Multisensory Environments

Paul Pagliano

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317854715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1999. This book is written in four parts. Part I 'Foundations', starts with Chapter 1 'What is a multisensory environment?' and provides a general introduction to the field. The MSE can be different things to different people. It can describe an actual space, or the impact that space has on an individual. Furthermore, it can be for adults or children, for recreation, leisure, therapy or education. Part II 'Design and construction' explores the what, who, why and how of the open-minded, Part III 'Curriculum development' begins with Chapter 8 'Curriculum development in the MSE. The final section, Part IV 'Future developments', consists of two chapters. The goal of Chapter 11 'Conducting research in the MSE' is to demystify research and thereby encourage all members of the transdisciplinary team to become actively involved in MSE related research; Chapter 12 'Where are we going?', the MSE is re-examined to identify possible ways this development could contribute to the increased pluralities that will constitute education in the twenty-first century.

Part I:
Foundations

Chapter 1
What is a multisensory environment?

Introduction

I asked a teacher who has worked extensively in a multisensory environment (MSE) to describe the MSE in her own words.

'I tend to freak out when people ask me that', she said, 'because I find it really difficult to know how to start to answer. There are so many things I want to say about it – all at once.'

'You mean it's different things to different people?' I enquired.

'That's true, I suppose – but it's more complicated than that. It's almost like there are two different multisensory environments. There's the actual space – the physical environment – and then there's the impact on the students-with this impact being different for each student. If I describe the physical environment it gives a false impression because the physical environment is just a small part. It's somehow too concrete and something qualitative is lost in the process. Then again if I describe the metaphysical there's the opposite problem. The description is too abstract, too abstruse.'

'Well then, could you describe the MSE in two parts beginning with the physical environment?'

The actual space

'Of course you realise that every MSE is different. Our MSE was constructed on a shoestring budget with a lot of goodwill from capable friends who volunteered their time and expertise. We have a principal with good community liaison skills and when a local disco was refurbishing, we were in the right place at the right time. The actual MSE is in an air conditioned converted double classroom. It's pitch black with the lights off and the door closed, although the ceiling, walls and floor have been painted white to provide a neutral three dimensional ground. We could have painted the walls black to create a dark room but we decided to go with the white.

A variety of equipment is on hand to provide visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and kinesthetic stimulation. These stimuli include a wide range of pleasant aromas, soothing music, vibrating cushions, tactile wall panels, wind chimes, wooden flying birds, beanbags, a water bed, a ball pit, and two giant clear perspex pillars of water with ever-rising air bubbles. A wheel-effect optikinetics projector makes fluid oil patterns that slowly slide across two walls. A touch-responsive plasma light sculpture sits invitingly in one corner and a fibre optic spray cascades light-like water down another. Two spotlights shine on a first clockwise then anticlockwise rotating disco mirror ball while ultraviolet light bounces off neon iridescent flowers, earth globe mobiles, stars and planets, and long hanging coloured tapes. There is a sound system and a television with VCR (video cassette recorder) facilities. When everything is activated it's quite awe-inspiring.'

The impact on the child

'Now can you tell me a story to illustrate the impact your MSE has on one of your students?'

'One girl in my class is called Zoe. She's fifteen. She lives in a small residential setting. They take the best care they can of her but the human resources there are too limited to allow them to give her sustained close individualised attention. Her world is very narrow and she's had a lot of problems. She is extremely tactile defensive. Anything that is put on her tray she will immediately swipe off. She doesn't want anything or anyone to come near her.

Zoe makes a very loud screech like a cockatoo. The screech doesn't change and it's often difficult to identify why she is making a noise. It may be excitement, or pain, or someone or something is too near her, or for no identifiable reason. With pain, if it's really bad she will cry. Most often though the screeching is her letting us know very explicitly that she is not happy with something that is happening.

The interesting point is, she doesn't ever make these noises in the MSE. She seems very happy just being there. I think the MSE has provided her with a sense of security. She has dislocated hips and she's very restricted in her movement. She is often in a lot of pain. She can't be positioned because it would be too painful but she's just capable of moving into a comfortable situation herself. In the ball pit she has no difficulties getting comfortable, and that development, just in itself, is a giant step forward. For the ball pit we plan to gradually take balls out and add different textured objects, to design a more diverse environment just for Zoe. By we I mean the physiotherapist, the occupational therapist, the communication therapist, the teacher's aide and myself. We work together as a team.

We plan to seat her in a beanbag under the fibre optics next to someone she likes. She is starting to like looking at the fibre optics but she doesn't like to touch them. In the beanbag she will be able to observe the other student enjoying touching the fibre optics and we're hoping that in the future she'll more readily allow people and things into her personal space. We'll just have to take it very gradually.

