Engaging Boys with SEN in Literacy - Essay Example

?Running Head: room Focused Development room Focused Development [Institute’s The impact report includes discussion and evaluation of a project that was carried out to assess development of male students, especially having special educational needs in primary school. The report includes rationale of the project that indicates immediate need of research on different aspects of special educational needs that has been supported by an extensive literature review to create knowledge base for critical analysis of findings of the project. Researcher used Reading Recovery and Big Write mentoring strategies during the project and was able to acquire positive outcomes from these strategies that enabled an understanding of different methodologies that can be implemented to deal with SEN students in mainstream classrooms effectively. Lastly, researcher implemented the whole project based on the National Strategies’ Waves model and has recommended future researches to have focus on the role of parents and contribution that they can make in progress of their children’ learning. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 CONTEXTUAL STATEMENT 4 KNOWLEDGE BASE 5 COACHING AND MENTORING 9 PROFESSIONAL LEARNING & CHANGE ACTIVITY 11 ANALYSIS 13 LEARNING AND PRACTICE 17 REFERENCES 19 CONTEXTUAL STATEMENT Since the last few decades, there has been a significant increment in the concern of educators and social scientists regarding educational processes of children with SEN or special education needs. Particularly, it has now become a debatable notion where educators and policy makers argue over the efficacy and applicability of ‘inclusion’ and ‘mainstreaming’ factors for children with special needs. It has been an observation that schools and teachers that offer inclusive packages for SEN students seem to be claiming their superiority over the schools that are educating SEN students with mainstream children. However, as the time go by and as research is being carried out, huge number of educators and teachers are now realizing the importance of mainstream education and the positive effects that mainstream education system leaves on students with special needs. The project under consideration was an attempt in the same context that allowed me to explore my own teaching methodology, and more importantly, engage with male students having special educational needs to ensure their literacy in the classrooms that has been an imperative issue since many years. For this purpose, the project has been a milestone for my teaching career, as it enabled me to look on other side of boat that is inclusive teacher-student experience while remaining a mainstream teacher. One of the major reasons of getting into this project was the understanding about different factors that exist in our education system, which do not allow a student to groom properly and sometimes, the child ends up being one with special educational needs. In this regard, I carried out this project as my responsibility to explore the issues that surround the problem of lack of literacy in students and that subsequently results in creation of SEN students. KNOWLEDGE BASE As mentioned earlier, topics surrounding children with special educational needs have received noteworthy amount of attention during the last few decades, especially in the European region where educators and policy makers have put enormous efforts in understanding the inclusion of students and the way with which mainstream schooling affects development and growth of students. Brief review of the literature has indicated that with the development of new educational policies, it has now become responsibility of local schools to ensure education of children with any disabilities or differences in the social, cultural, or emotional context. In the past, educators used to indicate the importance of an inclusive group of students with special needs, however, recent studies have indicated no need for any separate defined setting or grouping for such students. Although educational boards and bodies are putting efforts to ensure awareness of such concept in teachers nationally and globally, however, it is an understanding that it will take some more time for this notion to be accepted practically, whereas, it only enjoys its importance in theoretical frameworks. Since engaging SEN boys or students in literacy is the focus of this project, it is evident to understand different factors that play their role around it that will enhance understanding of the processes that need immediate attention. Experts have indicated that despite the government and educational bodies are endeavoring to ensure participation of SEN students in mainstream schools, there has not been any significant reduction in the number of students from inclusive sections that is an alarming indication of something that is not right. It is an observation that educational bodies have put efforts to train teachers of mainstream schools; however, the focus has been on teaching methodologies and strategies, whereas, not on the attitudes and individual approaches of teachers that is conflicting with the learnt pedagogies. Analysis of studies has indicated that more than teaching strategies, it is now about the personal learning experience of students with SEN, as it is important for a teacher or mentor to understand needs and potential