Seminar sponsored by the British Educational Research Association Social Justice Special Interest Group

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Seminar sponsored by the British Educational
Research Association Social Justice Special
Interest Group in collaboration with the Society
for Educational Studies Disadvantaged and
Disabled Learners and Social Justice
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WELCOME INTRODUCTION
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Interagency collaboration, social justice and
learners with disabilitiesand difficultiesProf
essor Harry DanielsUniversity of Bath
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DEMOS Paper

• Personalisation through participation
• A new script for public services
• Charles Leadbeater
• The dawn of new capabilities?

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Personalisation

• The proposal is that clients become
  coproducers of services and take a central part
  in the design and formulation of the particular
  service that is made available. stark contrast to
  the services that deliver a standardised offer
  to all clients whatever their needs
• Leadbeater, 2004

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CHOICE AND VOICE IN PERSONALISED LEARNINGSPEECH
BY DAVID MILIBAND MPMINISTER OF STATE FOR SCHOOL
STANDARDSAT A DfES INNOVATION UNIT / DEMOS /
OECD CONFERENCE PERSONALISING EDUCATION THE
FUTURE OF PUBLIC SECTOR REFORMLONDON, 18 MAY
2004
Aneurin Bevan used to say that the freedom to
choose was worthless without the power to choose.
This is the power of personalised learning. Not a
false dichotomy between choice and voice but an
acceptance that if we are to truly revolutionise
public services then people need to have both.
Because students are not merely educational
shoppers in the marketplace they are creators of
their own educational experience and their voice
can help shape provision. Both as a means of
engaging students in their own learning the
co-producers of education. And as a means of
developing their talents using their voice to
help create choices.
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Social Exclusion

• Social exclusion which may be typified as loss of
  access to the most important life chances that a
  modern society offers, where those chances
  connect individuals to the mainstream of life in
  that society.
• New life chances new patterns of exclusion?

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Changes 1 Interagency Work

• Responsive interagency work in these contexts
  requires a new way of conceptualising
  collaboration which recognises the construction
  of constantly changing combinations of people and
  resources across services, and their distribution
  over space and time.

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• Many services are shaped by their histories and
  organised for the convenience of the provider not
  the client (Cabinet Office, 2001).
• Audit Commission report (2002 p.52) suggests that
  there is a general consensus that agencies need
  to work more closely together to meet the needs
  of young people, but different spending
  priorities, boundaries and cultures make this
  difficult to achieve in practice
• Interagency working of such services tend to
  'underlap' rather than overlap and agencies can
  ignore the complexity their clients present

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The 2002 Spending Review

• prioritises multiagency support in schools and
  announces a multiagency behaviour strategy which
  includes the formation of behaviour and education
  support teams

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The Green Paper, September 2003 Every Child
Matters

• integrated teams of health and education
  professionals, social workers and Connexions
  advisers based in and around schools and
  Children's Centres
• sweeping away legal, technical and cultural
  barriers to information sharing so that, for the
  first time, there can be effective communication
  between everyone with a responsibility for
  children
• establish a clear framework of accountability at
  a national and local level with the appointment
  of a Children's Director in every local authority
  responsible for bringing all children's services
  together as Children's Trusts

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Policy and Inclusion

• Current policy on social inclusion is running
  ahead of conceptualisations of inter-professional
  collaboration and the learning it requires in a
  number of fields
• Even Personalisation through Participation

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A view of the problem from a study of Young
People Permanently Excluded from School

• Sample 193 young people aged 13 to 16
• PEX in 1999/2000
• Across ten local education authorities in England
• Sample over representative of females, ethnic
• Minorities and young people in care.

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Key Concerns

• Lack of joined up working
• Insufficient attention to needs led planning
• Prevalence of service led formulation of need
• Relationship between placement and expectations
  and aspirations
• Social capital
• Boundary crossing knotworkers

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Working Together

• Young people require, but typically are not in
  receipt of, flexible and responsive
  interagency service delivery
• Professionals need to learn how to work
  collaboratively.
• Collaboration between agencies working for social
  inclusion also now emphasises collaboration with
  service users.
• Promoting deliberative agency

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Development
Mass Production Articulated knowledge
Craft Tacit Knowledge
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Networking
Modularisation
Linking
Development
Renewal
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• Co-configuration
• includes interdependency between multiple
  producers in a strategic alliance or other
  pattern of partnership which collaboratively
  creates and maintains a complex package which
  integrates products and services and has a long
  life cycle.

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Learning

• For co-configuration
• In co-configuration
• Need to go beyond conventional team work or
  networking to the practice of knotworking

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Changes 2 Knotworking

• is a rapidly changing, distributed and partially
  improvised orchestration of collaborative
  performance
• takes place between otherwise loosely connected
  actors and their work systems to support clients.
  
• various forms of tying and untying of otherwise
  separate threads of activity takes place.
• Co-configuration in responsive and collaborating
  services requires flexible knotworking
• no single actor has the sole, fixed
  responsibility and control

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Knotworking

• requires participants to have a disposition to
  recognise and engage with the expertise
  distributed across rapidly shifting professional
  groupings.

