Professional development & critical reflection - Essay Example

? OF CUMBRIA – ASSESSMENT SHEET: to complete the sections from to signature, and the relevant parts of the receipt. Name of Degree/Diploma/Certificate/Course: PGCE Primary (Jan 11 Cohort) Campus/ Site Lancaster Year/Level of Study: 1 Group: 1 Module Code/Title: Meeting CYP Needs Module Tutor: Assessment Title: How has your professional practice been informed by the learning within this module Resources Included - Y/N - CD/Floppy Disk/Other: Word Count: No of Pages: 14 Date Assessment Due: 14/04/11 Extension Agreed Until: Declaration of Intellectual Integrity: I submit this work as my own, and have read the Academic Regulations relating to assessment of work and declare that this work complies with those regulations. I agree to allow my work to be compared against the work of others to detect plagiarism and collusion. Where software is used for this, I am aware this means it will be held on a (secure) external database for the sole purpose of detecting plagiarism. If requested by my module tutor, I attach an originality report for this assignment, generated by the Turnitin UK service. Signed: Date Submitted: 14.04.11 Marker’s Comments: In this assignment, you have not met all the Intended Learning Outcomes of the module. This is largely based on the style of writing and the relationship of this with the title of the assignment. You have demonstrated that you have good knowledge & understanding of issues reflecting learning theories and ideas and strategies for the child’s learning and initial assessment. Following on with some useful examples for intervention this part of the essay is the strength at this point. You also show good recognition in parts of the complexity of the subject in acknowledging the home background factors but the assumptions you make are unfounded and it is important that you address this. Your reflections on the course and what it has given you are not explicit in line with the title and to some extend the knowledge you give is in the most part descriptive rather than based on argument and logical reasoning. This is generally because of the confusing approach to the writing. Before re –submitting your work I would recommend that you….. 1. Give attention to all the ILOs of the module, particularly….. •       Demonstrate a critically reflective understanding of a range of social and individual factors which can affect children’s and young people’s well-being and development inside and outside of the school/setting; •       Show understanding of how to identify these factors in relation to particular children/pupils; 2. Ensure that you demonstrate detailed knowledge & understanding of key concepts and theories, through clarity or writing and that you are aware of and demonstrate the provisional nature of knowledge 3. You need to show evidence of a general critical approach building on your use of appropriate literature, by your individual judgement and reflection. Look at the title and the criteria more carefully Agreed Provisional Mark – may be subject to change until confirmed by the appropriate assessment board First Marker’s Name Second Marker’s/Moderator’s name, where appropriate A copy of this sheet must be retained with the coursework item. Professional Development & Critical Reflection Introduction This paper, by reference to a case study of Child A and the relevant literature provides a critical reflection of the social and individual factors that can influence a child or a young person’s welfare and development both at school and outside of school. Likewise, this paper will demonstrate an understanding of how these factors are identified by reference to specific child or student. In doing so, this paper will illustrate knowledge and understanding of the primary concepts and theories. Child A Background Information Previous school assessments and my own assessment reveal that Child A is a 7 year old male student who is repeating the first year because of learning difficulties. Two years of review reveals that Child A’s primary language is English. He has language-based difficulties, numbers-based difficulties and poor motor skills. Child A’s language-based difficulties are manifested by the fact that he has a tendency to write letters of the alphabet and numbers in reverse. He also frequently confuses capital letters with lower case letters. Observations/assessments also reveal that Child A is introverted and does not socialize with other children. In fact, Child A has been described as a loner. In addition, Child A has difficulties with cognitive functioning in that his attention span is quite short and he has difficulty going from one task to another. He requires simple and differentiated instruction and adult supervision in order to get him to focus and complete tasks. Visual aids are also required to engage Child A in classroom learning and instruction. Observations By age 6 children are generally expected to be able to recognize and record the letters of the alphabet as well as the basic numbers. However, it is not unusual for there be some instances of letter and/or number reversal (Cratty 1979, p. 138). Child A has no difficulty recognizing and recording letters. The problem is the frequency with which he reverses letters of the alphabet when recording them. An associated problem, is Child A’s consistent failure to discriminate between lowercase letters and capitals. Despite the letter and number