of a student having some issues with his understanding as compared to his classmates. In other words, recent researches have concluded that every child needs a personal learning experience, and it is the responsibility of teachers to ensure such experience by suiting educational strategies accordingly. Unfortunately, knowledge and experience indicates that majority of teachers continue to endeavor primarily on content and teaching strategy; however, lesser on their attitudes toward students that makes a lot of difference, and often negatively. In this regard, it is an understanding that this project will help teachers in identifying barriers that obstruct the growth and development of students having special educational needs. Before looking at those barriers, it is important to go through a few definitions of special educational needs that will make it easy for this review to be beneficial. Review of different sources has pointed out that ‘special educational needs’ is not a new term in the United Kingdom and it is under focus since at least three decades. Particularly, students with special educational needs are “children who have developmental difficulties that affect: their learning; their behavioural, emotional and social development; their communication, and their ability to care for themselves and gain independence” (Lindsay, 2007, pp. 3). Later on, in the year 2008, Pijl and his team referred such students having “various (combinations of) impairments and/or difficulties in participating in education” (Pijl et al, pp. 389). On the other hand, children having abovementioned needs were in the count of twenty-six percent in the United Kingdom in the year 2003 (Croll and Moses, pp. 1-11), and this percent have increased to thirty-one percent in the year 2008 (Pijl et al, pp. 390-393) that indicates the inefficacy of education system that is causing contradictory outcomes in the region. According to the House of Commons (2006, pp. 10-12), in England only, this percent is eighteen for children with special educational needs. Inclusion of statistics in the review will help in realizing the problems that need immediate resolution. Since the review has offered a brief understanding of the definition of SEN, it is important to explore some factors that cause problems in engaging students with literacy. In the year 2002, Avramidis and Norwich (pp. 129–47) emphasized that designation of a child as having SEN is not enough and it is important for teachers and mentors to understand nature of the problem that plays the main role in allowing a child to engage with literacy in presence of his special educational needs. For instance, children with learning difficulties will require a different approach as compared to the students who is having behavioral problems (Derriks et al, 1997, pp. 20-25). Unfortunately, teachers in mainstream schools look after several students at a time, and they generally do not get adequate amount of time to focus on every student personally, which increases the possibility of a student becoming a SEN student. In the past, educators and experts used to blame children because of their inefficiency and lack of abilities. However, recent studies seem to consider teachers the bigger cause of increment in the number of SEN students in schools, as they are unable to notice and recognize problems or difficulties that later on turn into disabilities (Coutinho et al, 2002, pp. 49-59). As the project under analysis focused primarily on boys, thus, this literature review included efforts to identify role of gender in hampering the process of educational development of students. Incidentally, experts specify that gender factor plays an imperative role in affecting learning process of students with differences or difficulties in mainstream or even inclusive schools (Delgado and Scott, 2006, pp. 28-35). In the United States, reports indicate almost twice referrals for boys in comparison to female students in mainstream schooling. In the year 2003, Evans carried out the study on the same issue, and he identified that in the European region also, boys seem to supersede girls in having special educational needs (Wilson, 2002, pp. 61-6). Besides gender, parents’ traits also affect the learning process of students, and a teacher should put efforts to identify its association with their students in class. It is an observation that teachers usually fail to notice the connection that increases the likelihood of a child disengaging from literacy. For instance, reports (Ferguson, 2008, pp. 109-20) have specified that children of uneducated mothers are more vulnerable to disabilities and difficulties in comparison to children of educated mothers; unfortunately, teachers in mainstream schooling usually do not give importance to such factor that result in disengaged students. In the year 2002, Croll identified that reports of Education Ministry of the United Kingdom has indicated that a survey of SEN students indicated higher number of uneducated parents or parents with lower education level. Thus, it is imperative for teachers or mentors to have a look on such aspect of the issue as avoidance will result in inefficacy and subsequently, more students disengaging from literacy (Wilson, 2002, pp. 61-6). Lastly, review of literature will include in personal opinion, the most important factor that does not allow teachers to engage students with