Paces

Teachers and training and special education - and Tom Peters

Tom Peters argues that "The very best and the very brightest and the most energetic and enthusiastic and entrepreneurial and tech-savvy of our university graduates must—must, not should—be lured into teaching. (They need not stay for life—one would be happy with 5 years, ecstatic with 10.)"

Me? I'd settle right now just for teachers of children with cerebral palsy to be trained to do so. 

MaSt - What's more ... Systemic failure of children with SEN statements

“…. there will always be a group of pupils who – however they are labelled – are likely to have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experience.”  (The Making a Statement project – final report” Webster & Blatchford, Institute of Education February 2013.) 

I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But ….  And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back to.

Take the statement above, which appears in the concluding paragraph of an early introductory section “The policy context”. Is it just me, or is that an odd sort of statement?

One obvious “but” is this: “But, hang on a minute, if ‘there will always be a group of pupils’ who ‘have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experiences” is it not possible that the ‘everyday classroom’ is not the learning environment they should be in? That, of course, is the basis of the argument for special schools.

Beyond the obvious, there is a bigger “but”. What strikes me as odd is the way the statement appears to ‘blame the pupils’; the pupils, it is said, “are likely to have difficulties”. It’s in the verb, the ‘having’ of difficulties.

Is not the truth of the matter that if any pupils ‘face’ or ‘experience’ difficulties,  it is the teacher, the pedagogy, the curriculum, that is the ‘difficulty’?

As with the lack of training provided to teachers of children with statements of special educational need, which the authors acknowledge but which fails to influence the main conclusion of their research, so here in this perspective on the responsibility for the interaction, the ‘elephant in the room’ is missed entirely: it’s the teachers, their lack of training, their limited understanding of specific disabilities, of alternative pedagogies and appropriate curricular arrangements, that should be concerning us. 

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Footnote:

The ‘elephant in the room’ is something of a cliché. A more recent, similar expression of the same might be the ‘dancing gorilla’. Take a look and have a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But ….  And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back to.

 

Take the statement above, which appears in the concluding paragraph of an early introductory section “The policy context”. Is it just me, or is that an odd sort of statement?

 

One obvious “but” is this: “But, hang on a minute, if ‘there will always be a group of pupils’ who ‘have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experiences” is it not possible that the ‘everyday classroom’ is not the learning environment they should be in? That, of course, is the basis of the argument for special schools.

 

Beyond the obvious, there is a bigger “but”. What strikes me as odd is the way the statement appears to ‘blame the pupils’; the pupils, it is said, “are likely to have difficulties”. It’s in the verb, the ‘having’ of difficulties.

 

Is not the truth of the matter that if any pupils ‘face’ or ‘experience’ difficulties,  it is the teacher, the pedagogy, the curriculum, that is the ‘difficulty’?

 

As with the lack of training provided to teachers of children with statements of special educational need, which the authors acknowledge but which fails to influence the main conclusion of their research, so here in this perspective on the responsibility for the interaction, the ‘elephant in the room’ is missed entirely: it’s the teachers, their lack of training, their limited understanding of specific disabilities, of alternative pedagogies and appropriate curricular arrangements, that should be concerning us. 

 

 

The ‘elephant in the room’ is something of a cliché. A more recent, similar expression of the same might be the ‘dancing gorilla’. Take a look: http://bit.ly/12fCFxa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But ….  And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back to.

 

Take the statement above, which appears in the concluding paragraph of an early introductory section “The policy context”. Is it just me, or is that an odd sort of statement?

 

One obvious “but” is this: “But, hang on a minute, if ‘there will always be a group of pupils’ who ‘have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experiences” is it not possible that the ‘everyday classroom’ is not the learning environment they should be in? That, of course, is the basis of the argument for special schools.

 

Beyond the obvious, there is a bigger “but”. What strikes me as odd is the way the statement appears to ‘blame the pupils’; the pupils, it is said, “are likely to have difficulties”. It’s in the verb, the ‘having’ of difficulties.

 

Is not the truth of the matter that if any pupils ‘face’ or ‘experience’ difficulties,  it is the teacher, the pedagogy, the curriculum, that is the ‘difficulty’?