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Argument 1Social world structures thinking
Any function in the childs cultural
development appears twice or on two planes It
appears first between people as an intermental
category, and then within the child as an
intramental category
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Argument 2Scientific and spontaneous concepts
Concept
Scientific concepts

• Impose on child logically defined concepts
• Scientific concepts move downwards towards
  greater concreteness
• Evolve in highly structured and specialized
  activity of classroom instruction

Mature concepts

• Concepts emerge from the childs own
• reflections of everyday experience
• Spontaneous concepts move upwards towards
  greater abstractness
• Develops in childs everyday learningenvironment

Spontaneous Concepts
Object
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Argument 3theories of learning

• subject (traditionally an individual, more
  recently possibly also an organization)
• acquires some identifiable knowledge or skills in
  such a way that a corresponding, relatively
  lasting change in the behaviour of the subject
  may be observed.
• knowledge or skill to be acquired is itself
  stable and reasonably well defined.
• There is a competent teacher who knows what is
  to be learned.

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• People and organizations are all the time
  learning something that is not stable, not even
  defined or understood ahead of time.
• important transformations -- literally learned as
  they are being created.
• There is no competent teacher.

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Activity Theory

• Theory
• Methodology

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1. Prime unit of analysis.

• collective, artefact-mediated and object-oriented
  activity system, seen in its network relations to
  other activity systems

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The structure of a human activity system
Engestrom 1987 p. 78
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• Subject the individual/subgroup chosen as the
  point of view in the analysis.
• Tools physical or psychological.
• Community individuals/subgroups who share the
  same general object.
• Division of labor division of tasks between
  members of the community.
• Rules explicit/implicit regulations, norms,
  conventions that constrains action/interaction
• Object the raw material or problem space at
  which the activity is directed and which is
  molded or transformed into outcomes

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2. Multi-voiced ness of activity systems

• division of labour in an activity creates
  different positions for the participants, the
  participants carry their own diverse histories,
• activity system itself carries multiple layers
  and strands of history engraved in its artefacts,
  rules and conventions.
• multiplied in networks of interacting activity
  systems.
• source of innovation,

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Two interacting activity systems as minimal model
for third generation of activity theory --
Engestrom 1999
Mediating Artefact
Mediating Artefact
Object 2 Objeect 2
Object 1
Object 1
Rules Community Division of Labour
Rules Community Division of Labour
Object 3
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3. Historicity.

• needs to be studied as local history of the
  activity and its objects, and
• as history of the theoretical ideas and tools
  that have shaped the activity

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4. Contradictions as sources of change and
development.

• historically accumulating structural tensions
  within and between activity systems

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Contradictions, tensions, conflicts, breakdowns
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5. Expansive (cycles) transformations in activity
systems

• object and motive of the activity are
  reconceptualized to embrace a radically wider
  horizon of possibilities than in the previous
  mode of the activity

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Methodology

• In Activity Theory development is not only an
  object of study, it is also a general research
  methodology.
• The basic research method in Activity Theory is
  not traditional laboratory experiments but the
  formative experiment which combines active
  participation with monitoring of the
  developmental changes of the study participants.
• Ethnographic methods that track the history and
  development of a practice have also become
  important in recent work.

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Expansive learning

• capacity to interpret and expand the definition
  of the object of activity and respond in
  increasingly enriched ways
• produces culturally new patterns of activity
• expands understanding and changes practice.

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• such learning is evidenced in enhanced analyses
  of the potential of objects and dispositions of
  subjects to recognise and engage with distributed
  expertise in complex work places.
• object is the constantly reproduced purpose of a
  collective activity system that motivates and
  defines the horizon of possible goals and actions
  
• studying the formation of objects and the
  learning that takes place in and across complex
  and rapidly changing activity systems as
  professionals learn to expand and co-construct
  the objects of their activities.

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Change Laboratories

• Each lasts about two hours.
• Tensions and dilemmas will be highlighted
• Alternative ways of working proposed.

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1. Work in the Change Laboratory typically starts
   with the mirror of present problems.
2. It then moves to trace the roots of current
   trouble by mirroring experiences from the past
   and by modeling the past activity system.
3. The work then proceeds to model the current
   activity and its inner contradictions, which
   enables the participants to focus their
   transformation efforts on essential sources of
   trouble.
4. The next step is the envisioning of the future
   model of the activity, including its
   concretization by means of identifying
   'next-step' partial solutions and tools.
5. Subsequently, the stepwise implementation of the
   new vision is planned and monitored in the Change
   Laboratory.

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• participants envision and draft proposals for
  concrete changes.
• videotaped for analysis.
• professionals involved will be asked to evaluate
  the acceptability of this way of working.

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• practitioner will be invited to present an
  overview of the case -- prepared in a prior
  meeting.
• devices and procedures to support the work of
  these preparatory sessions. include templates of
• calendars (to summarise important events in the
  trajectory),
• maps (to depict the key parties involved), and
• agreements (to summarise the division of labour
  amongst the parties).
• highlight the temporal aspect, the sociospatial
  aspect, and the relational negotiational aspect
  of the work

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• the intellectual work and the practical
  representational work (writing, drawing, etc.) of
  the participants
• move between the spaces of the mirror and the
  model,
• stopping occasionally in the middle.
• these processes move between three layers of
  time.
• the discourse moves between the participants and
  their various voices

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Travellers and additional support for learning
policy Gwynedd Lloyd Gillean
McCluskey University of Edinburgh
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Gender, social class and school exclusions

• Jean Kane
• University of Glasgow

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Why are boys over-represented in exclusion
statistics?

