Moderate Learning Difficulties and the Future of Inclusion

Narcie Kelly, Brahm Norwich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134363339
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Children with mild to moderate learning difficulties (MLD) make up the largest sub-group of children requiring special educational needs, and yet they are often neglected in terms of research and in their influence on future Government policies. This book, based on a Nuffield Foundation research project, considers the perspectives of children with moderate learning difficulties, reviewing relevant issues such as: * identification of children with MLD; * appropriate curriculum and pedagogy; * inclusion in mainstream schools; * their identity and self-perception. The authors weave their findings into a wider review of current research in the MLD field and use a range of perspectives, from the professional, to psychological and sociological. This is a contemporary look at MLD that discusses the historical and policy context , origins and justification for having a category for MLD. Students, researchers, and academics that are active in the field of inclusive education will find this an insightful and comprehensive text.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Rationale for the book

The term ‘moderate learning difficulties’ (MLD) was introduced formally in the Warnock Report (DES, 1978), to replace what was then the formal term for a group identified as being ‘educationally sub-normal to a moderate degree’, or ESN(M). The ESN(M) term was introduced in 1945 as one of eleven categories of educational handicap. Prior to this other terms were used to refer to a group of children who have been widely seen as constituting the largest group of children designated as having special educational needs. These have included mental deficiency, mentally defective, feeble-minded, mentally retarded, the backward child and the slow-learning child.

The introduction of the term MLD following the Warnock Report sat uneasily alongside the new framework for identifying children’s individual need for additional or different provision based on their learning difficulties. One of the main reasons for the Warnock recommendation to abandon categories like ESN(M) was that categories like this did not indicate specifically what provision was required for the individual child. Nor did they take account of a child’s other characteristics, perhaps significant assets, nor of the child’s context, which might be supportive or inhibiting of their learning. Another reason was that categories like this became negative labels that were associated with stigma and personal devaluation. So, the concept of special educational needs was built on the assumption that special provision would be based on an individual needs assessment and that decisions about provision would not be in terms of general categories of difficulty or disability. The key concept introduced by the Warnock Report was that of a continuum of needs, such that those with special educational needs (SEN) could not be distinguished clearly from those without SEN. There was no definitive basis for a general qualitative difference. This thinking still underpins the current system of identifying children with SEN and decision-making about suitable educational provision.

Despite this, the Warnock Report and subsequent Government guidance still made use of general concepts, but replaced terms like educationally sub-normal (ESN) with softer, less negative-sounding terms, such as moderate and severe learning difficulties. The term MLD, which is a derivative of the term learning difficulty, and is built into the current legislative framework, shares some of the benefits of this latter term. Learning difficulties does not mark out a group as different with as much negative connotation as does a term like educationally sub-normal. Learning difficulties can be seen as an inclusive term in that we all share difficulties in learning to some degree at some times; it is a term well suited to the continuum concept. However, since the Education Act 1981, which set up the current legislative framework for special educational needs, the term MLD has come to be used as a general category that referred to a kind of special school and as a general label to identify a child’s kind of difficulty. In this sense, the term MLD has perpetuated some of the uses of the previous term ESN(M) in its use to distinguish one group of children from others with SEN, for example severe learning difficulties or specific learning difficulties, as well as distinguishing the MLD group from those without SEN.

About twenty years ago Sally Tomlinson completed a study on the decision-making about children identified as ESN(M). In this she questioned the status of the concept ‘educational sub-normality’ on the basis that it was socially constructed by the judgements and decisions made by professionals about children, rather than ‘being an innate quality within the child’ (Tomlinson, 1982, page 2). From a sociological perspective she aimed to question the status of this category and asked how some children came to be ‘excluded from important institutions of “normal education”, and included instead in a category which for historical reasons carries a stigma of inferiority and difference’ (page 3).

