15/03/2011 by lizit.

The long-awaited government consultation document “Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability” was published last Tuesday. I have now had time to read it and and some of the early responses to it. My initial response last week was to question whether my research is still of any relevance given that the green paper addresses many of the areas I am interested in and that some of the discussion is underpinned by government commissioned research. I also had a sense that what I am doing might be anachronistic, even before it sees the light of day.

During the past few days, I have been able to reflect on the document and to begin to look at it more objectively. The fact that the green paper acknowledges problems in the existing system and suggests ways of addressing these does not mean that my work is irrelevant. In fact, in some ways it may be that some of the areas I am exploring are of even greater relevance as they are areas which receive scanty attention in the green paper.

The potential strength of the  recommendations is a move to a single assessment of SEN and disability culminating in an ‘Education, Health and Care Plan’ which will replace the Statement of SEN. The advantage of this is the potential reduction in the number of separate assessments a child or young person with complex SEN/disability might have to face and the shared responsibility and accountability of Health, Education and Social Care. However, it is unclear from the green paper which children and young people will have the opportunity of this single assessment and at what stage in their development. Clearly, it is applicable to those children with complex needs recognised very early in their life - and the green paper does lay emphasis on early identification of needs - but what of those children and young people who are apparently developing normally, but are a bit quirky and whose differences become evident at a later developmental stage. In particular, at present it is known that many children with Aspergers or HFA do not receive a diagnosis until they are into their primary education years - and some later still.

This leads to a further question. Many of these children with Aspergers or HFA (and others with neurological differences) have a record of behaviour difficulties and possibly exclusions prior to diagnosis. The green paper draws attention to the much higher risk of children and young people with SEN of both fixed term and permanent exclusion from school, but says nothing about the contested diagnoses which lead to some of these young people receiving a diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder and others being labelled as BESD. The section of the document discussing BESD is in my opinion the weakest in the whole document.

Although the green paper does focus on raising expectations of the potential achievement level of children and young people with SEN/disability, it is unclear to me how realistic some of the implicit, if not explicit, assumptions are. Yes, children with SEN/disability frequently leave school with lower qualifications than other young people and no doubt some could achieve more given the right support structure, but it is unlikely, I would have thought, that the achievement curve for school leavers with SEN/disability would ever mirror completely that for those with no SEN/disability. However, for high functioning young people, it is crucial that they are enabled to reach their potential rather than under-achieving as a result of missed education through exclusion or inappropriate or insufficient learning support.

Another area addressed in the green paper is that of the role of parents. It is acknowledged that parents frequently have insufficient information in the current system and recommendations are made to remedy this. It is also suggested parental choice will be increased, especially in relation to choice of school. Although there is no doubt parents have strong views about what is best for their children, it is disappointing that the voice of the child and their own aspirations has not been similarly strengthened, except when it comes to appeals where children will be able to enter their own appeals to the First Tier Tribunal. Parents are not necessarily always the best advocates for their children, though this is an area fraught with difficulty. Returning to choice of school, little is said about the continuing role of independent and non-maintained special schools…

There are very clear political themes underlying the green paper. Reducing expenditure is clear through reductions in bureaucracy and in multiple assessments. It is also there, so not so evident in other financial arrangements - who will be eligible for the new personal budgets and what restrictions will there be on their use. Free schools receive a mention - it is suggested that part of the increased school choice will include the establishment of new free schools and academies. The Big society is writ large with suggestions that the local community and voluntary sector might facilitate the new assessment system.

In terms of the recommendations in the green paper being enacted, some things are already being trialled such as short breaks; some things will begin to be trialled later this year, such as single assessments; but implementation of the whole will be over the next few years. Inevitably there will be considerable interest in the SEN community in both the discussion of the green paper, its implications and implementation and the effects of that implementation on the life chances of children and young people. My task is two-fold - to ensure that I complete my research and write a thesis which meets the academic criteria and to find ways of contributing to the debate and analysis of the change over the coming years.

Posted in SEN, Aspergers/HFA, Government policy, education | Print | No Comments »

22/11/2010 by lizit.

Last Thursday I was sitting, talking to a woman at the drop-in centre I facilitate for parents with children with SENs. Her son, aged 14 and currently out of school, was playing with duplo on the floor nearby. He hasn’t been labelled as a school refuser, but hasn’t been in school this term, and previously he was refusing to co-operate with teachers or absconding from the school site. He has diagnoses of Aspergers and Dyslexia and currently has a reading age of 6 according to the psychological assessment done recently as part of his statutory assessment of SEN.