reversal tendency and the tendency to confuse capitals and lowercase letters, Child A has not been tested for dyslexia. Aaron (1989) reports that in first grade students, it is quite often the case that boys will have these tendencies to a greater degree than girls do (p. 177). Moreover, letter and number reversals and the tendency to confuse lower and uppercase letters are not reliable indicators of dyslexia (Aaron 1989, p. 177). If Child A’s writing difficulties were such that they were characterised as a form of dysgraphia associated with dyslexia, a test could have been administered. The main problem appears to be clumsiness as Child A does not exhibit sequential/rational information processing, underlying dysgraphia. Or to put it another way, Child A is able to recognize letters and numbers, he simply has difficulties recording them. As David (2009) cautions: Clumsy children may also be called dysgraphic, but in them the defect is not material-specific, because oral spelling is normal, and they show evidence of clumsiness when they draw or perform any fine motor activity. Written productions are sparse from both dysgraphic and clumsy children (177). Taking into account Child A’s fine motor skills deficit and his propensity to reverse letters and numbers although he is able to recognize and record, them, I felt that Child A was better characterized as clumsy. The term clumsy child syndrome was first used in the 1930s to refer to “awkward motor behaviors” that is not related to brain disorder (Sadock et al 2007, p. 1170). The term clumsy is in current use for the identification of a variety of gross and fine motor problems that are often associated with social and academic problems. The prevailing view is that children characterized as clumsy have a greater risk of learning and language difficulties (Sadock et al 2007, p. 1170). Therefore the term clumsy provided a baseline for assessing how best to help Child A overcome his difficulties with language-based learning took account of his socializing problems. I thought it was best to avoid the problems associated with labelling and stigmatisation but at the same address the root cause of Child A’s language and learning difficulties. This meant not drawing too much attention to Child’s motor deficiencies by excessive differentiation. Certainly, it was also inappropriate to avoid Child A’s motor deficiencies. At this point the main task for me was to acknowledge that differentiated instruction rendered Child A segregated from the remainder of his classroom. Taking account of his socializing problem, my approach to intervention was to find corrective measures to integrate or to ensure Child A’s inclusion with respect to the classroom setting. Guided by Farrell and Ainscow (2002) I thought that the best approach was to continue working with Child A by virtue of intervention. In this regard, intervention was conducted by me and was designed to work with Child A with a view to improving his motor skills so that he could remain in the classroom. The alternative would have been to withdraw him from the classroom and place him in a group of children with special learning needs or to continue to provide him with differentiated instructions in the classroom (Kurtz 2003, p. 53). In other words, intervention mean working with Child A’s motor skills and differentiated instruction with a view to ensuring that he remained a part of the mainstream classroom with the eventual goal of ensuring that he would not have to be segregated at all in the long term. The key for Child A’s success is to minimize segregation as far as possible (Farrell and Ainscow 2002, p. 6). Segregation under the traditional mode of teaching children with special needs tends to contribute rather than facilitate successful outcomes (Farrell and Ainscow 2002, p. 6). Valuable guidance is offered by Greenspan and Wieder (2006) who inform that: The family, community, and culture in which an infant is embedded will combine her unique biologically based processing style to shape the kinds of human interactions she experiences (p. 6). Further clarification is offered by Greenspan and Wieder (2006) who explain by way of example: A parent who is by nature aloof and taciturn may be unable to fully engage an infant who is by nature underactive and self-absorbed. This child may not experience enough lively, warm interactions to develop the ability to focus attention and engage emotionally with others (p. 6). Based on this assessment by Greenspan and Wieder (2006) there are a number of factors that must be taken into account when evaluating how best to help a child overcome obstacles to learning. In Child A’s case, it was important to identify and work with how Child A’s ability to learn is influenced by a number of factors including his intelligence, his physical abilities, his linguistic abilities and his social, cultural and emotional maturity (Silver 2006). In this regard, I felt it was best to facilitate Child A’s emotional and social maturity with a view that this would help Child A to become successfully integrated into the mainstream classroom. Guided accordingly, I assumed that Child A’s poor social skills and inability to focus on tasks and his general difficulties with cognitive functioning are all tied together with his clumsiness or difficulties with his fine motor skills. It was apparent from all observations that his difficulties with fine motor skills have a direct impact on his ability to