantage of inclusion.

 

You could also look at the exclusion fingers for special needs and this would back up that inclusion is not successful.

 

 

 

Remember training does not alway alter staff attitudes.

 

Jen

(you can tell I write a lot of essays from the way my mind works)

[OPooh]

I did an essay just like that for my education module in my final year of my psychology degree. Shall dig it out for you...anything in particular you are focusing on?

[BuntyB]

Oh thank you, thank you

 

Here's the exact question:

 

 

?Wherever possible, children with special needs should be integrated into mainstream schools?. Explain and critically evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of ?inclusive? and ?exclusive? education for children with special needs

 

Any books titles that you know would be useful I can get from amazon, or if you have any links to documents you can PM me?

 

Just to make clear for anyone reading I am not trying to plagerise anybody's work , just in case any tutors are reading!

[OPooh]

The question I had was

 

What arguments may be put forward for the maintenance of separate proviosion for some school students. You should pay particular attention to psychological arguments.

 

I don't think I have it actually on disk anymore (well would be floppy and I don't have a floppy drive now).

References are 3 pages long so would probably be better to discuss which bits would be of use.

 

Will pm you my e-mail addy

[nellie]

Shona is this any good?

 

A Cognitively Accessible Environment

Clare Sainsbury

 

The movement for inclusion of children with special needs had its origins in the reaction against the pointless segregation of children with physical disabilities, and is still largely led by people who have physical disabilities and their supporters. Perhaps because of this, its initial focus has been on the provision of physically accessible environments, and there has been an assumption that inclusion for all children with cognitive or developmental disabilities can operate in a similar way. Relatively little attention has been paid to the possibility that inclusion for children with developmental disabilities such as autism may be a very different kettle of fish (or possibly can of worms).

I believe that we need to develop the concept of a "cognitively accessible environment". This is essential as a standard for meaningful inclusion of students on the autistic spectrum. It is also relevant to the discussion of whether any given environment, be it mainstream or special, is meeting a particular student?s needs.

My talk will draw on my own experiences and those of other people with high-functioning autism/Asperger's syndrome to develop the idea that a "cognitively accessible environment" is as essential to the meaningful inclusion of schoolchildren on the autistic spectrum as a physically accessible environment is to the inclusion of schoolchildren with physical disabilities. I will discuss the role of strategies such as TEACCH in creating such an environment, and also consider whether it is always possible to provide such an environment within a mainstream setting.

I?m going to draw on some of the accounts of school experiences quoted in my book "Martian in the Playground", so I apologize in advance to anyone who?s heard some of these bits already.

I believe that there is currently a deep failure to notice cognitive inaccessibility ? an assumption that as long as a child is physically present in a classroom, they are being included.

But it is essential to acknowledge that a classroom, although physically accessible, may still be impossible for a given child to access in any meaningful way. Though physically included, a child may be mentally excluded.

There is a further assumption that the mainstream classroom is somehow "neutral", not specialized ? it is the "main" stream, after all. But from the perspective of someone with autism or Asperger?s, it becomes clear that the mainstream classroom is in fact designed in a very specialized way to meet the learning needs and problems of neurotypical children: it?s not mainstream at all, but "normalstream".

Considered in this light, "inclusive" education can look dangerously close to an afterthought ? "including" children with special needs into an environment not primarily designed to meet those needs. Yet for any student to be able to learn from their environment, they must be able to make sense of and process their environment.

I want to describe some fairly typical experiences of students with high-functioning autism and Asperger?s in mainstream environments in order to give some idea of the most problematic areas.

Many researchers, and many people on the autistic spectrum, consider that autism is best understood in terms of information processing ? our brains process information in a different way from those of NT people. This is not necessarily a better or worse way, but it has different advantages and disadvantages.

When schools fail to accommodate this different style of information processing, and present information in a way which a student on the autistic spectrum cannot access, learning is impossible, and students bombarded with information they can?t make sense of will become overloaded, frustrated and bored.

One of the people on the autistic spectrum I interviewed, Jack, commented that:

"? the boring subject matter and the teachers' styles, the whole set-up of school, prohibited me from being able to learn much of anything."