 

As with the lack of training provided to teachers of children with statements of special educational need, which the authors acknowledge but which fails to influence the main conclusion of their research, so here in this perspective on the responsibility for the interaction, the ‘elephant in the room’ is missed entirely: it’s the teachers, their lack of training, their limited understanding of specific disabilities, of alternative pedagogies and appropriate curricular arrangements, that should be concerning us. 

 

 

The ‘elephant in the room’ is something of a cliché. A more recent, similar expression of the same might be the ‘dancing gorilla’. Take a look: http://bit.ly/12fCFxa

New report points to systemic failure in teaching of children with statements of SEN

I have been reading (and re-reading)a new research report from the Institute of Education: “The Making a Statement project Final Report.  A study of the teaching and support experienced by pupils with a statement of special educational needs in mainstream primary schools” by Rob Webster and Peter Blatchford.

The Executive Summary of the report concludes:

On basis of the evidence from our research, we suggest that the new EHCPs avoid expressing support for pupils in terms of hours, and instead specify the pedagogical processes and strategies that will help meet carefully defined outcomes. Furthermore, we recommend that setting personal budgets is dependent on the outcomes specified in the EHCP in order to avoid schools making decisions about support based predominantly on the resources available.

There is in this report much that raises my hackles but it is not my purpose here to enter that debate.  No, my purpose is to consider how some of the evidence might be supportive of the work we do at Paces and others do elsewhere: totally without scruple to use this research to our advantage. Given the evident ex cathedra support of inclusion, the authors might be surprised to see their work used to further education in a special school, and conductive education at that!

The research reported on is important because, as the authors state – and worth reading for this reason alone – “there is surprisingly little research that documents, in a systematic way, the support experienced by pupils with SEN, and specifically, those with statements”.

The most startling statement in the whole report comes on page 3:

Most teachers reported having had no training on meeting the needs of pupils with high levels of SEN, indicating failings in initial teaching training.

On page 56, in the section headed Preparedness: Training and guidance” the authors state:

… over a third of all teachers and TAs interviewed – said that they had had no specific training to help them support the needs of the statemented pupil they supported/had in their class.

One teacher who was interviewed as part of the research said (and is quoted presumably as being typical):

I’ve actually been on almost no special needs courses since I was trained thirteen years ago. So no; I’ve come into it very blind.

Another is quoted as saying:

“I did a four year teacher BA instead of a PGCE, but in my placements, I didn’t come across SEN children really at all”.

Commenting, (I can find that this observation has no impact on the authors’ conclusions from their research) that this level of professional ignorance indicates “failings in initial teacher training” seems to me as fine an example as may be found of British understatement, bordering on the euphemistic and myopic.

Contrast that with the training that Conductors bring to the classroom.

We might assume that despite the failure of their training to prepare them for the classroom, teachers would ensure that when they get there they familiarise themselves thoroughly with their pupils.

Not so. Whilst nearly a quarter of teachers participating in the research (12 out of 56) “claimed that they had an understanding of the pupil’s statement and/or annual review” exactly as many said they had “no understanding of these documents” (page 56). The rest were presumably somewhere in between; having somewhat less than “an understanding”. Frankly, I find it incredible that more than three-quarters of teachers of children with a statement of special educational needs, subject to an annual review, can in any sense be said to be doing enough without, in the author’s words “an understanding” of either document.

Contrast that with Conductors’ understanding of a pupil’s disability and the lengths conductors go to in assessing a pupil on first meeting.