• Nature of the links between certain identities
  and exclusion from school
• Relative influence of schools and wider social
  factors
• Meaning of social justice in this context

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Policy background

• Social justice discourse
• Social justice..a Scotland where everyone
  matters (Scottish Executive, 1999)

• School improvement discourse
• Better behaviour, better learning (Scottish
  Executive Education Department, 2002)

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Method

• Four secondary schools
• Twenty case studies of pupils who had been
  excluded in that session
• Classroom observation, interviews, school and
  pupil documentation
• Focus here on three case studies Andy, Ross and
  Davy

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Negotiating masculinities moving towards
exclusion

• Public respect
• The teachers do not treat you right. In
  Primary 7 the teachers treated you with respect.
  Here they dont they treat you like you were
  dirt, nearly every single teacher ( S1 pupil)

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Negotiating masculinities moving towards
exclusion

• 2. Power and control
• Pupils want to be his friend because I think
  it is the power he has outwith the school, or the
  perceived power he has outwith school.
• (Maths
  teacher)

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Negotiating masculinities moving towards
exclusion

• 3. Maturity
• Work, girlfriends, social life
• He is a very bright boy but he is out till
  1.00 or 2.00am and he cannot get up in the
  morning for school. He has a difficult home life
  but there is a lot of pressure as well with
  peers.
• (Home/School link worker)

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Negotiating masculinities moving towards
exclusion

• 4. Abilities and the future
• I was one of the brightest in my class at
  primary school. I still am really in most of my
  classes. I can do the work but I just dont do
  it most of the time. (Ross)

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To summarise

• Boys are negotiating identities in school for
  their lives outside of school
• For some, those negotiations entail behaviour
  which leads to their exclusion
• Limits to what schools can do

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What is social justice here?

• Continue to exclude?
• Alternative curricula? Alternative location?
• Develop in-school support systems?
• Curriculum flexibility and adaptability?
• Recognise impact of inequality on young people in
  school?

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Capability Theory and Disadvantaged and Disabled
Learners Lorella Terzi University of London
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Educational Equality and Justice Why does
educational equality matter? Primarily
educational equality matters because it is a
fundamental value of justice.
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This statement subsumes three important
considerations 1. Reasons for supporting
egalitarianism Intrinsic value of
equality Instrumental value of equality Equality
is the sovereign virtue of political communities
(Dworkin, 2000 1). 2. Important normative role
of equality at two interconnected levels in
education The theoretical level, concerned with
conceptualisations of values and aims The level
of provision, related to the enactment of these
ideals into policies and practice. 3. The
importance of conceptualising educational
equality in relation to disabled learners.
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Conceptualising Educational Equality for Disabled
Learners Equality in Capabilities I maintain
that the capability approach helps in
conceptualising educational equality by focussing
on the fundamental educational capabilities that
are essential prerequisites for functioning as an
independent person in society. My argument has
two interrelated parts. 1. First, I maintain
that, in so far as we can, we should educate
people in order to develop those educational
capabilities that, once secured, will ensure that
individuals are not at a disadvantage in society.
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2. Second, I argue that seeking equality in the
space of fundamental educational capabilities
helps substantially in considering the demands of
educational equality for disabled learners.
More specifically, it allows a
conceptualisation of educational equality as
equal effective opportunities for educational
capabilities, at a level necessary and sufficient
for participating as equals in society. The
specification of a level of equal participation,
as we shall see, entails the distribution of
additional resources to disabled learners as a
matter of justice.
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What is the Capability Approach? The capability
approach, developed by Amartya Sen and further
articulated by Martha Nussbaum, is a normative
framework for the assessment of poverty and
inequalities.
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Sens Capability Approach key concepts The
evaluative space for the assessment of
inequality, and conversely, for determining what
equality we should seek, is the space of the
freedoms to achieve valuable objectives that
people have, that is the space of capabilities.
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Within this space, Sen distinguishes functionings
and capabilities. Functionings are beings and
doings constitutive of a persons being (1992
39). Walking is a functioning, so are reading,
being well nourished, being happy or having
self-respect. Capabilities are capabilities to
function, and represent a persons substantive
freedoms to achieve valuable functionings, or
functionings that a person has reasons to value
(1992 40). Capabilities represent various
combinations of functionings (beings and doings)
that the person can achieve. Capability is, thus,
a set of vectors of functionings, reflecting the
persons freedom to lead one type of life or
another (1992 40). Example Fasting as a
functioning is not just starving it is choosing
to starve when one does have other options
(1992 52).
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Sens capability approach key concepts The
concept of human diversity The capability
approach theorises a space where considerations
of personal heterogeneities are relevant for the
assessment of equality. Sen maintains that the
empirical fact of human diversity is crucial in
assessing the demands of equality (1992
xi). Human diversity is no secondary
complication (to be ignored, or to be introduced
later on) it is a fundamental aspect of our
interest in equality (1992 xi).
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Human diversity is addressed as the interrelation
of personal and circumstantial factors. According
to this view, human beings are diverse in three
fundamental ways 1. Firstly, they are different
with respect to their personal, internal
characteristics, such as gender, age, physical
and mental abilities, talents, proneness to
illness and so forth. 2. Secondly, different
individuals are different with respect to
external circumstances, like inherited wealth and
assets, environmental factors, including climatic
differences and social and cultural arrangements
(1992 1, 20, 27-28). 3. Thirdly, a further and
important diversity relates to differences in the
conversion of resources into freedoms, that is it
relates to different individual abilities to
convert commodities and resources into valuable
ends (1992 85).
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Elements of a fundamental educational
entitlement The Capability approach allows a
conceptualisation of a fundamental educational
entitlement in terms of the equal effective
opportunities to levels of educational
capabilities necessary and sufficient to function
and to participate effectively in society. The
fundamental educational capabilities form the
necessary and sufficient enabling conditions
that, once achieved, allow individuals to
function effectively in their dominant social
framework. In so far as we can, we should
provide people with equal effective opportunities
for fundamental educational capabilities and the
relative achieved functionings, which constitute
the transformational resources necessary to
functioning and participating effectively in
society.
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• Elements of a Fundamental Educational Entitlement
  for Disabled Learners
• Two components a level of definitions and
  conceptualisations of disability and special
  educational needs, and a level of provision.
• 1. A capability perspective on impairment,
  disability and special educational needs