literacy: attitudes of mentors/teachers toward students having special educational needs. Researchers have pointed out that despite application of different teaching methodologies; teachers have failed to alter their attitudes toward such students, especially in mainstream classroom that subsequently enforce SEN students to become a part of inclusive education system (Ferguson, 2008, pp. 109-20). According to Meijer (2003), “the attitudes of teaching teams play an important role when it comes to the question of how much effort primary schools should make to hold on to their children with special needs.” Meijer and his team further identified that “an educational philosophy that is shared by the team does not offer sufficient guarantee of quality of care for the students, but that the outlook and views of the individual teacher are a decisive factor. The attitude of teachers toward students with problems and disabilities, their position on differences between students and their willingness to deal with these issues effectively, turn out to be of great significance for the extent to which inclusive education can be realised (2003, pp. 29-56). COACHING AND MENTORING From literature review and personal experience, it is an understanding that students’ difficulties play a lesser role in their disengagement from literacy in comparison to other factors that seems to be affecting the learning process considerably. Besides factors that came under discussion in the literature review (Evans, 2003), another aspect is very important that helps in judging whether a child will remain engaged with literacy or not, and that is coaching and mentoring. Due to such significance of coaching and mentoring, I put enormous efforts in making the most appropriate selection. Since I belong to the mainstream schooling, my first priority was to ensure prevention of any new student getting SEN while endeavoring to guarantee their engagement with literacy. For this reason, Reading Recovery was first selection due to its characteristic of a preventative measure. One of the major reasons of selecting Reading Recovery in the project was efficacy of this mode of mentoring to facilitate teachers in helping students defeating their difficulties and not turning them into disabilities or SEN. From several observations of Inclusive Suite in the school, I came to understand the blunder that mainstream teachers make that caused embarrassment for a while. However, this project was an attempt to play a noteworthy role in bringing a change and influencing students with little difficulties to overcome their problems while remaining in mainstream classrooms rather than becoming a part of Inclusive Suite. In this regard, Reading Recovery was one of the mentoring methods that teachers of inclusive classrooms were using and that influenced me in using it as an SEN intervention with my students. Particularly, Reading Recovery is “an Early Intervening Service (EIS) designed to provide students with targeted assistance before being identified as learning disabled. Reading Recovery is a scientifically, research-based EIS. By intervening early, Reading Recovery can halt the debilitating cycle of failure for low-achieving children. Reading Recovery enables learners to make accelerated progress, catch up with grade-level peers, and profit from regular classroom reading instruction. Highly qualified literacy teachers are a critical factor in student achievement. To ensure the skillful teaching necessary to prevent literacy failure, the Reading Recovery training model provides a powerful framework for teacher learning. The intensive level of initial training and continuous support empowers teachers to make changes in their own instructional practices and to impact the teaching of reading and writing in their schools systemically” (South Carolina Department of Education, 2012). Besides Reading Recovery, The Big Write was second mentoring strategy selected for the project. One of the major reasons of selecting two coaching approaches is due to suggestions by different sources that discouraged reliance on a single mentoring strategy, and thus, the Big Write is another strategy that facilitated me along with Reading Recovery in the observation and evaluation process. Particularly, “the Big Write has been something that I have come across in some of the schools I have taught in. It is called the big write as the whole school participates in this at the same time. It is essentially an hour of writing about a topic, and normally a story with certain criteria that must be included, for example a witch and a house. There is around 15 minutes of discussion, where they are not allowed to record any of their ideas and then the children have 45 minutes to write story. There is no help given during this time” (Protocol Education, 2012). PROFESSIONAL LEARNING & CHANGE ACTIVITY The project under evaluation played a considerable in contributing to my professional learning and it facilitated me in bringing some alteration in perspectives and attitudes of teachers and mentors in the school. As review of the literature identified several factors that hinder the process of students’ learning, in this regard, to avoid any inefficacies, I considered it imperative to plan and implement everything systematically. Thus, the process of implementing this project was in line with the National Strategies’ Waves model that