Including Children 3-11 With Physical Disabilities

Practical Guidance for Mainstream Schools

Mark Fox

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135373047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

First Published in 2005. This is a guide to help teachers successfully include children with physical disabilities in mainstream classrooms. The book looks at: planning for inclusion; understanding different kinds of physical disabilities; managing teachers' and parents' expectations; organising the classroom; liaising with other professionals and considering the emotional and social aspects of inclusion. Early years and primary teachers, SENCOs, teaching assistants, parents of children with a physical disability and other education professionals should find it helpful and informative.

CHAPTER 1

Teachers’ Expectations

A shared historical framework

This chapter focuses on developing a shared framework for the inclusion of children with physical disabilities. This framework is made up of the beliefs, attitudes and values of teachers, teaching assistants (TAs) and other staff in schools. These attitudes or beliefs about inclusion are important as they underpin teachers’ professional practice. If practice is to change so that more children with physical disabilities are included then attitudes and beliefs also have to change. Beliefs are based on teachers’ own personal experiences, but also on how others, particularly significant others, talk about inclusion. So the beliefs about the inclusion of children with physical disabilities are shaped not only by teachers’ own personal experiences but also by how others in the school (for example the head teacher, the SENCO and other influential staff) talk about the issues. These beliefs and attitudes are shaped by the culture of the school. The school's culture develops over time within society's general culture. Present beliefs about inclusion are set within an historical context.

The development of special schools for children with a physical disability

Over the last 50 years there has been a radical change in the education of children with physical disabilities. This shift has been accompanied by changes in language as new views are expressed on how best these children can be educated.

After the Second World War children with disabilities were known as ‘handicapped’. The 1944 Education Act defined 11 categories of handicapped pupils – including children with a physical handicap. Local education authorities (LEAs) had a responsibility to ascertain which children required special educational ‘treatment’. In the 1950s and 1960s numerous special schools were set up to meet the needs of these handicapped children. Organisations such as the Spastics Society (now Scope) saw the provision of special schools as one of their prime goals. The number of special schools increased from 528 in 1945 to 743 in 1955 – with 105 of these designated for children with a physical handicap (Male 1998). By 1977 there were 1,653 special schools in England and Wales (Booth 1981). Teachers and parents were told that the placement of children with physical disabilities in special schools would ensure their best education.

The first significant change for children with physical disabilities was in 1970. Many children with severe physical disabilities and no speech had been considered ineducable. The Education Act (Handicapped Children) recognised that the 32,750 children who had previously been considered ‘ineducable’ were now the responsibility of LEAs. These children were almost all placed in what were known as ESN (S) schools – Educationally Subnormal (Severe) schools.

The development of integration

During the 1970s there was some questioning whether the placement of handicapped children in special schools solved their educational difficulties. This view, that children should be integrated wherever possible, was enshrined in the Warnock Report (1978) and the 1981 Education Act. Integration had a variety of meanings, but was broadly used to describe the needs of some handicapped children to be allowed to attend a normal, ordinary, or what will be referred to as a mainstream, school. The main means of integration was seen as special units attached to mainstream schools (Deno 1970). From these units children with physical disabilities could be integrated in a variety of ways:

• locational integration: the children were on the same site but were kept separate;

• social integration: the children mixed at social times, for example dinnertime; and

• academic integration: the children attended some of the classes with their peers.

There was a belief that there should be a continuum of provision to meet the needs of children with physical disabilities. Children with severe physical disabilities or complex needs were likely to attend special schools and even residential schools. Children with less severe difficulties could be at least partially integrated, often from a specially designated, resourced mainstream school. In addition, some children with mild physical disabilities were included in their local mainstream schools (Within Reach 1992). At the same time the categories of handicap were abolished and the concept of Special Educational Needs was introduced to describe the learning difficulties of a pupil. The focus in the 1980s was on recognising the differences between pupils – identifying their special educational needs. There are, however, no really accurate records on how children with physical disabilities were educated at this time. Neither LEAs nor central government have records on how many pupils with what kind of physical disability were educated in these different types of schools (ibid. 1992)

The development of inclusion

By the mid-1990s the term ‘inclusion’, as opposed to ‘integration’, was being used to describe the education of children with disabilities in mainstream schools. More recently, the term ‘full’ inclusion has been introduced (Giangreco 1997; Jarrett 1996). The full inclusion model has a number of features:

• all children attend the school to which they would go if they had no disabilities;

• a natural proportion of children with disabilities occurs at any school;

• no child should be excluded on the basis of a disability;

• school and general educational placements are age-appropriate, with no self-contained special educational classes operating on the school site;

• cooperative learning and peer teaching methods receive significant use in general teaching practice at the school; and

• special educational support teachers and TAs are provided within the context of the general educational class and other inclusive environments.