• Disability and special educational needs as
  inherently relational, or, more specifically, as
  emerging from the interlocking of individual
  characteristics with social and circumstantial
  elements.
• They are conceptualised as functionings and
  capabilities limitations and hence evaluated in
  terms of vertical inequalities.

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Example dyslexia Dyslexia is considered a
difference, which, in affecting functionings,
constitutes an identifiable disadvantage. It is
relational to both impairment and the design of
educational institutions. The capability approach
evaluates dyslexia as a vertical inequality and
highlights how additional and appropriate
provision in any case of restriction of
functioning and capability becomes a matter of
justice.
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Elements of a Fundamental Educational Entitlement
for Disabled Learners 2. A fundamental
educational entitlement, an educational minimum
for disabled learners consists in levels of
opportunities and resources required to allow
learners to achieve those basic educational
functionings that are prerequisites for en
effective participation in the dominant
framework. In this sense, therefore, a dyslexic
child is entitled to additional opportunities and
resources that will allow her to achieve reading
and writing functionings appropriate to
participate effectively in her social framework.
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Problems and Limits 1. Possible element of
reductionism. Why should we propose an
educational minimum based on certain capabilities
necessary to an effective functioning in society,
when certain impairments restrict functionings in
such substantial ways that the actual well-being
of the individual is better promoted through
fostering other, non-basic capabilities? 2. The
possible discriminatory use of a threshold
level. Why not proposing the promotion of
capabilities and functionings achievements and
abandon any idea of threshold level?
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Conclusions The Capability approach helps in
answering one of the hardest normative questions
related to educational equality What and how
much educational resources should be devoted to
disabled learners? It suggest an understanding
of educational equality in terms of equal
opportunities to fundamental educational
capabilities at levels necessary to function and
participate effectively in society. This leads
to the requirement, as a matter of justice, of
additional opportunities and resources for
disabled learners. This view does not represent
a theory of educational equality, rather, it
presents an exploration of its complexities and a
possible answer within the capability approach.
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Questions
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The Social Construction of Dyslexia in Higher
Education Shelia Riddell Elisabet
Weedon University of Edinburgh
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Focus of Paper Construction of dyslexia in
higher education and negotiations between
students, lecturers and academic institutions
over diagnosis and support. Draws on social
constructionist thinking to highlight ways in
which individuals use category of disability to
make sense of experience.
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Parallels approaches used to make sense of other
new disabilities e.g. AD(H)D ADHD as a
category has established itself within schooling,
and in this sense is both a social fact and a
resource that is actively used for dealing with
problems. It has implications for the manner in
which teaching is organised and for the use of
limited resources. It will also have
consequences for the students educational
career, and obviously, a neuropsychiatric
diagnosis, indicative of a brain injury, will
play a critical role identity formation of young
people. (Hjorne and Saljo, 2004 7)
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• Structure of Paper
• Construction of dyslexia in scientific literature
  
• Incidence of dyslexia in higher education.
• Case studies of dyslexic students to illustrate
• understandings of students and university staff
• institutional responses with regard to curricular
  and pedagogical approaches
• resource allocation issues

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• The research project
• Data drawn from ESRC funded study Disabled
  Students and Multiple Policy Innovations in
  Higher Education
• Conducted jointly by researchers at the
  Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow between
  2000 and 2003.
• Range of methods
• analysis of HESA data
• questionnaire survey of institutional practices
• in-depth case studies of forty eight students in
  eight HEIs in England and Scotland.
• Case studies
• Interviews with students, lecturers and support
  staff
• Observations of individualised and anticipatory
  adjustments

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• Anti-discrimination legislation and the
  construction of reasonable adjustments
• Over two decades, higher education transformed
  from elite to mass system
• Growth of new public management (RAE, TQA)
• Also increase in equalities legislation
• DDA Part 4 requires individualised
  anticipatory adjustments
• Adjustment to curriculum, pedagogy assessment
  contentious raises issue of standards