Let the authors – in their words, not mine – sum up this state of affairs in mainstream schools:

Many staff were unsure how to best deal with the challenges and sometimes complex difficulties posed by pupils with statements. Most teachers reported having had no training on meeting the specific needs of pupils with statements, and only a few had received some general training on SEN. In our view, this indicates a failing of initial teacher training. This lack of knowledge seemed to be a contributing factor in teachers’ lesson and task preparation; their planning rarely extended to cover the learning needs of pupils with a statement. (p71)

The Making a Statement project set out to collect systematic data on the educational experiences of pupils with a statement of SEN in mainstream primary schools. (p73)

This was achieved through the collection of observation data based on many hundreds of hours spent in classrooms over the 2011/12 academic year. The observations results were supported with detailed case studies, which drew together data from interviews, documentation and researchers’ field notes. The findings from the observations and case studies led to the summation of the main messages from the study in terms of five key, overarching themes. (p73)

Three of these themes and some of these main messages are (p69ff):

The appropriateness and quality of pedagogy:

Pupils with statements often receive a less appropriate and lower quality pedagogical experience compared to their average attaining peers.

The quality of pedagogy is unlikely to be sufficient to narrow the attainment gap between pupils with statements and their peers.

The extent of knowledge:

There are considerable gaps in teachers’ and TAs’ knowledge concerning meeting the needs of pupils with statements. 

The quality of leadership and management:

There are concerns about the ways in which schools prioritise meeting the needs of pupils with statements.

The authors of “The Making a Statement project Final Report” have observed and reported the systemic failure in the teaching of children with statements of special educational needs in primary schools. 

Maybe in our conversations with local authorities and with Tribunals – and in our lobbying of MPs as the Children and Families Bill makes its way through Parliament, presaging the “most radical change in SEN for 30 years” - we should use this report to point out this failure and, conversely, what conductors and conductive education have to offer.

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Institute of Education Press Release: Pupils with most serious special needs spend too much time apart from their classmates and teachers

Institute of Education Blog: Worlds apart? How pupils with special needs lead a life away from their teachers and classmates

You might also like to take a look at how the Times Educational Supplement reported this research and the comment on that by Tom Bennett on his blog The Behaviour Guru: When everyone’s special, no one is: how inclusion went sour.

All you need is Love? Not quite but pedagogy is also about Love. True.

The element of chance, of stumbling upon, is surely one of the great pleasures of the internet.

So, this, just found, from a report of an international workshop at the School of Education, University of Manchester in 2007.  Three cheers for Professor David Halpin!

The final leg of our journey was a stirring one, led by David Halpin (Institute of Education, London University), who urged us to reclaim passion in our educative practices by considering the relationship between love in its many forms and pedagogy. ‘Yes!’ I cried (internally). At last, I have worked out what this is all about. Pedagogy is about service, an educative journey, interrelationships and to a certain extent rhetoric and persuasion. But it is also about love."

Some of us in conductive education already new that, didn't we?

Professor Halpin's profile can be read on the Institute of Education website. The titles of some of his publications are a delight. This one I especially like:

Halpin, D. (2007) Romanticism and Education: Love, Heroism and Imagination in Pedagogy. London: Continuum.

It's the final phrase for me that packs the punch: "Romanticism", "Education", "Love", "Heroism", "Imagination",  all building a crescendo to .... "in pedagogy" Boom! Boom!

I must see if there's anything of Professor Halpin's work that I can find online.

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A few moments later .... Yes, this "the proper practice of education, which is premised upon the hope that teaching and learning will lead to improvement", found, with much else besides, in "hope, utopianism and educational renewal". There's so much I want to quote for you from this article! Why not just enjoy the pleasure of reading it all for yourself?

I'm fascinated by the notion that the proper practice of education is premised upon "the hope that teaching and learning will lead to improvement". 

No training for teachers of children with cerebral palsy?

Perhaps worth reading in full is an interesting SEN blog posting from the National Association of Head Teachers relating mostly to training.

This caught my eye:

"The Autism Education Trust (AET) has rolled out Level 1 of their materials through 7 regional Training Hubs (see www.autismeducationtrust.org.uk/TrainingHubs). Already, over 1,500 people have been trained. Levels 2 & 3 are being piloted at present and will become available in the Autumn. At the same time, the DfE has funded the AET to develop a set of National Standards, which schools can use for self-evaluation, as well as a Competency Framework, which can be used alongside appraisal to identify staff training needs.

Similar Frameworks have been developed by the The Communication Trust (www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk) and the Dyslexia- SpLD Trust (www.dyslexia-SpLDtrust.org.uk) for those who want to move their schools forward in terms of speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), or Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD).