Sitting through hours and hours of lessons which are so inaccessible that they might as well be in another language can be a trauma in itself ? another interviewee, Joseph said the most traumatic thing about school was simply "the boredom",

As the TEACCH approach emphasizes, many people on the autistic spectrum , including those who may seem very fluent verbally, have a predominantly visual style of thinking and learning ("thinking in pictures" as Temple Grandin describes it), and benefit from teaching strategies that emphasize pictures and/or written text (some visually-oriented people on the autistic spectrum, like me, also have hyperlexia, displaying unusually early and fast reading abilities - not always accompanied by equal levels of comprehension.). Therese Joliffe , a researcher who has autism herself, has written:

"At school and during my first degree I was helped by the fact that I could read up topics in advance, things were also written down on the blackboard, the work tended to follow a logical progression and because new material was being put across to students, teachers could not talk too fast, rather they seemed to leave gaps of a second or two between each sentence which enabled me to guess more accurately what I had heard."

As this suggests, a visual learning style is often accompanied by auditory processing problems. Sarah said:

"As I grew up, I often had problems following conversations and would often blank out while trying to listen to what other people are saying. Very often in grade school (and on through high school), I would say ?Huh?? or ?What?? because I failed to hear what someone had said to me. This would especially be the case if I had to selectively listen to one person in a room full of chatter or noise."

Difficulty processing auditory information can mean that spoken input quickly becomes overwhelming. Carol reported that as a small child with significant language delays:

"If I did pay attention to what was being said, it was as if everyone was talking to me even if they were talking to someone else or even if the talk was coming from the TV. That got overwhelming at times. I was constantly on edge and aggravated when I tried to focus on language and other people talking. It was kind of like having ten radios blaring with each one of them slightly off the station and trying to listen to each one of them.

On the other hand, when my mother would try shutting everything off and try to get me to focus on her and what she was saying, that too was overwhelming. I would hear her words, but they just didn't make any sense. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming tractor trailer rig."

Simply holding spoken information in short-term memory long enough to make sense of it may be difficult, even though the same person, asked to repeat what has been said, may be able to echo it back without comprehension. Even at university, lectures were almost completely useless to me, as after only a few minutes I would find that I could hold the beginning of a sentence in my mind, and then the end, but not grasp the whole long enough to extract the meaning.

However, not all people on the autistic spectrum share this learning style, and some have exactly the reverse, finding auditory information far easier to process than visual. Darius explained:

"? visual stimuli simply don't enter my brain in a meaningful way. This was probably the reason why I used to talk to myself all the time. I translated everything explicitly in language. Teachers should do the same. They should talk children like me through every problem. Preferably, they should teach children to do this for themselves."

I would suggest that the common denominator of autistic learning styles is concreteness: we typically have great difficulty in moving from specific details to perceiving an overall "gestalt" or pattern. Another quote from Darius illustrates this well:

"We had to learn topography and I learned this at home with the map my parents owned. The next week we had to take a test. The big school map was hung in front of the class and the teacher would point to cities and we'd have to write down the name. I failed abysmally. I now know why this happened. The map at home had different colours. When I learned from the map at home it was lying flat on the table. The map in school hung down from the ceiling and the background (table vs. wall) was also quite different. I still have the same problems. A street entered from the south is a different (and to me unfamiliar) street than the same street entered from the north."

Typically, our thinking and learning tends to be concrete rather than abstract, absorbed in details while having significant difficulty perceiving overall "gestalts", and suited to processing information organized spatially rather than temporally. Often, what is "obvious" to us is very difficult for others to grasp, while we have equal trouble understanding what neurotypical people take to be obvious.

Some researchers (notably Uta Frith and Francesca Happ�) have suggested that the manner in which information is processed by the brain may be at the root of many autistic difficulties ? and strengths. They argue that neurotypical processing of information is dominated by a drive for central coherence, which pulls bits of information together to derive overall patterns and meanings. In contrast, autistic processing of information does not pull information together to such a strong degree, resulting both in weaknesses when it comes to contextual understanding and seeing the "big picture", and in greater accuracy in perceiving details and greater ability in tasks which require one to separate out bits of information, such as the "block design" and "embedded figures" cognitive tests. In other words, people with autism are unable to see the wood for the trees, but we see the individual trees in very great detail.

