Pupils with Learning Difficulties in Mainstream Schools

Christina Tilstone, Christopher Robertson, Jill Porter, Penny Lacey

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138157880
• eBook ISBN: 9781136622779
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2000. Written with the newly-qualified or student teacher in mind, the nature of this highly accessible book considers the nature of learning difficulties and the impact of legislation and policy on the teaching and learning of pupils with a wide range of special educational needs in the mainstream classroom. The authors offer practical solutions to the many challenges facing teachers of inclusive settings, and individual chapters provide the reader with guidance on: meeting special needs appropriately in inclusive educational settings; effective access to the curriculum; classroom organisation and management to support pupils; staff roles and responsibilities and staff development. The writers are also sensitive to the views and experiences of pupils and how these can enhance opportunities for good quality learning. Teachers and students will find this book an essential companion.

Part I Rationale and Framework for Teaching and Learning

This book is concerned with promoting positive practice in mainstream schools for pupils with a wide range of learning difficulties. Immediately we face a dilemma as the targeting of a particular group of learners in this way suggests that we are proposing that they should be considered different from other pupils, requiring specialist support and teaching techniques. Our approach to learning difficulties is not that they should be viewed as a collection of deficits which are intrinsic to an individual or group, but as additional learning needs that exist in particular contexts. Many learning difficulties can actually be created by an education system that has grown up over the years and failed to be responsive to diversity. We hope that the content of this book will enable teachers to recognise shared as well as exceptional needs and to develop their professional skills in a way that promotes effective learning for all pupils.

Part I provides a rationale and framework for teaching pupils with learning difficulties in mainstream schools. It illustrates how the acceptance of people with learning difficulties into society depends on the flexibility of teachers and other professionals in mainstream settings and their ability to respond to diversity and to reject labels and stereotypical images.

The content of Chapter 1 emphasises the need for high expectations and a positive attitude in providing teaching and learning experiences of pupils with learning difficulties. A key element of this lies with the importance of focusing on the strengths of pupils rather than their difficulties. In Chapter 2 the emphasis is broadened to a consideration of adaptations to the curriculum to meet needs through structured approaches. The importance of working collaboratively is highlighted and discussed in detail in Part II.

As the above indicates, the ethos of teaching pupils with learning difficulties is examined in Part I, but there are additional characteristics which are emphasised throughout. The importance of ensuring that pupils (who in the past may have been disenfranchised by the education system) feel valued and respected as learners is an important theme running throughout Part I. Pupils need to be involved in all decisions to meet their special educational needs, and if staff are willing and able to listen to their opinions it is more likely that an appropriate curriculum will be developed. Finally, the fundamental requirement for teachers to extend their knowledge and existing skills through a reflective and analytical stance underpins the ethos of teaching pupils with learning difficulties.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Setting the Scene

For people like me and a lot more you know, people were frightened of us. So in them days they said OK, there’s nowhere for you, you get shut away in big institutions. If people are different then other people get frightened. I still see it. People are frightened of people like me, and a lot more, because we are different.

(Atkinson, Jackson and Walmsley 1987: 11)

The quotation is from the autobiography of a person with learning difficulties who lived for most of her life in a long stay hospital. Her ‘schooling’ took place on the wards where she participated in some craft work. In her words:

In them days they said you wasn’t able enough to learn so you didn’t go to school you went to like a big ward and they had tables. You just went there and made baskets or what-have you. Because in them days they said you wasn’t capable enough to learn to do anything else, so that’s what you did. (ibid., pp. 23–4)

Mabel was born in 1945 and, under the Regulations which followed the 1944 Education Act, she was labelled as ‘educationally subnormal’. If she had been born a year or two earlier she would have been considered to be a ‘mental defective’ and categorised as an ‘idiot’ or an ‘imbecile’, which were the accepted terms for those whose ‘mental defectiveness’ was of such a degree that they were unable to guard themselves against common dangers. At the age of seven, she was sent to a residential institution were she received a ‘dependent’ model of care. She now lives in the community and is an active member of the self-advocacy movement. Not only is she taking her rightful place in the community, but she is making a contribution to society by speaking at conferences, running workshops and representing ‘People First’ (a powerful self-advocacy group for people with learning disabilities) on national and international bodies. Her experiences reflect the changes in policies and practices over the last fifty years for those who have difficulties in learning.