is a perfect guideline to ensure effective mentoring that was my focus to engage boys with literacy, as well as to motivate them to get involved in learning methods themselves. One of the chief reasons of relying on the National Strategies’ Waves model was of its provision that facilitates in the creation of an arena of personalisation that usually lacks in other model/s. For abovementioned reason, this model allowed implementation of a strategic approach to include both students with little difficulties, as well as usual learners. Based on the model, implementation of the whole project is divided into three phases. During the first phase, it was made ensure that coaching and mentoring process stays in line with existing school policies. In other words, first phase focused on all the learners and their different and separate needs. The phase allowed me to understand the application of school policies on micro level and facilitated in identifying differences that it caters simultaneously. In order to ensure systematic implementation, this phase included planning and scheming of work along with settling on the mentoring strategy: Reading Recovery. Benefiting from model’s guidelines, I made use of students’ prior learning to acquire an understanding of their level of knowledge and their planned accordingly to get them to a stage where it would allow subsequent evaluation of their knowledge and understanding. In addition, since knowledge base helped in understanding the importance of different learning needs of every student, I put efforts to alter planning to cater their needs and expectations accordingly. Besides prior learning of students, I based my understanding of different students on their previous performances and work in different capacities. It helped me in avoiding any subjectivity in the assumptions, whereas, further assumptions were made by providing them with early readings. In the second phase, strategies of the first phase continued; however, there were few alterations. For instance, the implementation of strategies were now time-limited, and students went to a higher level as they had to complete tasks in a time-specific manner. This phase facilitated me in identifying individuals with similar needs that then inclined me to create different learning groups based on their learning needs and patterns (Wilson, 2002, pp. 61-6). This subsequently resulted in increment of the progress rate, as now the mentor was able to focus on all of them simultaneously while catering their personal needs collectively in groups. During this phase, I along with mentors continued to provide support to students in completing their reading activities that helped students, as well as allowed us to evaluate their rate of progress that was imperative for the implementation of third and last phase of the project. In addition, it was made sure that children continue to receive intervention support when needed to ensure their motivation that was essential to sustain their learning process. Results and observations from phases one and two provided an understanding of attitudes that were causing increment in the rate of progress and strategies that were not fruitful. Particularly, outcomes of both phases enabled formation of individualised plan for students needing intervention frequently and children that showed behavioral problems and learning difficulties during the first two phases. With implementation of individualised plans and strategies, expectations in this phase increased to ensure maximized progress of the students and to diminish any gaps in their performances. During this phase, students with difficulties were observed closely, whereas, other students were let loose to explore their own learning. I took help of specialist teachers and mentors from the Inclusive Suite to help me in observations and evaluations of students in focus, as the targets were now very specific based on individuals needs and potentials. ANALYSIS Findings of the project indicated that only two out of every ten students showed ‘very low’ levels of progress in learning that were then became part of third phase of the project. It has been an observation that besides those children, rest of the students received positive statements and feedback from the observers. The last phase of the project included a questionnaire that allowed us to identify the level of progress that every student reached based on different measures of knowledge, understanding, attitude, etc. In this regard, few students indicated increment in their knowledge regarding the content, whereas, questionnaires of few students pointed out improvement in their understanding regarding the topic. In few other cases, students reported enhancement in their confidence level and that Reading Recovery played a significant role in building their confidence level along with improvement in their reading skills that were the focus. Findings indicate that fifty percent of the students stated that the strategy of Reading Recovery mentoring was fruitful for their personal learning in comparison to usual methods of text reading. Thus, the strategy was of a greater value to them and seventy-five percent of the students showed their interest in getting into learning process with the same strategy that supported personal assumption as indicated in the previous proposal. “When carrying out my research, reading different