Given this information processing style, it may be difficult or impossible for a student to absorb expectations which are implicit in the environment unless they are specifically spelled out. I have a vivid memory of one little boy panicking when told "we are going to the swimming pool" ?I had to explain to him "we are going to the swimming pool and then we are coming back to school" many times before he calmed down.

We have a great need for order and routine at least in part because we can?t use social understanding to predict events. One teenager, Quinn, commented:

"School causes a lot of anxiety for me. There might be a new rule of event I would not be able to know how to handle. I can never understand the point of these rules (probably because there isn't one). I would be constantly paranoid and worried about what I would have to do, and had no clue what to do. Things like this caused me to not want to go to school."

There is often a painful confusion about what is expected, and more able children on the autistic spectrum may develop a strong desire to follow rules and be good which only exacerbates the distress when instructions are confusing or contradictory. I was particularly unhappy at primary school because I seemed to be yelled at most often when I was being especially good and helpful and doing exactly what I was told. Jim remembered:

"When I was seven I had a teacher who used to give me instructions in such a way that if I followed them literally I would be wrong. Then she would slap my hands with a ruler. I didn't understand that until I was about twelve."

Children on the autistic spectrum have no intuitive grasp of social hierarchy, a feature which is all too often mistaken for disobedience or disrespectfulness and continually causes problems in lessons. Hans Asperger noted of the children he studied that: "They treat everyone as an equal as a matter of course ? They may demand a service or simply start a conversation on a theme of their own choosing. All this goes, of course, without any regard for differences in age, social rank or common courtesies.". Darius remembered "I had (and still have) a hard time interpreting what exactly is required. What are 'hard expectations one has to comply with' and what is optional? Other people seem to have no difficulties with that." We do not intend to be disrespectful ? indeed we may be desperate to avoid displeasing others ? but it does not occur to us that we are supposed to treat someone in a different, special way, just because they are a teacher. So a child with Asperger?s may not understand that they are supposed to obey the teacher without discussion, let alone that they are not allowed to correct the teacher?s errors (even though the teacher corrects their all the time). Sarah remembered:

"In my first week ? I got the schedule down pat and threw a tantrum if the teacher did something at 10 a.m. which was supposed to happen at 11 a.m. I would tell her, ?You're not supposed to do this now,? and after a while, she got tired of me telling her what to do."

Things are made worse when reluctance of many teachers and others refuse to make explicit many of the tacit rules of the classroom (for example, that one is expected to laugh at the teacher?s jokes), and their tendency to supply principles which, if actually obeyed, land one instantly in trouble; Elizabeth reflected ruefully:

"When I was younger I used to take the little sayings parents and teachers told kids to heart ('don't lie', 'be yourself', etc) and really didn't understand that that wasn't actually what they wanted."

Apparently "non-educational" situations, such as the lunch queue, must also be considered in this light. Simply understanding the tacit rules of the situation could be extremely difficult. Do you need to get a tray? If you forget, can you go and get one? Do you serve yourself with food, or do you have to ask (for some people, having to choose food "on the spot" was very difficult)? Can you choose where to sit, or do you have to sit at a certain table? When you finish, do you have to put your plate and tray away in a certain place? The potential for making mistakes (and the anxiety caused by the fear of making mistakes) is enormous. One of my most vivid memories of secondary school is of being hauled out of the lunch queue by one of the dinner ladies, shouting angrily, and made to stand to one side; she refused to tell me why ? "You know what you?ve been doing". Only after I had burst into tears was I allowed back into the queue; nobody ever explained what I?d done wrong in the first place, and to this day I still have no idea.

Being overwhelmed with the sheer volume of sensory input is another common problem, unless the environment has been arranged with the autistic spectrum in mind.