I first met this woman, I’ll call her Pam, a couple of months ago. She arrived at the drop-in very concerned about her son and adamant that he was not going to go to the school she understood the local authority were going to recommend for him. She knew he was being assessed for a statement, but she had very little understanding of the process, or what actions she could take to help him get an appropriate placement. Over the weeks, we have seen Pam become less angry and defensive and more prepared to listen to suggestions as to how she can build a case for placement at a school she thinks would be appropriate for her son. She has visited a number of schools and seen the range of options - and also found a school which her son would be happy to attend.

On Thursday, Pam arrived at the drop-in with the proposed statement. It could have been better written, but she had spoken to the SENCO at her son’s school and they had agreed it was probably OK. She had also spoken to the two schools, she did not want her son to attend, but she felt the local authority would be recommending. One had been very clear that it was not a good idea to admit a new pupil to an established group of students with special needs in the middle of Year 9. The other was clear that they could not offer the boy anything more than his current school had been able to. Both schools agreed to email the local authority saying they would not be an appropriate placement. She had also obtained a letter from her son’s psychiatrist to say that he needed to be in a specialist setting with staff who understood his conditions and his needs.

I suggested to Pam that she phone the local authority to check if they had received the emails. They said they had had no communication, but there was a panel meeting that afternoon when the boy’s placement would be discussed.

There was little else we could practically do, but Pam agreed to email me on Friday when she heard the results of the panel meeting. We also agreed that it would be appropriate for her to ask for a meeting to discuss school placement, if the local authority were still adamant about which school the boy should attend. It was while talking about the possible meeting, that Pam showed her concern. “I’m only a parent. They are all officials and I don’t know how to talk to them.” Pam had articulated the very reason why the drop-in had been set up. As another parent, and as somebody who has been through the whole SEN process, I understand how she feels and how much she needs support, and how much she feels wrong decisions are being made for her son. I want to step in and accompany her to meetings and tell the local authority how ridiculous they are being. At the same time, I want to enable and equip her to make her own case to the officials and realise that she can do it and that she is far more than “only a parent”, but a woman who can use newly developing skills to present her son’s needs.

In the end, I assisted her to write a letter - she is perfectly capable of writing letters, but needed the right turn of phrase to address the officials. At least she is using email now - when I asked her to email something to me a couple of weeks ago, she looked terrified. On Friday, Pam emailed me to say the local authority are still wanting to send her son to the school she regards as totally inappropriate. She had asked for a meeting and was waiting to hear when that might be.Next Thursday, I will see her again and we will talk about her preparation for the meeting and who she might take with her, either to help her to present her case or simply to take notes and support her. How much more than “only a parent” Pam is having to be as she learns knew skills and sets about supporting her son to get the education he needs and deserves.

Posted in SEN, parenting, struggle, Aspergers/HFA, education, learning | Print | No Comments »

17/09/2010 by lizit.

A few days ago, the headline on most of the BBC news bulletins and in the press was that schools were misdiagnosing children as having special needs when all they needed was better teachers and pastoral care. I was surprised by the reporting, as the implication was that schools diagnosed special needs, when at most they identify children who might later be diagnosed by appropriately qualified medical practitioners with assistance from appropriately trained therapists. Further, much of the reporting seemed to imply that this misdiagnosis was across the range of children with special needs, including those who had undergone a formal statutory assessment which includes a plethora of testing and reports.It just didn’t add up, so I decided to look at the Ofsted review for myself, and also the Lamb Inquiry which was coming to an end as the Ofsted review started and which covered similar territory.

The Ofsted review and the Lamb report both make it very clear that there is a formal definition of special needs and that children who fall within the terms of that definition are variously categorised as School Action (their needs are met completely within the school resources), School Action Plus (where school personnel call on expertise from outside the school to advise or provide support) and children who have had a statutory assessment of their special needs and a statement has been written. The children identified by the Ofsted review as being wrongly categorised fall into the School Action category. There is no suggestion that children with statements or on school action plus are wrongly categorised - but there is a strong message that they do not always have their needs met appropriately and are not always enabled to reach their potential.

