Disability and Inclusion in Early Years Education

Chris Collett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317269335
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Disability and Inclusion in Early Years Education supports practitioners in understanding and implementing inclusive practice relating to disability in early years education. Offering a detailed explanation of recent developments in the field, such as the 2015 SEND Code of Practice, it provides straightforward and accessible guidance on implementing the crucial procedures that help to promote good practice.

More broadly, the book provides guidance on creating a fully inclusive early years environment that will support all children, focusing on high-incidence needs around communication, behaviour and learning. Chapters offer a wealth of practical tools and strategies to support the inclusion of children with disabilities more effectively, covering key topics such as:

• assessment, early identification and individualised learning
• working with parents, carers and families
• the key role of picture books
• multisensory approaches to learning
• supporting behaviour and communication

This text will be valuable reading for all early years practitioners and students who want to promote the inclusion of children with SEND in mainstream provisions.

Part I
Principles of inclusion

1
Why include children with SEND?

Chris Collett

This chapter looks at:

• inclusion as a contested concept
• the origins and development of inclusive practice
• changing attitudes to disability, from negative historical stereotypes of fear, suspicion and pity to present-day understanding
• the influence of key models of disability; medical and social
• the moral argument for inclusion in the context of rights and opportunities
• current barriers to inclusion

One of the most powerful barriers to the equal participation of children with SEND, is not the inevitable result of their impairments or medical conditions, but the prejudicial attitudes of others. During the course of a career spanning thirty-five years, I have come into contact with many early years practitioners and teachers, as well as students, who were keen to include. But I often found that whilst inclusion was accepted on principle as being a ‘good thing’, there was often little understanding of why this is so. As will be discussed later in this chapter, including children with SEND can present challenges and if there isn’t a strong rationale on which it’s based, then it is all too easy to think that it is unimportant and to give up on it when the going gets tough. Practitioners not only need to be confident to address the needs of the disabled child, but also, at a time when there may be anxieties about children’s progress, they need to be able to articulate to colleagues and sometimes to parents, the reasoning behind the inclusion of a child who may be perceived as ‘difficult’ and demanding of practitioners’ time and resources.

Where a child’s disability is evident, as in the case, for example, of cerebral palsy, this may be more straightforward, but it is less so where a child has a ‘hidden’ disability, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although there has undoubtedly been a shift in thinking about disability that moves away from historic stereotypes, the default position remains, in education, that disability presents a potential issue or problem. In the wider world, there has, in recent years, been a resurgence of negativity in the media rhetoric around disabled people as ‘benefit scroungers’ and, according to Coleman, Sykes and Walker (2013), 39,000 adults per year, in the period 2009–12, were the victims of disability hate crime. This reflex comes as a direct result of centuries of suspicion, fear and pity surrounding disabled people, and, in order to fully understand why these attitudes remain so deeply embedded in the public consciousness, it is necessary to explore where they originated.

A history of segregation

Ancient history tells a grim story of the treatment of disabled children. The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded imperfection and deformity as abominations, and any such affliction as a judgement from their gods (Reiser in Cole 2012; Brignall 2008). The lives of disabled people were considered of little value, except for the purposes of entertainment, and Quarmby (2011:24) records that ‘dwarves, hunchbacks and fools’ were much in demand amongst the wealthy, for this purpose. Many malformed or disabled infants were discreetly disposed of, before their births could be registered, a practice that was positively encouraged. Disabled children who did survive to live into adulthood were perceived as being a burden on society, as their economic contribution was limited, and they were shunned by the wider population (Quarmby 2011).

The perception of disability as a ‘punishment’ for wrongdoing that carried with it a shameful stigma, was reinforced by the major organised religions, which established the importance of so-called ‘miracle cures’. This added to the belief that disability, by definition, was undesirable and unacceptable (Reiser in Cole 2012). Where tolerance towards disabled individuals did exist, within isolated rural communities, disabled people were nonetheless consigned to the lowest ranks of society, a status that has ever since been a guiding factor in the framing of social policy, with disabled people often considered only as an afterthought.

During the middle ages, the suspicion surrounding disability was further strengthened through witch hunts that were, in effect, nothing more than the persecution of women who might be perceived as different due to a physical deformity or eccentric behaviour (Quarmby 2011). These women became the scapegoats for any ill fortune, a theme that persists through folklore, with the portrayal of wicked witches and evil goblins in fairy tales (Reiser in Cole 2012).

Reflective activity

Think about the characters in fairy stories you were read as a child.

Were there particular characteristics that helped you to recognise the villain?

How many of these were physical imperfections?

The exploitation of disabled people as ‘entertainment’ saw a resurgence in Victorian England through freak shows and country fairs, and this pastime was later extended, making ‘lunatic asylums’ accessible to the viewing public, the most famous of which was Bedlam (Quarmby 2011). But whilst all of these practices helped to firmly establish damaging perceptions of disability, the biggest upheaval in the lives of disabled people was yet to come.