Tomlinson rejected the view that this group of children presented educational characteristics that could be identified and assessed objectively with tools of diagnosis, like the IQ (intelligence quotient) test. This was partly on the grounds that the ESN category had a disproportionate number of children from manual working class backgrounds and that in the 1960s there had been a disproportionate number of children from an Afro-Caribbean background being sent to ESN(M) special schools. Her case was based partly on an analysis of the various and sometimes contrary definitions used by different professional groups involved with children identified as in the ESN(M) category. Though much of her case was based on contemporary issues and the framework of two decades ago, the underlying themes that she was dealing with continue to present challenges for education and social policy and practice more generally.

The reason for focusing this book on inclusive education provision for the group identified as having MLD is similar to those that moved Tomlinson to examine the ESN category twenty years ago, though the style and orientation of this book may be different and the context has changed considerably over this period. The MLD group is widely recognised to be the largest within the larger group of those with special educational needs (Fletcher-Campbell, 2004). Despite this it is an area which attracts less interest by educational researchers and social scientists than others, such as specific learning difficulties (dyslexia), emotional and behaviour difficulties and autism, for example. It is a poorly defined area of special educational needs and, as we will explore in this book, it is contentious whether it is rightly considered to be a special educational need in many respects. Tomlinson based her critique of ESN on the differences between professionals in how they defined that term. The problems of defining MLD nowadays reflect many of the issues that she confronted then. It is relevant that the Department for Education and Skills, in issuing the new classification of types of special educational needs in 2003, noted that they had difficulties in defining the term MLD.

At the root of these issues are questions about whether these children are more like those with sensory impairments, where there are identifiable organic impairments, or more like those children whose school attainments are below and well below average. As often remarked, these children come to be identified only once they have started their formal schooling, unlike those with sensory, motor and more severe intellectual difficulties. This might indicate that there is something about their difficulties in learning which is specific to the demands made by mainstream school curriculum and teaching. It has been noted over many decades that there has been confusion about what used to be called ‘high-grade defectives’. The great majority of those who came under this administrative term did not come to official notice, except in schools, where they were considered ‘educationally sub-normal’. It was held by some that there was no reason why those identified as ‘high-grade defectives’ should not be regarded as anything other than ordinary, if somewhat limited, citizens (Clarke and Clarke, 1974). As educationalists and special educationalists have noted for well over a century, the predominant feature of this group is that they come from lower socio-economic class families. This was the basis for Tomlinson’s critique of the ESN category which argued that the so-called ‘dullness’ was being attributed to children from manual working class backgrounds. She argued that this implicated the wider social functions of schools and the role of schools in industrial society. Special schools for the ESN were seen from this sociological perspective to have various functions. One was to assist the smooth functioning of mainstream schools by acting as settings to receive those who were troublesome and difficult to teach. The second function was to legitimise the segregation and labelling of those who did not fit the mainstream and prepare them for low socio-economic positions in society, which has been called the ‘transmission of ignorance’.

However, over the last two decades there has been a social movement to retain and provide support for children who are struggling in mainstream schools, and to transfer children from special schools into the mainstream. Though it is difficult to quantify, it is likely that many children who in the past would have been identified as being ESN(M), or more recently MLD, and transferred to MLD special schools, have been retained in mainstream schools with support for their learning difficulties. This process would have contributed to the reducing proportions of MLD pupils in special schools. It is also likely that some children in special schools for MLD would have come to have been included back into mainstream schools with various support arrangements. This phenomenon of school inclusion provides the other reason for examining in this book what the move towards greater inclusion means for MLD. This is the group that many might consider to be the easiest to include in mainstream schools that are adapted for a greater diversity of children.