participate and engage. Ultimately, Child A has learned by necessity to escape into his own world and this has impacted his ability to engage with other children. Working with this assumption appears to be the right approach as Child A is currently showing signs of improvement in that he is participating in classroom activities. More details are provided below. In the final analysis, I determined that in order to help Child A overcome his learning problems it was best that I narrowed his difficulties down to two causes: poor motor functions and the attending poor socialization skills which are most probably a result of his poor fine motor skills. Therefore, I determined that there was a link between Child A’s socialization, learning difficulties and his motor skills. I felt that if we addressed Child A’s motor skills and socialization problems, we would see marked improvement in Child A’s language-based skills. In other words, I did not segregate his math/numerical difficulties from his language-based difficulties. In any event, I felt that Child A’s numerical problems were directly linked to his language-based problems which were in turn, linked to his poor socialization skills and fine motor skills deficit. Guided by this perception, I ruled out dyscalculia which is often associated with dyslexia. Reports indicate that a majority of children with dyslexia have number difficulties which is a form of dyscalculia (Swarbrick and Marshall 2006, p. 45). The symptoms of dyscalculia are instructive in that a majority of the symptoms do not apply to Child A (Swarbrick and Marshall 2006, pp. 45-46). I came to the conclusion that since Child’s only real problem was the number reversal, it was language based and was therefore a manifestation of his poor motor skills and socialization difficulties. I also took the position that Child A’s poor motor skills contributed to his poor socialization skills. In a typical case, a clumsy child is generally expected to outgrow his or her clumsiness. However, as Child A is repeating the first year, I felt it was best to depart from this general expectation and to focus directly on resolving this issue. Kurtz (2007) offers some valuable insight by noting that children who learn to “adapt to their differences” may eventually become “less affected as they become older” (p. 25). Kurtz (2007) also informs that children with poor motor skills or children who are characterized as clumsy will typically “avoid situations that may cause frustration or failure” (p. 25). Drawing on the information shared by Kurtz (2007), I took the position that Child A’s socialization problems which impacts his ability to develop cohesive self rather than a detached self, was complicated by his domestic surroundings. Even if I were to rule out Child A’s domestic surroundings and was satisfied that he had loving and attentive parents, it is still obvious that his poor motor skills accounted for his isolation, if not in part, then absolutely. Kurtz (2007) cautions that: Failure to provide help for children with coordination difficulties exposes them to the risk of failure in performing school and social activities, frustration and loss of self-esteem, and ridicule and bullying by other children (p. 25). I decided to submit Child A to individual counselling as a means of helping him understand that he can effectively manage his coordination difficulties and to have him conduct appropriate exercises for improving his motor skills generally. Reflecting on counselling theory and techniques for identifying factors that can influence a child’s social, academic and cultural development and drawing on the literature, I was able to assume that Child A’s poor fine motor functioning is already impacting his performance in school and his socialization. I was therefore also able to assume that much of this is a direct result of Child A’s lack of confidence in his abilities. He is obviously self-conscious in terms of his poor fine motor skills. My learning experience in the course has taught me to look beyond the child’s problems and to deal with social, physical and emotional factors that might be the root cause of the child’s development and learning difficulties. Intervention Assuming that Child A’s social skills are directly or partly impacted by his familial relations, there is nothing that I can do to transform his parents or carers from aloof nurturers to loving and attentive nurturers. However, there is a lot that can be done to help Child A gain confidence and to learn to cope with or adapt to his fine motor skills deficit. Intervention was therefore based on the Cognitive theories of Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsky. I came to the conclusion that in order to offer more productive assistance to Child A and to produce the best possible outcome it was preferable to proceed with what was factually known rather than to make assumptions, regardless of how reasonable they might seem. Therefore, I decided to ignore the possibility that Child A came from a detached family background. Instead I decided to target the fact that he had poor fine motor skills and that this was the most likely cause of his detachment, isolation, clumsiness and lack of attention and cognitive functioning. I felt that we could turn things around for Child A, as he is motivated when adults support him and responds quite well when he gets this source of support. All indications are therefore that, Child A can learn