Full inclusion is not a reality in Britain. It is, however, an aspiration of some special educators and is used to promote changes. These changes in terminology, from handicapped to full inclusion, not only reflect special educators’ concerns that children with special educational needs are not being appropriately educated, but they are also used to try and shift the public's perception of inclusion. In the last 50 years, teachers have been shown a variety of ways to most effectively educate children with physical disabilities. A fundamental principle of the government's present position set out in the Code of Practice is that: ‘The special educational needs of children will normally be met in mainstream schools’ (DfES 2001a: 7). However, it is clear that this is not intended to mean all children or full inclusion.

Throughout the book the term ‘inclusion’ will be used to describe the education of pupils with physical disabilities in mainstream schools. Inclusion will not mean ‘full inclusion’; instead, it is recognised that inclusion can happen at a variety of levels in Britain today. Many schools feel constrained to offer full inclusion against the wishes of the parents and without appropriate support. Addressing these constraints in order to move to a position of full inclusion is the central concern of this book.

Answer the following questions using the scale: 4= strongly agree; 3= mildly agree; 2= mildly disagree; 1 = strongly disagree.

Number	Item	Score
1	I feel that I have the knowledge to teach children with a physical disability.
2	I support inclusion for children with physical disabilities.
3	I feel that children with physical disabilities make better progress in mainstream than they would in special schools.
4	I feel that children with physical disabilities are socially accepted by their peers.
5	I feel that I am able to remediate the learning difficulties of children with a physical disability.
6	I feel that children with physical disabilities benefit academically from inclusion in a mainstream classroom.
7	I feel that other pupils benefit from the inclusion of children with physical disabilities into mainstream classrooms.
8	I feel that I have adequate classroom support (TAs) for planning and working with these children.
9	I believe that mainstream teachers should support inclusion as a positive education practice.
10	I feel that adequate support services (such as speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and educational psychologists) are readily available to me.
11	I feel that children with physical disabilities get considerable support from their typical peers in the mainstream classroom.
12	I am willing to attend additional INSET to broaden my knowledge about the education of children with physical disabilities.
13	I feel that adequate equipment and teaching material is available to me for teaching children with physical disabilities.
14	I feel that children with physical disabilities benefit socially from inclusion into a mainstream classroom.
15	I believe that children with physical disabilities have a right to be in mainstream schools.

Table 1.1 The teacher inclusion attitudes questionnaire (adapted from Sideridis and Chandler 1997)

Teachers’ attitudes to inclusion

Teachers’ attitudes to inclusion have a direct bearing on its success. The questionnaire in Table 1.1 is designed to help teachers understand their own attitudes to inclusion. It can be completed by individual teachers or as part of a staff group.

Interpretation

The questionnaire can be broken down into five attitudes areas:

• Rights (questions 2, 9 and 15): teachers’ beliefs about the right of children with physical disabilities to be included in mainstream schools;

• Benefits (questions 3, 6 and 14): teachers’ beliefs about the academic and social benefits from inclusion for the pupil with a physical disability;

• Skills (questions 1, 5 and 12): teachers’ beliefs about their skills and competencies in effectively teaching and managing children with physical disabilities in mainstream schools;

• Acceptance (questions 4, 7 and 11): teachers’ perceptions of the social acceptance or rejection of pupils with a physical disability; and

• Resources (questions 8, 10 and 13): teachers’ beliefs about the support given to the teacher in terms of resources, equipment and supportive personnel.

By adding the scores of the three questions in each area, a total score for each attitude is obtained (see Table 1.2).

The higher the score in each of these areas the more the teacher feels able and ready to include the child with a physical disability in her classroom. A score of 12 means that the teacher does not see any issues for inclusion in this area. However, many teachers’ will not give a score of 12 to each attitude area. Research has shown consistently that teachers have concerns in these five areas. However, before proceeding to look at these there are some further questions to think about:

Attitude to inclusion	Total score
Rights
Benefits
Skills
Acceptance
Resources

Table 1.2 Summary of attitude to inclusion

• Which area am I most confident about (the one with the highest score)?

• Why do I feel confident in this area?

• Which areas do I feel least confident in? Why?

• Does everyone in the school feel the same way?

• Who sees it di...