In a recent study of the views of professionals in relation to inclusion, Evans and Lunt (2002) concluded that many of these professionals, including educational psychologists, teachers, social workers and health service professionals, saw obstacles to ‘full inclusion’ and considered that schools as currently organised frequently find it difficult to meet the wide range of needs. Though these authors discuss their findings in relation to conflicts between different Government educational policies, their study did indicate that these professionals had views about which areas of SEN were more or less difficult to include. Those with MLD were widely recognised as being ‘easy to include’ along with those with sensory and physical difficulties, speech and language difficulties and specific learning difficulties. This contrasted with those who were ‘difficult to include’, such as those with severe and profound learning difficulties and those with emotional and behaviour difficulties. These conclusions are clearly over-generalised given the wide variety of difficulties within these different categories. However, it is clear that the MLD group is seen here to be one which can be accommodated within the mainstream, yet there are many children identified as having MLD who are still not in mainstream schools. This raises the question of why this is still so. Relevant to this, it is interesting that some ten years ago Phillip Williams, in a review about the integration of students with MLD, claimed that:

The integration of children with MLD is the acid test of integration policies: they constitute the largest group in the special school population, their parents are not as strong a lobby as parents of other children with special needs, and they do not command the same degree of sympathy as do children with obvious sensory and physical handicaps.

(Williams, 1993, page 314)

If inclusion is to proceed as it has over the last two decades, then clearly the future of inclusion for this group is the ‘acid test’ for inclusion. Also, as Williams notes, this group does not have the same voice in lobbying Government as other areas of special needs. This means that there has also been less advocacy on behalf of this group, less policy and practice focus on the group and, as discussed above, less research interest and less written about it. Despite the relative size of the MLD group, children in this area of SEN do not have a clear identity, unlike those with severe learning difficulties. Nor are they like those described as low attainers, who are not identified as having SEN. One of the questions to be considered in this book is whether this situation will persist or can be resolved.

One interesting development has been recent work undertaken under the title of ‘special needs education’ in which the Organizatioon for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) undertook an international survey of the incidence and indicators used by different countries with respect to students with disabilities, difficulties and disadvantages (OECD, 2000). They adopted a system similar to the one introduced by the Warnock Report in the United Kingdom and built into aspects of the legislative system established by the Education Act 1981. Rather than focus on the nature of the child’s disabilities, they adopt the term ‘special educational needs’ to refer to those who require additional support. But in doing so they see the SEN concept as extending ‘beyond those who may be included in handicapped categories to cover those who are failing in school for a wide variety of reasons that are known to impede the child’s optimal progress’ (OECD, 2000, page 8).

This is an interesting concept of SEN in that it goes beyond the one that has come into use in this country. Though the SEN concept established in UK legislation is also defined in terms of additional provision, it does not explicitly include those who require additional provision for non-disability or impairment reasons, such as social disadvantage. In fact the current English legislation defines special educational needs in terms of learning difficulties, and defines these in terms that are confined to areas of disabilities and difficulties with connotations of impairment. The legislation also explicitly excludes English as a second language as a causal factor for learning difficulties. By contrast, the OECD recognises such linguistic factors in its category C. They are:

1 Category A: educational needs where there is substantial normative agreement, such as blind or deaf, severe and profound mental handicap and multiple handicap. These conditions affect students from all social classes and occupations … In medical terms they are considered as being organic disorders attributable to organic pathologies.

2 Category B refers to educational needs of students who have difficulties in learning which do not appear to be directly or primarily attributable to factors which would lead to categorisation A or C.

3 Category C refers to educational needs of students which are considered to arise primarily from socio-economic, cultural and/or linguistic factors.

There is some form of disadvantaged or atypical background for which education seeks to compensate.

(OECD, 2000, page 9)

The OECD survey shows that there is consistency with students across countries in allocations to categories A (impairments) and C (disadvantage). However, in some countries children similar to those identified as MLD in this country might be in the impairment category A, or category B (neither disadvantage nor clear impairment). In some countries children with learning difficulties associated with social disadvantage might be in category C. It is interesting that the OECD report fails to classify the UK system in its three-way classification on the grounds that the UK uses a non-categoric system. Perhaps this arises because those involved in this country in the project took the UK framework as having literally abandoned categories. In practice categories have been used, as we will discuss in later chapters. Where the MLD group would fall under this OECD system is open to contention, as we will set out in the following chapters.