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Disability, categorisation and identity Early
writing in disability studies drew distinction
between impairment disability. Disability seen
as socially relative But writers like Abberley
saw impairment as an undeniable
bedrock Post-modern writing emphasises
mutability contingency Disability shifting
category tensions with fixed administrative
categories Categories like AD(H)D and dyslexia
reveal live struggles between different interest
groups
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Constructions of dyslexia Recent reviews
criticise fundamental research informing
practitioner action Findings seen as tentative,
speculative and controversial Standard
diagnostic criteria cast much too wide a net
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Differences between bodies over definition
British Dyslexia Association Dyslexia
Institute promote definitions based on
physiological/neurological/genetic
differences British Psychological Society adopts
more inclusive definition Dyslexia is evident
when accurate and fluent word reading and/or
spelling develops incompletely or with great
difficulty. (BPS, 1999) Voluntary organisations
parents claim dyslexia is discrete
category Educationists see it as part of
continuum of learning difficulties
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• The incidence of dyslexia in higher education
• Advantages of label for individual
• Access to the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA)
• Reasonable adjustments, including alternative
  ways of demonstrating learning outcomes and extra
  time in exams.
• Possible lower entry requirements
• Advantages of label for institution
• Premium funding
• Boost to numbers reported to HESA
• But level of resourcing supports standardised,
  rather than specialised, adjustments

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Table 1. Students in higher education with a
known disability (first degree programmes)
Year Number of students Total known to have disability Percentage
1994 - 95 323011 11162 3.5
2002 - 03 351805 21285 6
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Table 2. Categories of disability used by HESA
and percentages of undergraduates in each
category in 1994/95 and 2002/3
Type of disability 1994/95 2002/03
Dyslexia 15 49
Blind/partially sighted 4 3
Deaf/hard of hearing 6 4
Wheelchair/mobility difficulties 6 3
Personal care support 0.1 0.1
Mental health difficulties 2 3
An unseen disability 53 23
Multiple disabilities 5 4
Other disability 10 11
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Table 3. Male and female students
self-identifying as dyslexic (first degree
entrants 2002-2003, full-time)
Total number male students Total number of male students with dyslexia Total number of female students Total number of female students with dyslexia
146240 (9905) 5535 3.8 (56) 169910 (9705) 4390 2.6 (45)

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• Incidence of dyslexia has increased in both male
  and female students
• Dyslexic students socially advantaged group
• Significantly more likely to be male and middle
  class.

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Negotiating the meaning of dyslexia three case
studies Liam Assessment likelihood of positive
diagnosis I think you have to pay 200, but the
disability officer said You can get that back if
you are dyslexic and we havent had anyone yet
who has been tested who hasnt been and Im
pretty confident you will get it back so I never
ever had to pay the 200. (Liam, ancient Scottish
university)
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But not necessarily a guarantee of
adjustments You know I went to one guy, in fact
the first guy I saw, and said, Look, Ive been
diagnosed as having dyslexia and I was about to
say, Who can I go to discuss essays with? and
he said, Oh, you know in my experience dyslexics
dont spell any worse than the other students.
Afterwards, when I left, and this says everything
about the guy, he just said, Dont hassle me.
I thought, this guy, hes supposed to be teaching
English Literature and doesnt even have a basic
grasp of what dyslexia is. (Liam)
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Idiosyncratic institutional responses You know
if there was an essay from a dyslexic student I
tend to try and ignore the kind of structural
difficulties and try and see what they are saying
and so I tend to mark them on the ideas rather
than the actual presentation. But thats totally
improvised, thats not because of anything.
(Lecturer, ancient Scottish university)
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But reservations on grounds of equality I felt
that in a sense Liam was disadvantaged by his
dyslexia but also he was getting all this kind of
special attention which I was happy to give. I
dont think it was proportional to the attention
I had given to other students with dyslexia. So
I feel quite uneasy about that as well.
(Lecturer, ancient Scottish university)
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Student discontent with institutional
treatment I applied for funding from the
Students Awards Agency for Scotland for a PhD and
they said Sorry, you dont get funding because
you didnt get a first. And Im thinking, If I
was black, this would be racism, blatant racism,
but Ive possibly missed out on 20,000 worth of
funding which everyone says Im capable of
because the system was weighted against me and I
was misinformed at the time. (Liam)
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Maurice Early educational experience I went
through school everything was never fine I
was always slow. Always from the start of
primary school, my mother and father would have
been brought in because my reading wasnt very
good, my reading was always very slow. Both my
parents were teachers, so I think what really
happened was that they sort of worked with me a
bit. Nothing was ever diagnosed except that
Maurices a bit slow, do you know what I mean,
and I must have just muddled through school to be
honest. English was never a strong point and I
dont know if that was why I went down the
science route, because it wasnt structured
essays, factual learning. It was understanding,
and I was always better with diagrams and thing
like that. (Maurice)
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Response to diagnosis at university Initially
my diagnosis was You are dyslexic and at that
time that was a relief to me. I didnt take it
to heart, I didnt think I was retarded or
something like that. I think some people do take
it to heart. I thought, Well, thats quite a
relief and I was quite happy with the position
that the university was going to give me some
extra time in exams and I thought, Oh thats
good, it will take a bit of the pressure off me a
bit more in writing essays.
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Institutional scepticism I came to enquire
about it and they were a bit standoffish about
the whole dyslexic thing. Their point of view
is that they see it as an excuse and they say,
Why do you want extra time in an exam? You
wouldnt get extra time during a surgery or extra
time in rescuss. I know it is better being
dyslexic, I can feel my medical friends saying
And how did you fail that test Maurice?. There
are a few people think that.
98
Concealed identity Theres about three other
people in my year who are dyslexic in medicine
and Ive bumped into them as weve arrived at the
exam hall 25 minutes early, you can work it out,
but thats the only way. Sometimes it comes up
in the conversation, Where were you? Seeing
the special needs adviser. Oh, whats that
about? It never gets brought up in conversation
with any academic members of staff.
99
Reluctance to self-categorise as disabled I
dont like thinking of myself as disabled, I
dont even like, when you started talking, I
dont even like that you almost put me in the
category with someone in a wheelchair. I almost
find that offensive. No. I mean, God, Im glad
Im not and its almost a relief that I dont
have to deal with a physical or other disability.
I really dont like holding it up or shouting
about it at all. I like that its been
identified and Im not stupid, I rather look on
it like that. (Maurice)
100
Pragmatic use of category in job application I
wouldnt, I would not tick the disabled box I
think maybe I did actually reign in my pride and
tick the disability box and I rang them and said,
Im dyslexic and if Im coming to your centre
then I need access to a word processor. So
yeah, I think in that instance I made it work for
me and then I thought, well, damn it, why should
I handicap myself?. In other instances I havent
because Im very suspicious, despite the fact
that the Disability Discrimination Act exists.
Im very very suspicious of people making a
judgement about who you are depending on whether
you tick a box or you dont. Because I think
people dont understand that you can have
dyslexia and be completely, perfectly affable,
perfectly bright person who just has a few
problems in these areas over here. (Sheena)
101
Lecturers accounts of dyslexia Concerns about
dumbing down I think the issues of academic
standards will come to the fore when we have a
lot more students who fall into the disabled
group and what we will get is the student who is
disabled and a bad student. A student who is
disabled and is a bit lazy, and I think people
are not quite sure what to do because of the PC
nature of it. These are the cases that will be
difficult because the question arises, is the
student using their disability as an excuse for
being lazy? But most of the people we have had
so far are here because it isn't yet mainstream
and they have struggled so hard to get here and
they are willing. As I say in the past its been
a case of asking the lecturer, Can I have this
extra thing, can I tape the lecture and go away
and re-write it?. So they are going through all
this extra work so they tend to be the students
who are motivated. (lecturer, ancient
university)
102