As I suspected, there was no mention in the review of schools or teachers diagnosing special needs. Although there are children being identified as having special needs and apparently being placed on School Action for spurious reasons, what to my mind is more alarming, and the press made little of, is the fact that many children with properly identified and diagnosed special needs are not having their needs met appropriately - and that this can occur in all kinds of school and college settings.

Reading the review, it’s main message is that rather than developing special needs provision in ad hoc and opportunist ways, there should be more emphasis on strategic planning and development of provisions and on developing measures to ensure provisions are actually effective. This might reduce the view expressed by parents, and recorded by the Lamb Inquiry, that a statement was necessary in order to ensure their children’s needs were met.

The review also addresses inter agency working. Confusion is caused by the different terms used in education (special needs), medicine (disability) and social care (children in need). “Across education, health and social care services, the approaches to identification and the thresholds for intervention were very different. This made joint working across services difficult and led to confusion and a sense of unfairness amongst parents. It multiplied the number of assessments that some young people had to undergo, and created different and sometimes inconsistent plans for supporting them.”

All in all, the main thrust of the review was not the headline grabbing element of children being wrongly identified, but rather the shortcomings in the system leading to needs being inappropriately addressed and the need for higher quality services provided by people with expertise in working with children with special needs, and a concern that depending too much on low attainment or slow progress as indicators of SEN can divert attention away from some children and young people with complex and specialist support needs who are apparently coping academically.

Posted in SEN, education | Print | No Comments »

06/01/2010 by lizit.

These notes are based on Jean Lave’s 1996 article “Teaching, as learning, in practice”.

It is an interesting article as it clearly identifies the focus of most learning research is not research on learning but “research on instruction, on depersonalised guidelines for the teaching of specific lesson-like things in school settings in order to improve learning.” Lave draws on her research of the apprenticeship practices of Liberian tailors and on Timothy Mitchell’s observations of the training of Egyptian lawyers, to come to the conclusion that learning rather than teaching is the core concept.

Starting with Scribner and Cole’s (1973) paper drawing a clear distinction between learning in formal settings and in informal settings, Lave shows that a polarity has developed which values formal schooling. This, combined with a psychological model of learning, has led to an increasing marginalisation of those who do not succeed in the school system. Putting this into the 21st century UK context it could be hypothesised that the emphasis on achieving government set targets in schools and the emphasis on increasing the number of young people entering higher education could have had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the development of an underclass amongst those young people who do not meet the targets, leading to the development of the gang culture and criminal behaviours which are increasingly in the public eye.

Lave is clear that learning is about far more than knowledge transfer. In both her examples, the apprentices, or learners, did not only learn a skill or set of concepts, but were enculterated in a multi-layered system of cultural values with their implications. Particularly in the case of the Liberian tailors, the apprenticeship and its completion was accompanied by a strong sense of worth and self-respect in stark contrast to the poverty of the society the tailors were part of.

Lave’s work led her to three changes in perspective from those espoused in traditional education models:

1. a reversal of the polarisation that school and institutional learning is positive and other forms of learning are negative
2. a focus on learners and learning rather than the transmitters of knowledge - teachers, care givers, etc
3. learning is not individual but is socially situated

In her work with Martin Packer, a tentative model to underpin learning theories was developed:

1. Telos or the idea that learning involves some kind of change or movement
2. Subject-world or the relationship between the individual or self and the social world
3. Learning mechanism which focuses on how learning happens

Lave concludes by saying: “The conditions for the transformation of persons are the same whether the telos of learning is movement towards growing up from babyhood, or adolescence, becoming a craftsperson or a philosopher, and/or becoming a marginal person in a world where participation in and thus learning divisions of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual preference, determine strongly who is consigned to the advantaged cores and disadvantaged margins of society.”

I found some the article resonated strongly with me. I have already given some thought to the marginalisation and dis-empowerment of parents of children and young people with autistic spectrum disorders and it may be that part of this stems from the fact that their knowledge of their children’s condition is situated rather than as a result of teaching. Empowerment implies a polarity as for somebody to be empowered somebody else has to be dis-empowered. In the current model, professionals hold the power (and the budgets). Would a recognition of parental learning and knowledge lead to empowerment, partnership and possibly more shared decision making?

Posted in ASD, empowerment, social learning, informal learning, community, education, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

04/01/2010 by lizit.

Finding lots of interesting ideas in papers written some years back. Getting the background seems to involve a constant moving backwards. I can’t possibly read everything ever written, but I can read a lot of stuff and get a sense of big picture.