This three-way classification of SEN can be linked to the difference between what have been called the social and medical models of special educational needs. Category A connects with the medical model, while category C reflects aspects of the social model. However, category B, which is defined as neither based on impairment nor social disadvantage, appears to leave open whether special educational needs, and MLD in particular, can be simply attributed to external or internal causal factors. This would not suit those who advocate the social model as one to replace the medical model. The so-called medical model has been criticised as inadequate because it medicalises or pathologises difficulties in education in terms of within-child conditions and disorders, and in so doing ignores social factors. In the social model, difficulties in learning, such as with children described as having MLD, are seen to reflect schools which have not accommodated the learning needs of these children. They are interpreted as calling for organisation change, not for labels which implicate the child’s deficiency in a way that comes to justify separate provision outside the mainstream education system.

This opposition of social and medical model is unfortunate for various reasons. It confuses the role of the medical profession with assumptions often held in medical, but also other, circles. The medical profession has traditionally had power and influence in special education, but less so recently, with the growth of the influence of other groups, such as psychologists. One version of the medical model criticises excessive professional power relative to the influence and voice of the parents and the children said to have special needs. The other interpretation of the medical model is the focus on individual within-child causal factors. In this interpretation the model is better represented as an individual model where the analysis is in terms of causal factors impacting on individuals experiencing difficulties in learning. It is quite rare to find professional and medical practitioners who would deny the significance of environmental and social factors in the development of difficulties such as MLD. In this book we assume that there is a false opposition between social and individual models. There is a place for individual and social perspectives, the preference for one or the other depending on whether the focus is on individuals or social organisations, what is called the level of analysis. If the focus is on identifying additional provision required for an individual child, then some analysis of the interaction of within-child and environmental factors is relevant. If the focus is on planning curriculum and teaching programmes for groups and classes of children at the level of the school, then how they accommodate and include the diversity of children is relevant.

Inclusive planning at a school or class level requires taking account of individual children’s additional educational needs. This implies that an individual model cannot exist outside the context of the social, as a social model cannot exist without reference to individuals. It is difficult to make sense of an individual’s additional or special educational needs without considering how institutions and society accommodate and respond to diversity. Similarly, when education institutions accommodate diversity it is necessary to consider what that diversity is in individual terms.

The kind of conceptual model or framework that we need for the education of children and others with learning difficulties and disabilities is what has been called a bio-psycho-social model (Engel, 1977; Norwich, 1990; Cooper, 1996; Kiesler, 2000). This is an inter-disciplinary, multi-level and interactive framework. It is one where factors and processes within and between these three broad levels of analyses would be considered. When processes within a particular level might be seen as dominant, other levels might still be seen to have some contributory interactive impact. It is a framework which enables us to avoid over-individualising problems in education, a tendency criticised by proponents of social models, while still recognising individual factors, if they can be shown to be relevant. Also, it is a framework which enables us to avoid over-socialising problems, as those who assert the reality of individual difficulties and disabilities would contend. The social model has become the more dominant and popular model and this can be understood as a necessary development and corrective to over-simplistic and over-individualised models (Lindsay, 2003). However, the way that the social model has been presented and advocated has been exaggerated and over-simplified. Much of the persuasive force of the social model has come from the commitment to the value of the social and academic participation of all children and young people in mainstream schools. The social model has provided the basis for an agenda to remove barriers in society and schools to the greater participation of all in mainstream schools. How the model has come to be represented and used owes much to its role in justifying the push towards greater inclusion and less to the complexities about ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Are there children with MLD? categories, history and current issues
• 3 MLD and inclusion: curriculum, teaching and inclusion issues
• 4 Children’s perspectives on their special provision
• 5 Perceptions of self and labels
• 6 Social interaction, acceptance and bullying of pupils with MLD
• 7 Survey of LEA policy and practice for moderate learning difficulties
• 8 The future for children with MLD: as a special educational need or not?
• References
• Index