• Conclusion
• Social constructionist thinking provides insight
  into struggles over categorisation of disability
  over time
• Rapid expansion in number of students with
  diagnosis of dyslexia
• Expansion of disabled students largely explained
  by increase in the number of dyslexic students.
• Relatively socially advantaged group.

103

• Students describe struggle to have dyslexia
  formally recognised (although negative
  assessments rare).
• Identification of dyslexia welcomed - but
  institutional response often slow
• Dyslexia is not without stigma but preferred to
  category of disability

104

• Resistance at institutional level linked to
  struggle over resources
• Individual academics express scepticism about
  validity of category
• Seen as dumbing down linked to pathologising
  of normal experience.

105
Reforming Teaching is there such a thing as a
special pedagogy?Lani FlorianUniversity of
Cambridge
106
Pedagogy

• the broad cluster of decisions and actions
  taken in classroom settings that aim to promote
  school learning
• Lewis and Norwich, 2005 p.7

107
What is special education?

• USA
• Specially designed instruction...to meet the
  unique needs of a child with a disability
• England
• Special education provision means...educational
  provision which is additional to, or otherwise
  different from, the educational provision made
  generally for children of their age in schools
  maintained by the LEA, other than special
  schools, in the area
• Scotland
• A child or young person has additional support
  needs (ASN) where, for whatever reason, the child
  or young person is, or is likely to be, unable
  without the provision of additional support to
  benefit from school education provided or to be
  provided for the child or young person

108
Previous work on specialist pedagogy

• Lewis and Norwich (1999)
• interested in whether differences between
  learners (by particular SEN group) could be
  identified and systematically linked with
  learners' needs for differential teaching
• general differences - "needs which are specific
  or distinctive to a group that shares distinctive
  characteristics
• unique differences - "are informed only by
  common and individual needs, general specific
  needs are not recognised"

109
Previous work on specialist pedagogy

• Two central findings
• the available evidence does not support the
  general difference position and
• while it does not fully endorse the unique
  differences position there was some support for
  the argument that what works for most pupils
  works for all pupils, though there might be
  differences in application for various types of
  difficulties.
• 'continua of teaching or pedagogic approaches'

110
Meta-analyses of special education practices

• Considered useful answering questions about what
  works in special education Kavale review.
• Attempts to define what is special about special
  education have failed to show anything
  distinctive.
• It is when research which investigates the
  teaching-learning process in general is
  'interpreted' for special education that
  significant effect sizes are obtained.
• SPECIAL education
• special EDUCATION

111
Teaching strategies and approaches for pupils
with special educational needs a scoping study.

• AIM to map out and assess the effectiveness of
  the different approaches and strategies used to
  teach pupils with the full range of special
  educational needs
• language and communication
• cognition and learning
• physical and sensory
• emotional and behavioural difficulties

112
Findings

• Certain teaching strategies and approaches are
  associated with, but not necessarily related
  directly to specific categories of SEN.
• These were not sufficiently differentiated from
  those which are used to teach all children to
  justify a distinctive SEN pedagogy.
• Sound practices in teaching and learning in both
  mainstream and special education literatures were
  often informed by the same basic research.
• Some teaching strategies developed for one
  purpose can be used with particular groups of
  children for other purposes (e.g. co-operative
  learning).
• There is a growing need to move away from the
  belief that one model of learning informs and
  justifies one model of teaching. Thus, the
  findings of the scoping study led to focus more
  broadly on the question of pedagogy.