literature, observing lessons and discussing my work with other professionals I found that boys were engaged with literacy and motivated to read and write when they had a reason to do so and when they had access to up-to-date, interesting resources and programmes.” On the other hand, in case of Big Write, a few children indicated improvement in their writing speed, as well as the quality of writing, whereas, a few reported problems in writing publicly that affected their confidence level to some extent. For some, Big Write was a fun activity as writing in such public gathering helped them in enhancing their confidence level. These differences helped us in identifying similar needs and difficulties to begin next phase of the project. Particularly, findings indicate that forty percent of the students stated that the strategy of Big Write mentoring was beneficial for their personal learning as compared to other methods of writing that used to occur in their classrooms earlier. In this regard, the strategy of Big Write was of a greater value to them but not as much as Reading Recovery, and thus, twenty-five percent of the students showed their interest in getting into learning process with the same methodology. It is an understanding that lesser response for the Big Write was due to few reasons; one being the extended duration that would have been the major cause of boredom. Secondly, contrary to Reading Recovery where students received intervention support from mentors, Big Write was all about individual potentials and writing skills, and thus, it is understandable that it would have been difficult or uninteresting for many of the students. However, the Big Write strategy was efficient in recognizing the level of preparedness, as well as students’ capabilities that are usually required in the examination hall. On holistic level, students used terms, such as ‘fairly’, ‘clear’, ‘easy’, ‘interesting’ or ‘not clear’, ‘difficult’, ‘boring’ to indicate their responses for the tasks. During the Reading Recovery methodology, twenty percent of students indicated having problems in getting access to support materials during the tasks. Fortunately, more than fifty percent of students accepted fair improvement in their learning progress with their participation in both tasks. Besides, thirty-two percent of participants of this project specified that the two tasks helped them in identifying their needs or mistakes that they usually make while doing normal tasks and that outcome of this project will help them in focusing more on that side in the future. Besides acquisition of responses from student participants, the project required observers and mentors to fill out the questionnaire as well. From their feedback, evaluators found both tasks contributing significantly to the learning of students, and especially to the progress of students that were found to be having special educational needs. Accumulation of responses from teachers and mentors indicated positive outcomes of the project. According to them, eighty-four percent of students during this project were able to acquire an awareness of their own learning process that is very imperative according to educators and experts. It has been an observation that in most of the cases, the major problem is non-identification and often non-realization of the problem. In this regard, from findings of this project, it is an understanding that personalised learning plays an imperative role in catering needs and expectations of the learners. Besides awareness of own learning process and identification of self needs and potential, mentors and evaluators observed that eighty-three percent of teachers were able to understand the approaches with which one can identify special educational needs in the children. As discussed in the literature review, it is often lacking from the side of teachers and mentors who fail to identify potential of the students and ignore them due to their frequent mistakes. From this finding, I believe that efficient coaching and mentoring techniques do not result in fruitful outcomes for students only but they play a significant role in influencing and improving the role of teachers and mentors as well. Furthermore, teachers noted that forty-six percent of teachers were successful in bringing significant alteration in their attitudes toward students with special educational needs. Whereas, seventy-six percent of teachers were able to bring little change in their attitudes toward children having special educational needs that is an indication of the positive effects of effective coaching and mentoring. More findings specified that sixty percent of the students were able to identify the moment when they should ask for support and things in which they should not expect any intervention support from their mentors. From the literature review, it was evident that behavioral problems are also a cause of disengagement of students from literacy, as teachers in mainstream classrooms usually consider behavioral problems as misbehavior and disobedience, whereas, observations from the project indicates that behavioral problems can be an indication of misunderstanding about self-learning process. In other words, behavioral problems should be a measure for teachers to understand the level and progress of learning in students. Additionally, it will not be incorrect to state that a mentor should deal with behavioral