once his self-esteem is improved. Counselling theories suggest that individual counselling can help a child improve his or her self-esteem and thus improve his or her motivation, self-perceptions and self-efficacy (Siegel 2009, p. 12). The idea is to help Child A develop appropriate self-management tools so that he can adjust to and cope with his motor skills’ deficit and thereby improve his ability to learn. Individual counselling together with adult support would therefore represent appropriate intervention for Child A. Obviously adult support gives Child A the confidence that he can complete an assigned task successfully. It therefore followed that targeting his fine motor skill deficit would go a long way in helping Child A gain self-confidence. Vygotsky’s theory relative to how information is processed and expressed is intimately connected to social interaction was particularly influential. According to Vygotsky, a child’s development is first facilitated by his/her “social plane” (Moll 2004, p. 252). Piaget also advocates for development of the child’s “logical or systematic concepts through social exchange” (Moll 2004, p. 253). Bruner (2011) explains the significance of the social plane in terms of the child’s cognitive development as follows: Any function in the Child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, and the development of volition (p. 114). In other words, I took the position that Child A’s interpersonal social relations and his integration into the classroom was very important for helping him become more attentive and therefore more effectively process and express information. As long as Child A felt different, he withdrew. Counselling theory informs that inclusion and an eventual end to differential instruction is the key to helping Child A develop self-confidence and participate in the classroom. It meant closing the gap implicit in the “zone of proximal development” (Bruner 2011, p. 114). This meant bridging the gap between Child A’s internal concept’s and social conceptualization (Bruner 2011, p. 114). His tendency to self-occlusion is obviously related to his conceptualization, his attention and his logic. Drawing on counselling theories, I felt that Child A would benefit from classroom integration but only after he was able to feel confident in his ability to learn. By inclusion and thereby improving his socialization skills, it is hoped that Child A’s cognitive functioning would automatically improve. This meant targeting Child A’s fine motor skills first and foremost. In the meantime it was important to build his self-confidence relative to his language skills as his ability to express those skills have fallen behind. Having followed up on the intervention sessions which are conducted twice a week I am satisfied that the intervention is helping Child A adapt to his poor fine motor skills. I decided to enhance Child A’s intervention sessions by adding a physical education session and to ensure that the sessions included “motor imagery training” which is “visual imagery exercises using” a CD (Saddock et al 2008, p. 47). Saddock et al (2008) notes that this kind of intervention: Have a broad range of foci, including predictive timing for motor tasks, relation and mental preparation, visual modelling of fundamental motor skills, and mental rehearsal of various tasks (p. 47). The idea was to improve Child A’s “internal representation” of a physical task with the presumption that it would enhance his motor conduct (Saddock et al 2008, p. 47). In other words, informed by counselling theories, I determined that individual counselling and greater exposure to adult support aimed at helping Child A cope with and manage his motor skills’ deficit, would improve his self-esteem, self-perception and self-efficacy. I determined that Child A required vivid aid to help him overcome his letter and number irregularities. I felt that Child A would benefit from vivid methods that would help him learn and retain the finer elements that comprise each letter and number. His inability to consistently distinguish between consonants and vowels suggests a problem with attention and focusing. In other words, I felt that Child A had developed a pattern of isolation and detachment that compromised his attention, engagement and retention abilities. I therefore focused on exercises to improve Child A’s motor skills and helped him use tools such as the word processor and a special grip pencil as methods for managing his motor skills’ deficit. As indicated previously, I also felt that since, Child A had fine motor skills deficit, it was more appropriate to focus on his motor skills. Thus reinforcement was complimented by addressing the possibility that Child A was simply having difficulties sequencing and processing letter and number formation and by addressing the clumsiness that is associated with poor fine motor skills. I felt that this would build his self-confidence and therefore improve his social skills and as a result help redirect Child A’s concentration, engagement and retention and that would resolve his language-based problems. In the meantime, I worked directly with Child A’s letters and numbers problems as those issues would not miraculously disappear once his self-confidence was improved. The details are set out below. I worked with Child A’s Individual Learning Plan (IEP) which is reviewed each term. By doing so, it was noted that Child A was improving in that his social skills were