113
Pedagogy

• what one needs to know, and the skills one needs
  to command, in order to make and justify the many
  different kinds of decisions of which teaching is
  constituted...including
• children their characteristics, development and
  upbringing
• learning how it can best be motivated, achieved,
  identified, assessed and built upon
• teaching its planning, execution and evaluation,
  and
• curriculum the various ways of knowing,
  understanding, doing, creating, investigating and
  making sense which it is desirable for children
  to encounter, and how these are most
  appropriately translated and structured for
  teaching ( Alexander, 2004).

114
Pedagogy

• It is not the differences among children, their
  characteristics or upbringing that is problematic
  but when the magnitude of these differences
  exceeds what schools can accommodate that
  children are considered to have special
  educational needs.
• this process of making accommodations does not
  constitute pedagogy but is an element of it.
• questions about a separate special education
  pedagogy are unhelpful.
• the more important agenda is about how to develop
  a pedagogy that is inclusive of all learners.
• SEN Code of Practice areas of need are important
  elements of human development for all learners.

115
Pedagogy

• Moreover these elements interact in ways that
  produce individual differences which make it
  difficult to prescribe a course of action to
  remedy a particular problem.
• Special education knowledge - an essential
  component of pedagogy.
• Necessary but not sufficient conditions
• an opportunity for pupil participation in
  decision-making processes
• a positive attitude about the learning abilities
  of all pupils
• teacher knowledge about learning difficulties and
  other special educational needs
• skilled use of specific teaching methods
• parent and teacher support

116

• Transitions for Young People with Special
  Educational Needs
• Alan Dyson
• University of Manchester

117
The Issues

• Model of social inclusion dependent on
• Progression to EET
• Employability in a globalised labour market
• One way of being
• Support structures interventions for those at
  risk of exclusion
• Young people with difficulties which make this
  model problematic

118
The Study

• Longitudinal study of YPs identified at school as
  having SEN
• Wave 2 captures YPs at age 17
• Main survey supplemented by 16 case studies
• Cases weighted towards those where interventions
  might have most effect
• Interviews with YPs, parents/carers, providers

119
Themes

• Deferred transitions for some
• preordained tracks
• waiting for maturation
• Disrupted transitions
• churning lack of progression
• Variable support 7 planning at school beyond
• Dependence on parental intervention
• an under-utilised resource

120
Themes II

• Variable outcomes
• Social difficulties
• Lack of independent living
• Lack of rational planning

121
Some implications

• All may yet be well, but
• The linear transition model appears not to apply
  here
• Personal limitations and inadequate support send
  young people off-track
• No obvious entitlement
• Maybe stronger support is neededor a different
  paradigm

122
Adult Basic Education and Social Inclusion

• Lyn Tett
• University of Edinburgh

123
Social Inclusion

• The excluded do not constitute a defined group in
  the population there is no single clear-cut
  definition of social exclusion. Categories such
  as the unskilled ethnic minorities the
  unemployed cover a range of circumstances. . So
  exclusion does not bring a precise target into
  view but a range of associated issues (OECD,
  1999 15-16).
• The goal of policy is now to change behaviour in
  civil society (individuals and organisations)
  rather than simply provide a service.
• The new language of exclusion implies that
  governments task is to promote inclusion into
  the existing social order (Field, 2000 108).

124
Literacy and numeracy

• Being literate and numerate is generally equated
  with success in life, with notions of a person
  being educated, obtaining a job and having
  access to the goods and trappings of well being
  that are valued highly in society.
• An earlier discourse of economic egalitarianism
  has given way to a new emphasis on individual
  responsibility. Extremes of income and wealth are
  no longer presented as undesirable in themselves.
  The only undesirable element is that they may
  lock certain members of society into an inability
  to take care of themselves. The state then has a
  responsibility to ensure that opportunities for
  self-advancement are made equally available to
  every citizen, an obvious responsibility in
  relation to education and training
  (Phillips,1999 13).

125
Employment and basic skills

• A number of quantitative studies have shown that
  literacy and numeracy skills are significant both
  in gaining employment and also in retaining and
  progressing in it.
• The findings of the International Adult Literacy
  Survey (IALS) are based on a particular discourse
  that assumes that literacy and numeracy skills
  are neutral that takes no account of the ways in
  which literacy and numeracy are used in specific
  communities. In this discourse literacy skills
  are viewed as a set of technical skills which,
  once acquired, usually lead to positive
  employment outcomes.
• In contrast ethnographic studies of literacy and
  numeracy practices reveal the role of social
  networks where people act as mediators or
  brokers in assisting others.