The autistic writer and advocate Jim Sinclair has commented that "For people whose disabilities involve significant sensory issues, as autism does, inclusive environments are often nightmares of continual sensory bombardment which interferes with learning and causes constant discomfort or pain." .

The corridors and halls of almost any mainstream school are a constant tumult of noises echoing, fluorescent lights (a particular source of visual and auditory stress for people on the autistic spectrum), bells ringing, people bumping into each other, the smells of cleaning products, and so on. For anyone with the sensory hyper-sensitivities and processing problems typical of an autistic spectrum condition, the result is that we often spend most of our day perilously close to sensory overload (the only everyday sensory experience that neurotypical people have that is remotely similar seems to be "rush hour"). Like computers overloaded with information and required to process too much at one time, we often "crash". Some people shut down and "tune out" completely.

Noise levels were a common source of stress; Darius commented "If your sensory system doesn't work too well, lots of distracting sounds are very tiring."

Being in close physical proximity to others is a particular problem for some people with Asperger?s, and deliberately arriving at lessons early in order to capture a seat on an aisle or in a corner was a common strategy (others felt safest if they could be near a door or window). Physical proximity could be a serious problem during exams and tests. Jack said that the most difficult thing about school was:

"? being so physically close to the other kids ? trying to concentrate when they had all the kids sit at one big table a few inches from each other ? "

School assemblies, narrow corridors, and lunch queues were very stressful for the same reason, and some people ended up lashing out if pushed or jostled. Often, we have trouble creating a mental map of our environment without being shown an actual map to provide a visual image, and we do not always recognize the cues that others use to navigate, ending up disoriented and "lost in space". Difficulty finding their way around school, even after following a route with their class group many times, was common. At the age of ten, after being at the same school for five years, I still couldn?t find my way around it.

Problems with executive planning have been noted as a feature of autism, and unless the environment provides us with a means to organise ourselves, we often end up perseverating, obsessively repeating a particular response even when it is no longer of use (repeating a question once it has been answered, for example, or repeating a strategy that has already failed to solve a problem). We are often unable to shift our attention away from the point at which we have become stuck, or generate new strategies to try. Apparently simple tasks like being able to bring the right books to a lesson could be very challenging. At secondary school, I adopted the strategy of carrying everything I might conceivably need at any point in the week around in my schoolbag at all times, out of fear that I might be caught without something I needed. Obviously, this strategy had a significant cost (the schoolbag got very, very heavy); nonetheless, it was the only way I was able to ensure that I arrived at my lessons with everything I needed.

Planning difficulties should not be confused with laziness; many people combined "absent-mindedness" and disorganization with extreme perfectionism. Often, we end up getting "stuck" and perseverating about one detail or preliminary point. The environment needs to be constructed so as to enable us to perceive the task as a whole.

Hans Asperger commented of one typical autistic spectrum pupil that "He took away from the lesson only those things for which he had a particular affinity and could think about in his own way." I?d like to suggest that this is true of all autistic spectrum pupils; we can only take information away from a lesson if it?s presented in such a way that we can "think about it in our own way": in other words, if it?s presented in a cognitively accessible manner.

But as I hope I?ve indicated, a mainstream school without adaptations presents an environment which is, in cognitive terms, highly inaccessible and in some cases deeply distressing even for the most able autistic spectrum pupils.

It is also vital to consider whether or not the social environment of the school is cognitively accessible. Typically, it is assumed that children with special needs will automatically benefit from the social environment of a mainstream school, and the beneficial effects of "normal" role models are often cited as a major benefit of inclusion. But the social is in fact one of the most inaccessible parts of the school environment for autistic spectrum students, especially when isolation in a school full of neurotypical children creates a very "uneven playing field". Sarah said that:

"I ? had trouble learning the rules to the games the other children played and I often played the wrong way, causing the other kids to avoid me as well or tease me ? My reactions to various situations were not quite what people expected. A kid would, for instance, greet me with smiles but I would sometimes give no response, which gave others the impression that I was unfriendly. I knew that I did not act right but I often was at a loss to know what I was doing wrong. Some of the things I did struck others as very strange. ? As far as social interaction is concerned, it would not occur to me naturally to do something (or not do something) out of kindness, respect, or appreciation of someone. Social rules like saying please and thank you, reciprocating someone else's kind act, and so forth, would be beyond me. I would need to be reminded to do one thing or another, or it would occur to me afterwards, usually when it's too late?"