When Mabel was of school age she, and many others like her who were considered to be ‘mentally defective’, were excluded from the education system and their ‘schooling’, or lack of it, took place in a residential institution. She cannot remember her parents, but if her circumstances had been different, she could have lived with her family at home and attended a junior training centre. If the centre or, in Mabel’s case, the long-stay hospital had been progressive, she would have done more than merely taking part in craft activities, and consequently benefited from an individualised skills-training programme in the areas of self-help, socialisation, occupation and communication.

Whatever the quality of the experiences offered to them, children placed in residential institutions or attending junior training centres were the responsibility of the Health Service until 1971 when, under the Education (Handicapped Children) Act (1970), the onus for their ‘education’ was transferred to the education authorities. Stevens (1997) makes the point that for mentally defective children placed in long-stay hospitals ‘doctors ran institutions, nurses controlled patients, and patients were “passive” victims of the staff’ (p. 52). Despite some good practice, children were likely to be ‘cared for’ in both the long-stay hospitals or training centres in ways which minimised meaningful experiences and resulted in reduced expectations.

Labels and Categories: Help or Hindrance?

If Mabel had been born some twenty years later she would have had the same basic right as all children to ‘education’, although almost certainly it would have taken place in a separate special school. Mabel left the hospital in 1976 to live in a hostel; her first step into the community. Two years later the famous Warnock Committee (DES 1978) reported and alternatives to the segregated special school provision were recommended. Members of the Committee proposed that a greater number of children could be educated in mainstream schools and suggested the well-known three types of integrated provision:

• locational: where children attended separate special units but on the same site as mainstream school;
• social: where children went to separate classes but mixed with ordinary children at mealtimes, playtimes and assemblies;
• functional: where children attended the same classes as the non-handicapped and shared the same curriculum.

The Committee recognised that special schools played a vital role in encouraging integration, and the 1981 Education Act (DES 1981) which followed the report took the recommendations further and for the first time, it became the legal duty of every LEA to educate all children in ordinary schools, but only if compatible with:

• Parents’ wishes;
• the efficient education of other children;
• the efficient use of resources.

Only children with the most severe difficulties would, the Committee felt, need special schooling (calculated at about two per cent). Whether Mabel’s difficulties were in fact ‘severe’ cannot now be assessed; certainly, as is often the case, they are not embedded ‘within’ the child, but are shaped by the policies, curriculum organisation and practices of the institution; in her case, a residential hospital. The learning context can have considerable impact and, over the last ten years, it has been recognised that school-based factors can be a major cause of difficulties – a point which will be explored in more detail later in this book.

The notion that a pupil’s special educational needs are exacerbated by the educational experiences offered is vitally important, although it should not detract from a recognition that his or her difficulties can also stem from organic difficulties (birth damage, resulting in brain damage, for example, or a genetic disorder). In many cases it is not difficult to identify the relevant aetiological factors, but the information is only useful to the teacher if it helps to identify the educational needs of the child. Down’s Syndrome, for example, one of the most common genetic cause of impaired intellectual functioning, but the physical signs and disabilities are many and varied and there is no clear relationship between them and mental abilities. Those possessing many of the medical characteristics (large tongue, short neck, slanting eyes, for example) are just as likely as those with few such characteristics to have higher levels of ability. The same could be said of Fragile X syndrome which, although the most common inherited cause of learning disability, does not invariably lead to a learning difficulty nor does it have a fixed set of physical features.

Anya Souza (1997), who attended mainstream schools, lives in the community and is in paid employment, writes of the negative effects of being labelled:

my mother was told by the doctors that I had Down’s Syndrome and would be mentally and physically handicapped for the rest of my life. It was a very negative way to describe me and what to expect from me . . . the doctor has separated me out, put a label on me . . . made everything to do with me a negative image (p. 4).