Brown, Collins & Duguid (1989) present some useful contrasts between different types and contexts of learning in developing their ideas about situated cognition.I find their description of the learning of ‘just plain folk’ (JPF) relates to the questions I am asking about the learning of parents of children and young people with ASDs and how they learn to provide appropriate support and care for their children.

Brown, et al, start from the “distinction between mere acquisition of inert concepts and the development of useful, robust knowledge” citing Whitehead’s 1929 treatise on the aims of education. The implication is that it is possible to possess a tool, or knowledge, and not have a clue how to use it. Similarly it is possible to have good working knowledge of the use of a tool without knowing why it works as it does. In the real world, we learn how to use tools from others and through practice. The same tool may be used differently by different communities of users - example is given of chisel which is used differently by carpenters and cabinet makers, Just as we need to learn how to use physical tools, the same is necessary with conceptual tools. As with physical tools, the conceptual tools only really make sense in the context of practice. It is suggested that learners learn through enculturation or socialisation into a community of practice.

As tools are used in authentic context they gain meaning & relevance. Brown, et al, comment that “the process may appear informal, but it is nonetheless full-blooded, authentic activity that can be deeply informative - in a way that textbook examples and declarative examples are not.” This is illustrated using Lave’s example of the apprenticeship of tailors.

Brown, et al, then consider the learning of JPFs, students and practitioners. When a JPF wants to learn something they can become an apprentice or a student. As the former, they enculturate into the community of practice. As the latter they go to school where “the general strategies for intuitive reasoning, resolving issues, and negotiating meaning (…) are superseded by the precise, well-defined problems, formal definitions, and symbol manipulation of much school activity.” Brown, et al, suggest the JPF is closer to the practitioner in learning & practice than students whose learning & practice is abstracted from real life, implying that contextualisation is vital for learning to be meaningful.

The discussion can be related to the current educational policy debates where politicians are demanding more focus on vocational education in higher education. Brown, et al, suggest that it is only in post graduate study that students begin to become practitioners through an apprenticeship process embedded in the supervisory relationship with an experienced researcher. However, there is no discussion of the thinking and analytical skills developed through the education system.

They suggest more work is needed on understanding the “relationship between explicit knowledge and implicit understanding”.
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18 (1), 32-42.

Posted in Government policy, education, concepts, community, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

21/11/2009 by lizit.

This will no doubt need more work, but is an attempt to capture something of the bigger picture and context against which thinking about adult learning is happening.

Posted in social learning, self-directed learning, informal learning, education, concepts, learning | Print | No Comments »

18/11/2009 by lizit.

Afraid the heading of this blog is a bit of a mouthful, but it comes out of my recent reading around self-directed learning and listening to a recording on Graham Attwell’s blog.  A phrase that jumped out of me from the recording was around how the ‘reflexivity and critique’ which is valued in formal learning can be incorporated into informal learning.  Over the last few days, I have been reading a lot around self-directed learning and one of the things that struck me about this was that in the first instance self-directed learning was something which was observed as happening - recognised in the early informal learning surveys - but then the education/social science community got hold of the concept and began to look at it in relation to formal education. Apart from the attempts to quantify self-directed learning, the emphasis appears to have been on the encouragement of independent learning in formal contexts (use of learning contracts and problem based learning) and questioning whether self-directed learning in the wild was really learning if it was focusing on skill development without the reflective elements.

Brookfield (1984) has a useful discussion about terminology - how the word ‘learning’ is understood and contrasting this with ‘education’ and ‘teaching’. Perhaps the ‘knowledge acquisition’ mentioned by Attwell should also form part of the semantic mix? Brookfield stresses the need for clarity in terminology: “one priority for thinkers in this field must be to propose clear and unambiguous definitions of learning and education in order that internal mental change is distinguished from the external collection, management and analysis of information.” Is it the continuing confusion over terminology underpinning the desire for the mental processes of informal learning to more closely resemble those of formal learning?

Is there a danger that informal learning will be undervalued in much the same way as informal care has been through the imposition of measures and standards that have little or nothing to do with the informal and all to do with something else, whatever label we give that something else?

Posted in informal learning, education, learning | Print | 2 Comments »

04/11/2009 by lizit.