For children on the autistic spectrum, "break" can be the most demanding and exhausting, and least restful, part of the day. A comment from Quinn gives some idea of the constant mental effort involved:

"People probably assume I am stuck up and rude because of inappropriate social responses. For example I did not know I was supposed to say hi to people when they said hi to me until I was 13, and I wasn't able to make it a habit until age 14. It's still difficult to understand some things. Like if someone gives you something (like someone who passes out a piece of paper) it is appropriate to say thank you. I have trouble determining exactly which situations to say thank you in, or how to say it, or reacting fast enough."

I?d like to suggest that the methods developed by Division TEACCH should be seen as strategies for creating a cognitively accessible environment for students on the autistic spectrum. But these methods need to be thought about in a particular way, which I believe is in keeping with the spirit of TEACCH if not with how it is sometimes misinterpreted. There are far too many people who firmly believe, contrary to everything taught by Division TEACCH, that sticking up a picture schedule for all the children in a class is "doing TEACCH". Never mind if one of the children has to be guided hand-over-hand to use the schedule each time and doesn?t connect pictures to objects; never mind if another child can happily use a written schedule: TEACCH means picture schedules. No. The focus should be on principles not procedures, on comprehension, not compliance.

TEACCH is best considered a s a set of strategies for enabling a child to "read" their environment; its procedures should not be another meaningless demand with which a student is expected to comply. A point made during the 5-day TEACCH course I attended demonstrates this nicely: it was emphasized that it should not be necessary to work on teaching a child how to use their schedule or to continually guide them through it; if that was necessary, it was a sign that the schedule was being presented in too abstract or complex a form. A schedule is a tool to enable a child to understand their environment, not another lesson they have to learn.

The TEACCH term "structured teaching" is often misunderstood. Particularly when it comes to children with behavioural problems, references to a "structured" environment often indicate one which is strongly adult-directed and tightly controlled, with strictly enforced rules. The "structure" needed by children with on the autistic spectrum, in contrast, refers to order, not control. In fact, it is extremely important to share control and involve children in planning their schedule: for example, a child and their teacher could agree together that on Fridays the child will have an hour after lunch in which to work in the library on a project on their latest obsession. What matters is whether the order of events is predictable and legible (presented in a format that the child can grasp), not who is in control.

Carol Gray?s Social Stories, which are deliberately descriptive rather than directive, provide a similar tool for making social demands and rules legible.

One temptation for teachers and other professionals working with children with autism is to buy into a "package", a fixed programme of rules and procedures which, it is claimed, will automatically meet the needs of all children on the autistic spectrum. TEACCH is not such a package, but demands that everyone working with a given student to do whatever it takes to make the environment and academic tasks comprehensible for that student. And if you aren?t making the environment comprehensible, you aren?t doing TEACCH, no matter how pretty your picture schedules are.

One of the most depressing things I?ve come across lately was an account by a parent which explained that the primary reason why he had chosen ABA for his son and rejected TEACCH was that TEACCH "required us constantly to problem solve. What Lovaas offered were answers. If this does not work, try that. We did not have to spend all our time thinking about how we could help Sam, we could just get on with the programme ?"

In contrast, I would argue that the first priority for anyone working with an autistic child is to adopt a problem-solving approach, to constantly examine and re-examine what works for that particular child. There is no point in "doing it by the book" if that fails to make the environment or task in question comprehensible for that particular child. It?s certainly easier to follow a pre-ordained programme, but the goal is for the child to succeed in learning, not for teachers and parents to succeed in carrying out the procedures of a particular program according to the book.

A lot of myths about TEACCH still circulate, possibly because Division TEACCH has kept a low profile and not engaged in the self-promotion or claims of a "miracle cures" that some other programmes have produced.

Such myths include the claim that "TEACCH is only for low-functioning children with autism", or "has low expectations" ,etc.