Many people with Down’s Syndrome live ‘ordinary’ lives in the community with or without a partner. They hold down jobs, drive cars and take part in a range of leisure activities. Others may have a delay in some or all of the main areas of general development and have marked sensory and physical impairments. They, and other children, particularly those with neurological damage, may be considered to have severe learning difficulties which can be identified by marked limitations in learning across all aspects of development, particularly in the area of communication, and it is this information that is important to the teacher and other members of the school staff.

The numbers of children with learning difficulties being educated full-and part-time in mainstream provision has markedly increased over the years, although the numbers vary from one LEA to another and teachers in mainstream schools are likely to encounter more and more children with a wide range of learning difficulties. As pupils with Down’s Syndrome are an easily identifiable group; their placement in mainstream schools often indicates an LEAs commitment to the principle of inclusion (see Lorenz 1998a for a useful guide to the inclusion of pupils with Down’s Syndrome in mainstream schools). Small-scale studies on these pupils show an increased trend towards mainstream attendance although there is a gradual decline in the numbers of pupils with Down’s Syndrome in secondary schools (Lorenz 1995; O’Hanlon and Turner 1998).

Not only has the number of children with learning difficulties increased in mainstream schools, but the ways in which they are included has also developed beyond the three types of integration first described by the Warnock Committee. In addition to full-time placement in a mainstream school and attendance within a unit for children with either specified or general special needs, the range of opportunities for education to take place in mainstream settings has expanded significantly. The arrangements now include integrated nursery provision; the placement of classes of children from a special school within a mainstream school; extended and flexible links between mainstream and special schools; and many variations of these structures.

Adrian benefits from one such arrangement. In his case, the special school, where he is registered, is part of a mainstream secondary school. In real terms this means that there are two classes of pupils with learning difficulties within the mainstream school who are managed and run by the special school staff. The special school has maintained its identity within the mainstream school and pupils attend lessons in both schools. Adrian has Down’s Syndrome and it is encouraging (in view of the small-scale studies mentioned above) that his secondary education is taking place in a mainstream setting. His learning difficulties have been described as moderate to severe.

Adrian

Adrian is thirteen years old and is good at languages. He attends a number of lessons in the mainstream school, particularly in German and French. In addition, he goes to mainstream assemblies and ‘tutor group’ sessions. He is good at reading, although his understanding is greater than his decoding ability. He is a sociable young man with friends in his own special school class and in the mainstream tutor group. He would like to join his mainstream peers in games of football at lunch-time, but when he found he could not keep up with the pace of the game he organised his own matches with friends from his special school class, which take place alongside the faster games played by his mainstream friends.

His language lessons are differentiated and he is offered extra support. In his German lesson, for example, Adrian sits next to his learning support assistant and, with her encouragement, joins in the ‘quick-fire’ vocabulary session at the beginning of each lesson. He answers questions in German, repeats words and phrases, puts up his hand in order to respond to the general questions asked of the group and is an accepted part of the class. The teacher differentiates in her expectations by accepting one-word answers from Adrian and phrases from the rest of the class. The learning support assistant occasionally helps him with a word or repeats the question directly to him in order that he hears it correctly.

Adrian’s teachers and parents are pleased with his progress and feel that he has gained from peer-group involvement in several ways. His self-esteem has risen, for example, and his social skills have improved. He can now cope with greater pressure, and it is very likely that the time he spends in mainstream classes could increase.

What can be learned from this brief description? First, major reasons for Adrian’s progress are the flexible arrangements which have been created to allow him to ‘dip into’ appropriate lesso...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Part I Rationale and Framework for Teaching and Learning
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 The Responsive Curriculum
• Part II Classroom Practice
• Chapter 3 Identifying Learning Needs
• Chapter 4 Learning Styles and Learning how to Learn
• Chapter 5 Teaching Approaches
• Chapter 6 Organisation for Learning
• Chapter 7 Communications
• References
• Appendix - Useful addresses
• Index