126
A social practice approach to learning

• Rather than seeing literacy and numeracy as the
  decontextualised, mechanical, manipulation of
  letters, words and figures instead literacies are
  located within the social, emotional and
  linguistic contexts that give them meaning.
• Thus reading and writing are complex cognitive
  activities that integrate feelings, values,
  routines, skills, understandings, and activities
  and depend on a great deal of contextual (i.e.
  social) knowledge and intention

127
A social practice approach to learning
learning as belonging
community
learning as doing
Learning
identity
practice
learning as becoming
meaning
learning as experience
From Etienne Wenger (1998) Communities of
Practice Learning, Meaning and Identity,
Cambridge University Press
128
Learners Views from the workplace

• Ive got the practical skills to work out how
  much paint its going to take to cover a room
  from doing it over the years so I dont really
  need to measure it all out. The young guys in my
  firm know how to do all that and we work together
  because they can learn from me but they also know
  things that I dont.
• I speak up a lot more now. When they tried to
  change our schedules at work I said it wasnt
  right and we got together and they changed it
  back. Before I came to the programme I would
  never have done that because I didnt want to
  make trouble.
• I basically know what Im talking about now. Im
  confident and capable and know I can achieve
  things.

129
Learners Views continued

• Its making me realise that Im not stupid.
• It made a whole lot of difference to how I feel
  about myself since I learned to read better. You
  feel better when you learn to do a lot of things
  for yourself you know.
• Im not afraid to voice my opinion now, even if
  Im wrong.
• Im being taken more seriously at work now.
  Im not just a woman who left school and then had
  lots of kids.

130
Education and Learning

• Even a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It
  causes a smouldering discontent that may flame
  into active rebellion against a low level of
  life, and produces a demand, however stammering,
  for more interests and chances. Where we see
  ferment there has been some of the yeast of
  education (Margaret Davies, 1913).

131
Social Practices approach and Social Inclusion 1

• Literacy and numeracy being organised within
  specific social, emotional and linguistic
  contexts that integrate feelings, values,
  routines, skills, understandings, and activities.
• Purposeful learning that builds on learners
  prior knowledge and experience to shape and
  construct new knowledge but also challenges them
  to take risks
• Developing a curriculum that helps students to
  recognise that they have the capacity to learn
  and to generate new knowledge that will be really
  useful to them

132
Social Practices approach and Social Inclusion 2

• Working on both increasing skills and developing
  peoples critical awareness of why they might not
  have these skills in the first place
• Developing the awareness of employers, policy
  makers and other decision-makers about the value
  of using a social practices, rather than a
  deficit, approach to literacy and numeracy
• Maximising the strengths of peoples spiky
  profiles of skills, knowledge and understanding
  through working collaboratively in their
  communities of practice.

133
Disabled Learners and Social Justice A Swedish
Comparative Perspective

• Eva Hjorne Lisa Asp-Onsjo
• Goteborg University

134
A school for all

• The idea is 200 years old
• Political goal and ambition
• Not everyone fits in
• A dilemma solved by differentiating/segregating
  strategies

135
The arguments have changed

• Protect the normal child
• For the childs own best
• Beneficial for everyone implies differentiating
  pupils into homogeneous special classes
• Meet the individual pupils needs implies
  entitlement or right to special support

136
Categories used have changed

• Poor, unintelligent short period of schooling
• Moron, imbecile remedial class
• Intellectually retarded, maladjusted, immature,
  CP 8 different classes in the curriculum
• Neuropsychiatric impairments (diagnosises)
  special teaching groups i.e. ADHD-group

137
For example in 1962

• Remedial class
• Special class for maladjusted children
• Class for children with impaired hearing
• Class for children with visual impairments
• Remedial reading class
• Open-air and health class
• School readiness class
• Class for children with cerebral palsy (CP)

138
Goal- and result oriented school

• Local school regulates the details and
  distributes resources
• Categorization a sensitive issue
• Equal access to school
• Entitled to special support if needed
• Medicalisation and the use of neuropsychiatric
  categories -10 - ADHD and 21 NPF

139
Swedish Compulsory School

• 1.1 million pupils (65.000 pupils in independent
  schools)
• 1,5 classical impairments visual - hearing
  impairments (0.1) and mental retardation (1.4)
• Increasing number (50) pupils in special school
  for mentally retarded 10.000 (1999) ? 15.000
  (2004)
• 21 in need of special support
• Trend increasing number of special teaching
  groups groups for reading, maths, disciplinary
  problems, ADHD, Aspergers

140
How the political goal of having a school for
all turn out in praxis
141
Pupil Welfare Team the institutional mechanism

• Local responsibility focus on the professionals
• Define pupils in need of special support
• Gender balance 31
• Consensus in the multiprofessional team
• Childrens difficulties seen as a consequence of
  pupil characteristics - diagnosises
• Normalising school practices
• No pupils perspectives
• Attempts of joining-up thinking

142
IEP an institutional tool

• IEP - a legal obligation for the school and an
  entitlement for pupils and parents
• Designed by school staff in negotiation with
  parents and pupils

143
The case of Angie

• Desired situation - special school for
  mentally retarded
• IEP as a force of pressure on the parents
• Resulted in placing Angie in the category
  mentally retarded
• Solution seems unaviodable

144
Diagnosises solve the dilemma but a diagnostic
culture undermines a school for all
145
Questions Discussion
146
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