I actually got through much of my school and university years on the basis of ad-hoc TEACCH-like strategies. I coped by making endless visual schedules and timetables and checklists. I feel very sure that I could never have coped without doing this , and I still use these methods to some extent - if you ever see me when my schedule has been disrupted, you'll know. It's my schedule which enables me to be far more flexible than I would otherwise be capable of being.

When I was preparing for my final exams at university, I finally had the courage to jettison "normality" and turn all my notes into visual diagrams (rather like mind-maps) in coloured felt-tip pen on sheets of card covering every wall of my room (I think a few spilled over onto the ceiling). It was the most effective revision I did (it enabled me to get through one paper which I'd completely missed owing to being ill for almost all of the term I should have been studying it), and I got a First. It freaked out everyone who came into my room, and it certainly wasn't "normalised" behaviour, but it was wonderful and I had huge fun and actually enjoyed the exams a lot as a result . So when I read about TEACCH methods for the first time, I experienced a great sense of recognition and also a sense of surprise that some people believed that these methods were only suited for low-functioning children or precluded academic achievement!

For many people, an objection to TEACCH is that it fails to "normalize" children with autism. Some parents object vociferously to an approach which doesn?t attempt to make children with autism "normal" or forcefully "correct" our alleged deficits. Some insist that environmental adaptations such as schedules or visual structures for tasks will stigmatize children, especially if they are in a mainstream school. But stigma attaches to difference itself. We do not do children any favours by preventing them from learning as much as possible in order to pander to prejudice against the "different". We would not dream of demanding that a child with no usable vision should not be taught Braille because it might stigmatize them. We would not claim that having them hold a printed textbook which they are unable to read constitutes meaningful inclusion. But when it comes to the autistic spectrum, perhaps because the symptoms are behavioural, there is still an assumption that they "should" be able to "act normal", to learn in normal ways.

The assumption of some approaches, such as the Lovaas approach, is that children with autism need to be forced to learn. On the basis of my personal experiences and observations, I believe that children with autism, like any other children, will naturally learn and absorb information ? when the environment makes this possible. Obviously, children who also have global learning difficulties will learn at a slower rate ? but they will learn.

You do someone a profound disservice by insisting on trying to teach them in a way which makes it unusually difficult for that person to learn. Because ultimately it is learning that gives them the best chance of being able to navigate successfully through a world which is not designed for autistic people.

Jim Sinclair comments that "a common experience of many people with a variety of different disabilities is that a goal of looking and acting ?as normal as possible? is often achieved at the expense of being able to function as well as possible with one's disability. Adapting, accommodating, and coping with disability often requires learning to do things differently from the ways nondisabled people do them."

Similarly, Gary Mesibov and Victoria Shea of Division TEACCH have argued that autism can in many ways be seen as a culture, complete with its own ways of understanding the world, communicating, and so on. They explain that, since the neurological basis of autism cannot be altered:

"? we do not take ?being normal? as the goal of our educational and therapeutic efforts. Rather, the long-term goal of the TEACCH programme is for the student with autism to fit as well as possible into our society as an adult. We achieve this goal by respecting the differences that the autism creates within each student, and working within his or her culture to teach the skills needed to function within our society."

As I hope I?ve indicated, true inclusion demands a genuine commitment to making the entire environment (not just a portion) accessible to children on the autistic spectrum. And this in turn means a commitment to designing that environment around autistic needs and learning styles, and to problem-solving to meet the needs of each individual child. A little knowledge about autism on the part of one teacher or one special assistant is not enough. Merely reading a pamphlet or going to a one-day workshop, while helpful, is not enough to ensure an adequate understanding. Theo Peeters and Christopher Gillberg comment: "What would you say if you had lung problems but were being treated by a dentist (?Oh, but we shall be sending him to a lung congress?).". But this is the basis on which teachers are commonly expected to make inclusion work, and typically, non-teaching staff (such as dinner ladies), who often dealt with the child in many difficult situations outside the classroom, are given no information on autism at all. Indeed, minimal knowledge of autism often demonstrates that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing ? for example, the claim by researchers that people with autism have difficulty with empathy, i.e. reading or predicting the emotions of others, is often misunderstood to mean that people with autism are selfish and incapable of caring about others, a totally different (and incorrect) claim.