She is very fussy about the types of food and drinks she will accept. She can hold the spoon but needs help to get it into her mouth. If she doesn't like the smell of something she will rub it across her teeth on the spoon and refuse to eat. Recently, however, she has increased her tolerance. What we do is give her something she likes during one session and something she's not so keen on, but is nice, at a second session later during the day. If she refuses that's fine. For a long time before we started going to the MSE there was no progress at all. So now I feel we are making progress, even if it's slow. After she has had lots of positive experiences in the ball pit we'll see how she reacts to a different setting.'

'So in summary you feel Zoe's unique relationship with the MSE provides you with an expanded range of options. You then carefully orchestrate these options to create a learning, therapeutic and recreational environment in which Zoe can interact with the world in new and constructive ways.'

'That's the idea. It's complicated though.'

(Parts of this transcript appeared in Pagliano 1997a).

History

Three separate factors, all of which began development in the 1970s, can be seen as major technological and sociological contributions to the evolution of the MSE. It was the birth of the discotheque with its focus on visual and aural ambience, the popularisation of soft play constructions in early childhood centres and the radical revision of expectations in the provision of services for individuals with disabilities that were pivotal (Hirstwood and Gray 1995).

The discotheque phenomenon is continuing to sweep and re-sweep the western world. The discotheque environment relies on loud rhythmic music and sophisticated, synchronised, sound-activated lighting and special effects to set the scene. All over the world designers have vied with each other to create ever more exciting entertainment spaces. In the process useful lessons have been learnt in applying industrial psychology to MSE design. A further facet of the discotheque phenomenon is the disc jockey, an individual who not only chooses how and when to play the dance music but also skilfully manipulates the extra-aural environment. Through microtechnological developments it has become possible to create interesting portable sound and lighting systems comparatively easily and cheaply. The discotheque phenomenon however is not only technological but also sociological with regard to the semiotics of youth culture (Woodill 1994) .

The popularisation of soft play constructions for use in early childhood also began in the 1970s. An increasing demand for institutional childcare resulted in the emergence of a powerful and influential childcare industry. Many early childhood centres wanted all-weather play environments that were safe, stimulating, attractive and easy to keep clean and maintain. New synthetic materials appeared on the market which could be used to cover foam rubber to make lightweight, waterproof, sturdy shapes. These shapes could be used for manipulation, relaxation and exercise including climbing, jumping, rolling and sliding, and could be made in a wide range of attractive colours. The addition of Velcro meant these large solid shapes could be arranged and rearranged in stable yet innovative ways. Additional developments have included other plastic environmental toys such as building blocks, ladders, tubes, chutes and ball pits. This revolution has been so pervasive that even shopping centres nowadays frequently have a soft toy play centre to entertain the children while the parents are busy shopping.

Services for individuals with disabilities have undergone considerable change since the 1970s. Three early developments were normalisation, the goal of making the life of the individual with a disability as normal as possible (Bank-Mikkelson 1969), de-institutionalisation, the process of moving individuals with disabilities out of institutions into the community (Wolfensberger 1972) and mainstreaming, the process of moving children with disabilities out of segregated special schools into regular education. Kirk and Gallagher (1989) claimed that during this period the field of special education changed perspective moving 'from a medical model, which implies a physical condition or disease within a patient, to an ecological model, in which we see the exceptional child in complex interaction with environmental forces' (p. 6).

Fulcher (1989) argued this change in perspective is discourse related. 'Discourses articulate the world in certain ways: they "identify" "problems", perspectives on those problems and thus "solutions'" (p. 8). She suggested that two opposing sets of discourses were at play, namely 'divisive' and 'inclusive', 'professionalism' and 'democratism' (p. 9).

. . . crudely put, the divisive discourse theorizes problems as belonging to the child and as therefore 'needing' extra resources, whereas the inclusive discourse suggests the school has a responsibility to treat all children firstly as pupils, and therefore to concentrate on pedagogical solutions to do with curriculum which all teachers might use (p. 9). . . . Democratism is the view that those affected by decisions should take a genuine part in debating the issues and in making these decisions. Democratization is the historical struggle in which democratism has been the key strategy. Professionalism, the view that experts know best, has been the major tactic in professionalization, the historical struggle to gain control of an area of occupational life. (p. 15)

A range of discourses are now acknowledged as being influential in disability services. Fulcher's (1989) 'rights discourse' with its themes of 'self-reliance, independence, consumer wants (rather than needs)' (p. 30) has played an important role in the development of the MSE. However, the medical model and discourse have not been entirely discarded. This point will be further developed in Chapters 2 and 5.