My first thought was to wonder why there isn't a "Physical Disabilites Educational Trust" or "Cerebral Palsy Educational Trust" that can win contracts from the DfE to develop training programmes as the AET has?

My second thought was to wonder how it is that there appear to be no training programmes for those who teach children with physical disabilities arising from cerebral palsy or similar neuorological impairments?  

Maybe you know the answers?

The woman who changed her brain - in 1978

Coincidentally, another 'brain' piece. (Yesterday, I posted about an Observer article Who's in charge - you or your brain?) This time a piece from the author of the recently published "The woman who changed her brain" (which I haven't read, btw, just this article "Why I wrote 'The Woman who changed her brain'"), Barbara Arrowsmith-Young.

The writer, recounting her own experiences, seems to understand implicitly that her success was 'self-taught', with an emphasis on 'taught', implying teaching and learning, albeit she was both teacher and learner, and yet, in the article, seems more comfortable with the vocabulary of 'exercises' and 'repetition' - just one technique for teaching and learning. One suspects, on the flimsy evidence of this article, there was more to her successful transformation, than 'exercises' and ' repetition'.

This is what she herself writes though:

"I the­o­rized that a per­son could trans­form weak areas of the brain through repet­i­tive and tar­geted cog­ni­tive exer­cises. With much read­ing and an intu­itive under­stand­ing of the brain’s func­tion­ing, I invented a series of cog­ni­tive exer­cises to “fix” my own brain."

This, though, and perhaps quite remarkably, was 1978, when she was a graduate student in psychology. She does well to remind us of "the 1950’s and 60’s when the brain was viewed as unchange­able" and as a consequence she, and others like her, were advised - and expected - to "live with her limitations". 

It is an era that I also grew up in and, like the author, went to school and started teaching, quite assured that our limitations - and our potential - were set by our brains. Not until I met conductive education (to my regret, having, unlike the writer, ignored an introduction to Luria and Vigotsky at postgraduate teacher training college in 1968-9), did I understand something I had begun to suspect - we can learn and we can be taught all our lives.

Anyhow, she writes of 1978, a time, as she writes, "long before the con­cept of “neu­ro­plas­tic­ity” was widely under­stood. At the time, the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity believed this kind of trans­for­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, but the exer­cises did indeed, in my first-hand expe­ri­ence, rad­i­cally improve the func­tion of the weak­ened areas of my brain."

I wonder how differently she might have accounted for, and recounted, her own first-hand experience, had she been, not a pschologist, but a pedagogue?

What is the purpose of schools? asked Anthony Seddon

What is the purpose of schools?

Writing in the Sunday Times (£pay site) a couple of weeks ago (“Think Tank: New Ideas for the 21^st Century”), Anthony Seddon, Master of Wellington College, approved much that Michael Gove has done as Education Secretary, whilst suggesting “If he has a blind spot, however, it is his lack of a vision for the purpose of schools”.

“Gove has let exam passes become the all-important validator of the worth of a school .... Exams, are, of course essential. They allow us to measure the progress of students and school performance. But they are not the whole purpose of schools. The objective that Gove needs to prioritise now is character building.”

Seddon sets out his case by calling on: David Levin, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Programme, (who realised … “those who possessed character strengths such as resilience and tenacity” were succeeding at university, not necessarily those who had been the top students at their schools); Angela Duckworth, (“a psychologist who showed that self-control could be a more reliable predictor of students’ university success than IQ”) and Martin Seligman (“a pioneer of ‘positive psychology’, who had identified no fewer than 24 character strengths that could be developed in schools”).  With Dominic Randolph, Head of New York private school, Riverdale, David Levin reduced Seligman’s 24 character strengths to 7 “which they made the cornerstones of their respective school’s programmes”:

• self-control
• grit
• zest
• social intelligence
• optimism
• gratitude
• curiosity

Noting “Independent schools, as we all know, major on the development of character”, Seddon points to examples of state schools that are “showing the way”: King Solomon Academy primary school in northwest London; West Kidlington primary school in Oxfordshire; and Kings Langley secondary school in Hertfordshire.