I know one teenager with Asperger?s who is capable of academic work at a mainstream level and spends part of her time at a specialist school largely to provide her with moral support. She commented of the mainstream school she attends that the teachers are supposed to know about Asperger?s syndrome, but she thinks they don?t really understand at all.

Perhaps at some point, the "mainstream" will cease to be the "normalstream", but personally I haven?t seen any signs of this happening in any consistent way yet.

According a survey by the British Dyslexia Association, 67 percent of schools had never held a training day on dyslexia, and only 7 percent had held such a session since 1999. Of 473 schools responding to the survey, only 56 had a teacher with an accredited Special Educational Needs qualification. A spokesperson for the BDA said "Good practice is patchy and depends entirely on individual schools having an enthusiastic specialist teacher." Now, awareness of dyslexia is still miles ahead of awareness of autism. And while dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty, autistic spectrum conditions are both complex and pervasive, notoriously hard to "get a feel for".

If inclusion is to have meaning, it needs to have high standards. It must mean more than sticking a child into the same physical classroom as neurotypical children, perhaps hiring an untrained special assistant or even, if we?re very lucky, sticking up a picture schedule.

I believe that we need to shift the focus to creating an environment in which a given student with autism can fully and meaningfully participate, regardless of whether that is in a mainstream or special environment. A cognitively accessible environment is a right, not a luxury.

[nvapid]

well, are you for it or against it?

 

you could always stress Zygotski and Brunner that the application of ABA has been shown to work which is the basis for most SEN programmes...

[something vague]

Don't know if this'll be useful:

 

Barnard, J. Prior, A and Potter, D (2000) Inclusion and autism: is it working? The National Autistic Society.

 

SV

[BuntyB]

well, are you for it or against it?

 

you could always stress Zygotski and Brunner that the application of ABA has been shown to work which is the basis for most SEN programmes...

 

 

Well, it depends who for! One of my pet hates is people who refer to 'the disabled' as though there is a group out there with exactly the same needs. There's also a big confusion between special needs and 'special educational needs'.

 

My opinion is that for children who need support for physical reasons, they should be in the same school as they would be without their disability, otherwise it is discriminatory. However, every child deserves to learn in an environment where they will achieve the best for themselves, academically and socially. For many children, this isn't in a mainstream school.

 

My other pet hate is 'well-meaning' people who think that 'equal opportunities' means lumping everyone into the same class (because then all kids get the same education )

 

I'll leave my bigger rantings for the main essay! I have found some articles in some academic journals, but haven't found any good books about Inclusion and SEN. There are some on Amazon, but you can't really tell if they are any good. I bought one book and it was an American author which wasn't really what I wanted.

[BuntyB]

Shona is this any good?

 

A Cognitively Accessible Environment

Clare Sainsbury

 

 

 

Nellie- where did this article come from? If I use any quotes, they need to be fully referenced.

Thanks!

[nellie]

Shona,

 

I thought not having the references to this might be a problem and have been looking for the source. Sadly I have been unable to find it. I found it in my files copied and pasted without any mention of source. I thought it came from someone on the forum but haven't been able to find it despite doing a search.

 

Does anyone else know where this article came from?

 

A Cognitively Accessible Environment

Clare Sainsbury

 

 

Nellie xx

[UltraMum]

Shona,

 

I thought not having the references to this might be a problem and have been looking for the source. Sadly I have been unable to find it. I found it in my files copied and pasted without any mention of source. I thought it came from someone on the forum but haven't been able to find it despite doing a search.

 

Does anyone else know where this article came from?

 

A Cognitively Accessible Environment

Clare Sainsbury

 

 

Nellie xx

 

http://oldweb.northampton.ac.uk/ass/educ/c...resainsbury.htm

 

May be best to furl the link - furl saves a copy of the page so you can still access it if it is deleted from the web

 

Furl is free to use and you can alos access your archive from any computer