Spotted a couple of interesting blogs this morning. Steve Wheeler from Plymouth was responding to a blog from Tillman Swinke in Atlantis. Swinke is discussing personal learning and contrasting formal and informal learning and the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in each.  He is basically saying that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic and asking how the passion of intrinsically motivated informal learning can be incorporated into formal learning, suggesting social learning may be a way forward. (How I find myself wondering just what he means by social learning having seen the term used in so many different ways over the past months.)

Wheeler summarises Swinke’s blog and says that we begin to learn because we are interested - intrinsically motivated - but in formal education extrinsic motivation tends to take over as we seek to keep up with our peers, attain good enough grades, etc, and asks how interest and intrinsic interest can be/is maintained in formal learning. Wheeler then advocates PLEs as a way forward.

A commentator on Wheeler’s blog has pointed to the Futures of Education project which is asking questions about the redesign of education. This brings me back to another blog read this morning, Graham Attwell’s reflections on the use of computers in exams.

At root these posts are all raising some pretty fundamental questions about the nature of learning and education and the dichotomy between them.  Others educate me, but I learn. Some of what I learn is guided by my teachers who share their passion for an idea or a subject area. Some of what I am taught is the use of essential tools to facilitate my learning - the 3 ‘R’s. Much of what I learn now is out of interest and desire to learn and explore ideas and play with them either in my mind or with my hands. Some of what I have been taught in the past, I am rediscovering through my own learning in the present.

Good thoughts to start the day!

Posted in social learning, informal learning, education, motivation, blog | Print | 1 Comment »

03/11/2009 by lizit.

There is an interesting article in the Guardian on ELQ and the costs to students http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/03/second-degrees-higher-education-funding. Although my focus is more on incidental and serendipitous learning, it strikes me that the kind of sums of money involved in taking an additional qualification deemed to be at the same level as one already held is likely to result in a number - potentially large number - of people seeking to gain skills, training, expertise other than through formal education. It also makes me realise how fortunate I have been in the funding of my own education. Even if I have groused from time to time about having to pay my own postgraduate fees, at least they have been heavily subsidised. Whatever the government might be saying about wanting to increase the proportion of the population with degree level education, the possibility of increasing undergraduate fees and the excessive cost of retraining might well prove to have unintended consequences, especially for those who will not be entering the most highly paid of jobs.

Posted in informal learning, Government policy, funding, education | Print | No Comments »

07/09/2009 by lizit.

One of my declared interests is social change. Been musing a bit on informal learning and social change.

In a sense all learning/education is about change. There is a sense in which knowledge is power. I reckon this has particular resonance when related to informal learning and within the context of community development, community action and ’self-help’.  I’ve seen the effect of informal learning in the parent support group I am involved in; parents of children with SENs are frequently at a loss over how to best help their children. Within a parent support group, parents share their experiences of schools and discussions with education officials, learn how to complete forms, etc. Increasingly, parents find out how much they know and have learned through assisting other parents. No longer is it down to somebody like me to act as the fount of wisdom, as I know and others know that they know.

The story, as narrated by Lovett, of Liverpool EPA (a 1970s education initiative) is one of people engaging in learning from a position of being labelled as education failures - people who had left school at 15 with no qualifications and few, if any, aspirations. Through learning, or rather through discussion and gleaning information and taking new levels of responsibility, people were empowered and enabled to make choices and contribute to processes which made decisions about their lives. The same change process is evident in the community development projects of the 1970s and other community initiatives and in the various case studies described by Foley. Reading these accounts reminds me of my own work in the early 70s working with parents to set up holiday play schemes. In one, I recruited members of the neighbourhood social work team as volunteers, and in the post-project review, I recall their amazement at seeing parents they had viewed as inadequate and unable to cope with raising their own children organising large groups of children and volunteers for trips to the swimming pool or to the beach - perhaps wouldn’t be possible now in an age when risk assessment precedes just about any activity.

Although there are other  aspects of informal learning which are beneficial to the individual, the community or society more generally, the social change agenda cannot be ignored. It was that agenda which lay behind the Sunday schools, both christian and socialist, of the early 19th century. It was that which fuelled the development of trades unions and the establishment of Ruskin College. It was that which led to the establishment of the WEA. Even today, education is presented as an agent of social change in creating greater equity of opportunity by admitting more young people to universities where they are the first member of their family to enter higher education. Years ago Michael Young wrote of the rise of the meritocracy. We still haven’t seen it, but perhaps there is hope for those formerly considered failures.

Posted in informal learning, education, community, change agents | Print | No Comments »