Early MSEs combined a visual and aural ambience with soft play constructions to create an environment where the wishes of the individual with a disability determined the activity. Consequently more subtle forms of communication based on the individual's attention, interest and expressions of pleasure or displeasure began to emerge as the basis for participation in the MSE. These early MSEs were called 'snoezelens'.

From snoezelen to multisensory environment

Following on from these three developments, and against a background of increasingly prevalent education research per se, environmental factors influencing students with disabilities started to be investigated. Cleland and Clark (1966) described a 'sensory cafeteria' (p. 213) in which a variety of sensory stimulations elicited a variety of responses. This can be regarded as the progenitor of the MSE. Hulsegge and Verheul extended the 'sensory cafeteria' idea in Snoezelen: Another World (1986 Dutch, 1987 English) to establish an early MSE.

The word 'snoezelen' was a contraction of two Dutch words meaning to smell and to doze. Over a period of more than seven years Hulsegge and Verheul had created a series of sensory rooms (tactile, aural, visual, ball bath, water, smell and taste) at the De Hartenberg Centre in The Netherlands, These rooms provided relaxation and stimulation for individuals of all ages (particularly adults with intellectual disability). Hulsegge and Verheul also reported on similar rooms, built throughout The Netherlands and Belgium, that were successfully being used with individuals with dementia, mental health problems and a wide range of disabilities.

Snoezelen has given us the means to provide a wide range of sensory experiences that increase the quality of life of the individual. It also allows us to provide meaningful activity without the need for intellectual or developmental pursuits. (Kewin 1994a, p. 8)

By the late 1980s MSEs appeared in a number of countries throughout Europe. They were built in the UK in a wide range of settings from homes, to schools through to large residential institutions. Their main uses continued to be recreational and therapeutic but some educational uses were appearing in the literature. One particular well documented MSE, described as a suite of rooms for adult users, was located at Whittington Hall Hospital in Chesterfield, Derbyshire (Hutchinson 1991). By the early 1990s MSEs for use in education had appeared in countries around the world including those in Australasia, Africa and the Middle East. By the mid to late 1990s MSEs had been established throughout Canada and the USA (Quon 1998).

'Snoezelen' became the registered trade mark for a UK company ROMPA marketing MSE equipment. This company dominated MSE development for several years, although now a variety of other companies also manufacture and market MSE equipment. In order to avoid association with any commercial interests, the term 'snoezelen' was discarded in the literature and the term 'multisensory environment' was adopted instead. Unshackling the MSE from the narrow definition imposed by commercial interests resulted in a freeing up of the use of the MSE, especially in the education of children with disabilities.

Mount and Cavet (1995) called for increased critical evaluation of the MSE in the field of special education: 'The expansion and popularity . . . has led us to ask, what are multi-sensory environments and how can their usefulness be evaluated?' (p. 52). The popularity of MSEs is continuing to grow and it is of concern that comparatively little specific research to directly inform and guide MSE use has appeared in the professional literature.

Running in tandem with MSE developments, however, is a rich vein of educational research that relates to sensory development (Barraga 1964; Ayres 1979; Nielsen 1979, 1991, 1992a,b; Longhorn 1988) and the education of children with severe/profound multiple disabilities. (The contributions made by a number of researchers will be examined in Chapter 3.) Linking this voluminous indirect research to the direct MSE research (see Chapter 2) has helped to develop a theoretical base to predicate MSE use.

Philosophy of the 'snoezelen'

Hulsegge and Verheul (1986/7) made important early attempts to formulate a system of values to underpin use of the MSE. Their 'snoezelen' philosophy was developed from working in a residential institution with individuals of all ages, but was more related to recreation and leisure for adults than to education for children. Consequently when their philosophy was adopted primarily for use in education, serious criticisms emerged (Mount and Cavet 1995). These criticisms included the lack of research data to inform MSE use, the need to depend on staff intuition to achieve success, the question of compatibility of MSEs with inclusion (Whittaker 1992) and whether artifical MSEs numb 'our capacity to recognise the multisensory nature of all . . . places' (Orr 1993, p. 26).

Hulsegge and Verheul's (1986/7) snoezelen philosophy was founded on the premise that for an individual with severe/profound disability, an appeal to primary sensations was a more immediately powerful means of contact than any initial appeal to intellectual capabilities. Learning was regarded as secondary or incidental. 'Learning is not a must, but they [the individuals with severe/profound disability] should be given the opportunity to gain experience. . . . if he [or she] learns something in the process, that is a bonus' (p. 23). There was stress on the 'beneficial effect on mutual trust' and also the idea that MSEs require 'careful observatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I: Foundations
• Part II: Design and construction
• Part III: Curriculum development
• Part IV: Future developments
• Appendix
• References
• Index