problems of a child positively on the very first attempt, as it can be a tool for the child to express his needs that would have been ignored by mentors and parents continuously. While comparing findings of Reading Recovery and the Big Write, it is evident from the findings that the Reading Recovery resulted in greater progress and enhanced learning of the students. Although both tasks increased the level of interest in students and they will be beneficial to engage them with literacy, however, from findings, it is a supposition that Big Write mentoring will be effective in students with extended level of concentration and tolerance to extensive durations. This can be done by identifying students with similar traits; however, it is suggested that mentors should carry out the Big Write strategy once in a quarter to enable students to prepare themselves for the examination hall. LEARNING AND PRACTICE In brief, the project was a success and it enabled me and mentors in understanding different aspects of special educational needs and the role that mentors and teachers can play in engaging children with the literacy. Although I did not expect such positive results, however, Reading Recovery and Big Write mentoring strategies resulted in extraordinary outcomes and allowed a comprehensive observation and evaluation that will be very helpful in enhancing learning process of students with special educational needs in the most efficient manner. Although Reading Recovery showed significant outcomes in comparison to Big Write, however, while following up students after few months, there were no significant differences between the two, and both groups showed similar improvements and almost same progress rates that indicates the efficacy of both mentoring strategies. In addition, it is an understanding that alteration in attitudes of teachers toward students with special educational needs played the bigger role in diminishing difficulties of those students. Still, I believe that there is more room of improvement and future researches should focus on the role of parents, as they are the third most important pillar of triangle of student-teacher-parent. Lastly, strategies discussed in this report should not be limited for only students having special educational needs but teachers and mentors should put efforts to involve average and talented learners as well in such mentoring and coaching process that will result in effective results. Until now, the dissemination process is in its middle stages and the findings have been discussed with teachers, mentors, and parent bodies of the school. It is in the planning to the disseminate the findings to the parents that will then be playing an influential role in engaging their children with literacy. REFERENCES Avramidis, E., and Norwich, B. 2002. "Teachers’ attitudes towards integration/inclusion: A review of the literature." European Journal of Special Needs Education. Vol. 17, pp. 129–47. Coutinho, M. J., Oswald, D. P., and Best, A. M. 2002. "The influence of socio-demographics and gender on the disproportionate identification of minority students as having learning disabilities." Remedial and Special Education. Vol. 23, pp. 49–59. Croll, P. 2002. "Social deprivation, school-level attainment, and special educational needs." Educational-Research. Vol. 44, pp. 43–53. Croll, P., and Moses, D. 2003. "Special educational needs across two decades: Survey evidence from English primary schools." British Educational Research Journal. Vol. 29, pp. 731–47. Delgado, C. E. F., and Scott, K. G. 2006. "Comparison of referral rates for preschool children at risk for disabilities using information obtained from birth certificate records." The Journal of Special Education. Vol. 40, pp. 28–35. Derriks, M., Jungbluth, P. E., and Van Langen, A. 1997. Children with special educational needs in mainstream primary schools. Nijmegen/Amsterdam: ITS/SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut. Evans, P. 2003. "Aspects of the integration of handicapped and disadvantaged students into education." Evidence from Quantitative and Qualitative Data. Paris: OECD/CERI. Ferguson, D. L. 2008. "International trends in inclusive education: The continuing challenge to teach each one and everyone." European Journal of Special Needs Education. Vol. 23, pp. 109–20. House of Commons. 2006. "Special educational needs." Third Report of Session 2005-06. Vol. 1, HC 478-I. London: House of Commons, Education, and Skills Committee. Lindsay, G. 2007. "Educational psychology and the effectiveness of inclusive education/ mainstreaming." British Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol. 77, pp. 1–24. Meijer, C., Soriano, V., and Watkins, A. 2003. Special Needs Education in Europe. Denmark: Thematic Publication. Pijl, S. J., Frostad, P., and Flem, A. 2008. "The social position of pupils with special needs in regular schools." Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. Vol. 52, pp. 387–405. Protocol Education. 2012. The Big Write. Retrieved on February 15, 2012: http://www.protocol-education.com/blog.php?blog=the-big-write-teacher-discussion South Carolina Department of Education. 2012. Reading Recovery. Retrieved on February 15, 2012: http://ed.sc.gov/agency/se/Teacher-Effectiveness/Literacy/readingrecovery.cfm Wilson, J. 2002. "Defining special needs." European Journal of Special Needs Education. Vol. 17, pp. 61–6. Read More