The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century triggered a mass migration of people from rural communities to the factories of the industrial towns and cities. Due to their impairments, many disabled people were unable to meet the demands of mass production, where tasks often required dexterity or physical strength and had to be carried out quickly and to rigorous standards. Doctors began to identify those who were unsuitable for such work, consigning them instead to the filthy, infested poorhouses or workhouses, at the same time separating them from the rest of the population. Unable to fulfil a paid role, disabled people were at the mercy of handouts from the state, and diagnosis and categorisation suddenly became the key to accessing what meagre resources were available (Reiser in Cole 2012; Borsay 2006). Help from charitable organisations only helped to reinforce ideas of disabled people as pitiable and dependent on others (Harris and Roulstone 2012).

Mike Oliver’s medical model framework helps to describe perceptions at that time and through to the middle part of the twentieth century (Figure 1.1).

Reflective activity

Consider the main features of the medical model of disability.

To what extent do these ideas continue to resonate today?

Figure 1.1 The medical model. Adapted from Oliver (1990)

The wholesale removal of disabled people from mainstream society helped to fuel the fear and superstition that surrounded them, and such attitudes were given further weight by the growth towards the end of the nineteenth century of social Darwinism and the emergence of the eugenics movement (Hodkinson and Vickerman 2009). A movement supported by influential figures, such as Francis Galton and Winston Churchill, eugenics saw disabled people as weak, and a threat to the future of humankind. These ideas led to the further incarceration of thousands of disabled people to prevent them from procreating, and distinctions between the disabled, the degenerate and the criminal became blurred. The policy was taken to its extreme in Nazi Germany, when tens of thousands of disabled people were killed in the Holocaust, during the Second World War.

Reflective activity

Think about the children who were segregated from their families at a very young age.

What effects would this have had on them and their families?

How would this practice fit with our current understanding of attachment?

Changing perceptions

So what effect did all this thinking have on the education of disabled children? It was felt for a long time that children with disabilities, especially physical and learning disabilities, could not benefit from education. Before 1944, the only specialist educational provision in England was a handful of schools set up by charities or church organisations, primarily for deaf or blind children. Children with less clearly definable disabilities remained in the asylums (later to become mental handicap hospitals), often due to what would today be considered relatively minor conditions, such as epilepsy. Life in such institutions was harsh; children were frequently subjected to cruel, experimental medical ‘treatments’ and were at risk of abuse (Borsay 2006). It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that things began to change, in response to the growing understanding of equality and human rights.

Following the atrocities of the Second World War, the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’, and introduced principles of equal opportunities, dignity, self-determination and non-discrimination, for the protection of vulnerable minority groups. Originating in the US, during the 1950s and early ‘60s the disability rights movement began to take hold in Britain. This marked the beginning of a coordinated approach to tackling the injustices to which disabled people had been and were being subjected. Traditional ideas were challenged and increasingly disability was viewed as a form of social oppression (Hodkinson and Vickerman 2009).

With this movement came the growing recognition that disabled people were being denied educational opportunities and, as a result, the chance to participate fully in society (Quarmby 2011). In response, the 1970 Education (Handicapped Children) Act deemed that all children had a legal entitlement to a ‘full and broad’ education, bringing all children, even those with the most complex needs, from health care services into the remit of local education authorities (Hodkinson and Vickerman 2009). However, for many children with disabilities, this meant within a segregated (separate) system of special education, so that their presence would not ‘inconvenience the smooth running of normal schools’ (Fredrickson and Cline 2002). These special schools, usually catering for specific categories of disability, were few and far between, and often meant that children had to travel long distances and could be forced to board from an early age and against the wishes of their parents. Borsay (in Haines and Ruebain 2010) highlights the isolating effects and the long-term damage of these practices, which were compounded by low expectations, few opportunities for academic qualifications and consequently poor employment opportunities, leading to a lifetime of dependency. The rights of children with disabilities, and even their parents in choosing provision, were still not keeping pace with concepts of rights and equality.

Disabled rights activists, many of whom had been disadvantaged by special schools, continued to press for a change to oppressive medical model thinking, and a new way of framing disability began to emerge. The social model of disability recognises that an individual is disabled, not by his or her impairment, but by the environment in which he or she lives, works or is educated (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 The social model. Adapted from Oliver (1990)

As well as other aspects of daily life, this changing understanding was reflected in changes occurring in educational provision, and so began, in the 1970s and 80s, a move to reverse the policy of segregation for disabled children. Progress was formalised by the Warnock Report (1978), which paved the way for their ‘integration’ into mainstream schools. The 1974 committee chaired by Mary Warnock heralded a move away from medically imposed categories of disability, instead proposing an all-embracing term special educational needs. This also shifted the emphasis away from individual deficits (what was ‘wrong’ with the child) to what provision was needed to support his or her learning. Any additional resources that were required would be accessed through an individual ‘statement of need’ (Hodkinson and Vickerman 2009; Fredrickson and Cline 2002). The Warnock committee also saw the importance of early identification of needs and speedy interventions, the creation of effective partnerships with parents and the need to take a coordinated multi-agency approach (DES 1978). The Warnock Report was to set the blueprint for the education of children with SEND for decades to come and key recommendations were enforced through the 1981 Education Act. From that point on ‘integration’ and later ‘inclusion’ into mainstream schools became the central plank of education policy for children with SEND. And whilst the co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Principles of inclusion
• PART II Creating an inclusive early years setting
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• References
• Index