improving to the point where he was engaging with talking partners in classroom sessions, and was offering more in-carpet sessions with the class daily and his reading skills have improved to a much greater degree. I also set broad targets for Child A. The first target was to get Child A to compose short and simple sentences with the aid of finger spaces. However, Child A often forgets to use the finger spaces and requires persistent reminders. I am hopeful that once his confidence grows and his attention improves via the intervention and differential instructions, Child A will soon overcome much of his attention and engagement issues and will be able to join traditional classroom instructions. The vivid aids in which Child A is invited to describe shapes in pictures and models by naming the shape and identifying the number of sides and corners appear to be working. Child A has been observed working hard and has exhibited knowledge of shapes and sides/corners. I am therefore satisfied that intervention thus far has helped to engage Child A. The fact that he has been seen working hard and actually retaining information with respect to the shapes and models, indicate that Child A can learn to focus and retain. I am also working with Child A to write numbers up to 10 in its correct formation so as to support his independence in numeracy lessons. I used a 100 board with blotted out multiples of 5. Child A not only understood what numbers were missing, but was able to identify the pattern used. From my own observations, I can confirm that Child A is demonstratively improving. He is now able to write numbers in the correct form and has moved on considerably. Encouraged by the progress observed I used additional interventions. I took a “think it, say it, write it, read it” approach to help Child A understand words (Starko 2009, p. 186). I again used visual aids by presenting Child A with a picture and instructed him to identify these pictures with words. For example, Child A was asked to write a “this is a car” caption on a picture of car. Child A was also instructed to use 2D shapes to form pictures and patterns and to match shapes by placing stickers on the corners of the matching shapes. I believe that this form of vivid instruction improves concentration and focus as well as retention. In line with vivid instruction and improving Child A’s fine motor skills, I instructed Child A to write numbers in trays of sands with his fingers. I observed that Child A would follow this exercise by writing his name on a piece of paper as instructed. He would randomly place his name on the page. I noticed a marked improvement in Child A’s motor skills. While working on squared maths paper which, he was able to write within the confines of the squares with remarkable control. Conclusion With the progress observed, while I am ambivalent about the prospects of Child A being able to move on to the Year 3, I have been relatively comfortable with the idea that Child A can benefit from inclusion in the mainstream classroom environment. The ultimate aim is to ensure that Child A will be continually integrated into classroom instruction with differentiation. Continuous monitoring of his progress and identifying problems that may arise need to be addressed immediately. So far, my only concern is Child A’s problem remembering to use the finger spaces in the sentence exercises. However, considering the difficulties that Child A when we first met, he has come a long way. I fully expect Child A’s fine motor skills to improve and that his self-esteem will continue to improve. As a result, I anticipate that Child A’s performance in school will continue to improve. Bibliography Aaron, P. G. (1989) Dyslexia and Hyperlexia: Diagnosis and Management of Developmental Reading. New York, NY: Springer Publication. Bruner, J. S. (2011) Making Sense: The Child’s Construction of the World. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Cratty, B. J. (1979) Perceptual and Motor Development in Infants and Children. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall. David, R. B. (2009) Clinical Pediatric Neurology. 3rd Edition, New York, NY: Demos Medical Publishing. Farrell, P. and Ainscow, M. (2002) Making Special Education Inclusive. London: David Fulton Publishers Ltd. Greenspan, S. I. and Wieder, S. (2006) Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. Farrell, M. (2003) Understanding Special Education Needs. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Kurtz, L. A. (2007) Understanding Motor Skills in Children with Dyspraxia, ADHD Autism and Other Learning Disabilities. Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Kurtz, L. A. (2003) How to Help a Clumsy Child. London, England: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd. Moll, L. C. (2004) Vygotsky and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saddock, B.J. et al (2008) Kaplan and Sadock’s Concise Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health. Sadock, B.J. Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health. Siegel, L. M. (2009) Nolo’s IEP Guide: Learning Disabilities. Berkeley, CA: Delta Printing Solutions, Inc. Silver, L. (2006) The Misunderstood Child. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. Starko, A. J. (2009) Creativity in the Classroom. New York, NY: Routledge. Swarbrick, J. and Marshall, A. (2006) The Everything Parent’s Guide to Children with Dyslexia. Avon, MA: F W Publications Inc. Read More