So what is the purpose of schools? Of the purpose of schooling? Or, for that matter, the purpose of Education?

When I read this, I wanted to ask a couple of questions:

What is the purpose of parents?

What of upbringing? Is it even meaningful to talk of the purpose of upbringing?

 

 

 

 

 

Life long learning. Life long play (with thanks to @MaxMckeown) #CondEd

I especially liked the opening of this blog posting "Life long learning. Life long play" from Max Mckeown (@MaxMckeown on Twitter). The whole post is worth a read.

There’s an entrepreneurial art, the ability to see, and the guts to grab opportunities. Like all art, people have different aptitudes, like all art, people can learn. Learning the entrepreneurial art, requires the confidence to bet on yourself. And that confidence can be learned through practice and praise.

If society wants more entrepreneurial growth, then perhaps education should emphasis practice and praise. Instead of stopping the free play at five years old, free play should be encouraged throughout education. Throughout life.

Instead of school sharing out limited opportunities, education can be a way of creating unlimited opportunities. In this way, school stops being an incantation of the possible, and starts being an exhortation to the impossible. Each day, each child can choose to stay within neat, ruthless orthodoxy or decide to explore messy, forgiving unorthodoxy.

If our schools reflected the very best of us, they would be neighborhoods, communities, places of adventure and imagination. School has to do far more than let our children know where they rank on a four point scale.

A fanciful thought, maybe, but does "the confidence to bet on yourself", as Max puts it, sound just a little like what conductive upbringing and pedagogy is all about? Or what Mike Chitty calls "becoming"? Or Dr Hari writing about 'enhancing the quality of intention to achieve'?

Mind you, I remember Helen Pemberton (a conductor who worked with us at Paces a while back) once stressing to me that we do not emphasise enough the importance of play. Anyone for the early years foundation curriculum?

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@ and # are used on twitter as special signs.

Inspire me today? Glenda certainly does.

Glenda Watson-Hyatt has written a great piece at "Inspire me today".

I'll not add anything to what Glenda has written but just let you take a look for yourself.

Except this: it seems to me there are people we meet who understand almost instinctively the transformational potential in and for our lives of learning and doing - and are an inspiration to the rest of us.

Conductive education - education, education, education

"Conductive Education" is not an alternative therapy; it is an alternative education.

"Conductive Education" is a philosophy of education. It is an integrated system and practice of education. It is not about what goes on in hospitals and health centres; it is about what goes on in schools. It is not about what physical therapists do; it is about what teachers do. It is not about the training of physical therapists; it is about the training of teachers. It is not about research into therapeutic interventions; it is about research into learning and teaching.

Now, we can discuss my use of the word "alternative"; we can debate whether "conductive pedagogy" or "conductive upbringing" are better translations into English than "conductive education".

But what should be evident as we read or hear or speak or write the phrase in English "conductive education" is that we are reading or hearing or speaking or writing about education. 

Education. Education. Education.  Not physical therapy. Not "conductive physical therapy". Not "conductive therapy". Not "therapy".

How then, does a philosophy and system of education find itself amongst the following list of physical therapy interventions (tagged by its authors 'Pediatrics' 'Pediatric interventions'?

• adapted seating for children with cerebral palsy
• constraint-induced movement therapy
• lower extremity casting, orthoses and splints for children with neurological disorders
• neurodevelopmental treatment
• partial body weight supported treadmill training
• passive stretching to improve range of motion
• strengthening for children with cerebral palsy
• weight-bearing interventions for children with cerebral palsy

This list is tagged by its authors with the keywords "Pediatrics" and "Pediatric interventions";  it appears in an article "Review of selected physical therapy interventions for school age children with disabilities"; the article appears in a journal entitled "Physical Therapy Reviews".

When I was 60, I decided to learn to play the violin. I was initially surprised to discover what an intensely physical activity playing a violin is.  I was also more pleasantly surprised to discover that learning to play the violin is remarkably therapeutic. 

But I was not intent on music therapy. I was intent on learning to play the violin.