Contributions from: Patrick Wiegand
Abstract
This paper is concerned with education for the active participation in their community of children and young people who have learning difficulties. Specifically it addresses the question of developing their skills and confidence in independent wayfinding, not only so that they can get to where they want to go in order to access particular facilities, but also to promote a sense of belonging and identity within their local environment.
The paper draws on a research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation in which we explored the wayfinding experiences and skills of young people with moderate and severe learning difficulties. We present data from both questionnaires and interviews with young people, their parents and staff, and from 'home range' maps, to illustrate the fragmentary and restricted nature which characterises many young people's spatial experience. The barriers to their greater spatial independence arise from a complex interaction of personal limitations, attitudes and expectations of others and wider factors affecting personal and traffic safety. We focus particularly on those that result from a lack of coordinated planning for continuity and progression and outline a heuristic framework for promoting active problem-solving and self-help strategies.
Introduction
What do we mean by independent wayfinding?
We use the term to refer not only to navigating one’s way or route-finding, but also to exercising choice and developing preferences concerning where one wants to go. That is, we are not only concerned with functional wayfinding in order to access particular facilities, but also with a means of promoting a sense of belonging and identity within one’s local environment.
Why do we describe it as a key skill?
It is fundamental to the three elements that have been described as essential for citizenship, i.e. a sense of belonging, the capacity to gain access and the ability to participate (Boateng, cited in Burkimsher, 1993).
What does the word community mean for young people with learning difficulties?
For many young people with learning difficulties, there is great fragmentation in their experience of the local environments of home, school, and other salient settings. If we are to promote their active community participation, it is therefore vitally important that we seek ways of building greater coherence and integration.
This paper draws on a research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation (Wiegand and Beveridge 1997, 1998; Beveridge and Wiegand 1998, 1999) in order to characterise the current situation in relation to independent wayfinding for young people with learning difficulties; identify barriers to their greater independence; and present strategies to overcome these.
The aims of the research project were to improve the wayfinding strategies of young people (age 16-25 years) with moderate and severe learning difficulties and to promote confident, secure and independent exploration. Specifically, we set out to investigate:
and, with a sample of individual young people, we focused in more depth:
The project incorporated the following elements:
The current situation - how can it be characterised?
The picture which arises from our study is as follows.
At home: typically the young people with learning difficulties have a severely limited experience of independent outdoor activity based on their local home environment.
As illustrated in Figure 1, the most characteristic home range map shows:
In addition to the immediate locality of their home, many young people have one or more further ‘zones of independence’. These are typically supermarkets, pedestrian shopping centres or sports centres at which, once there, some measure of independence can be enjoyed.
Figure 1: Simplified model of typical 'home range'
At school, college or centre: although many activities take place out in the local community and beyond, typically:
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the primary purpose is what happens at the destination rather than the process of getting there; |
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most formal work on skills progression is restricted to personal and road safety; |
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any further preparation for wayfinding involves repetitive training along specific routes. |
Between home and school, college or centre: there is little evidence of joint planned activity to promote independent wayfinding. Because of the geographical distance that is typically involved,
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there is little independent travel between the locations; |
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some of the wayfinding activities organised by school, college or centre have little functional use at home. |
Between school and post-school provision: there is little evidence of continuity in planning.
In summary, the fragmentary and restricted nature of many young people's spatial experience is marked. Why should this be? Clearly there are a number of barriers to independent wayfinding for young people with learning difficulties.
Barriers to independent wayfinding
Many factors restrict the spatial experience of all children today. These include the dangers (both real and perceived) from traffic and issues related to personal safety as well as the appeal of an indoor world. However, most will make a transition to greater spatial independence at about the age of transfer to secondary school. For those with learning difficulties, however, the combination of limitations in personal skills together with restrictions imposed by environmental risk result in a set of very significant barriers to the development of their independence.
Personal skills. In our questionnaire survey, reported wayfinding skill levels were disappointingly low (see Table 1, for some illustrative examples). These levels are lower than they need be, for as already noted, opportunities to use and develop skills are typically limited. Indeed, it was notable how many of the young people we worked with were really ready to apply, develop and extend their skills over the course of their involvement with the project. Pertinent findings from the wayfinding walks we undertook with these young people include the following:
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even when skills are in their repertoire, they are not necessarily used when out on a wayfinding walk e.g. many young people demonstrate that they have the skills of using a pelican crossing, recognising shop and road signs, noting significant landmarks and using directions. However, only a minority apply these spontaneously in real world settings. |
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most lack the experience of taking the lead and taking responsibility for their own decisions. Related to this, almost none of the young people who lost their bearings on our wayfinding walks were able to recognise that they were lost until they were prompted. When they acknowledged that they were lost, most had no strategies for recovering their position. |
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because almost all the environmental experiences in which the young people were typically engaged are strongly functional in nature, they have few opportunities to reflect on where they like to go and why or to develop the skills needed to make choices based on their place preferences. |
Respondents Staff (%) Parents (%) Young People (%) Cross minor road? 53 58 62 Cross major road? 34 30 37 Use a pelican crossing? 50 47 57
Table 1: Example of wayfinding-related skill levels, showing the percentage of young people with learning difficulties reported by their staff, their parents and themselves to be able to cross minor and major roads and use pelican crossings without help.
Peer support. Absence of peer support is frequently a further barrier. Children often travel long distances to special schools, and so friends made there are unlikely to live nearby. This means that opportunities for peer support in making excursions and discovering new places around home can be limited, yet this is one of the principal ways in which most children extend their familiarity with their home area. The lack of peer support can have a cumulative effect over time: we found that in several cases the zone of spatial independence actually shrinks rather than extends from childhood to young adulthood.
Liaison between home and school (and subsequently, post-school provision). Preparation for independent wayfinding needs to begin early, but the absence of coordination between home and school represents a barrier for a number of reasons. Where home and school are geographically distant, as is often the case for children attending special provision, this leads to a lack of coherence in environmental experience. Moreover, there are potential areas of disagreement between their parents and staff on what constitutes a realistic and desirable level of independence, and on the importance of supported risk-taking. The situation can be further compounded of course if other residential contexts, such as some form of short term care, play a significant part in their lives.
Lack of planning for progression. In addition to a lack of coordination between home, school and post-school provision, our research revealed a lack of planning for progression in wayfinding-related skills. Where systematic work was undertaken, it tended to be restricted to a narrow focus on safety skills.
Wider issues. Road and personal safety are of course paramount concerns for parents and staff. Developments in urban and transport planning and changing societal attitudes all have a significant role in this respect.
Strategies for developing practice
The focus in the concluding part of this paper is on strategies to promote planning for greater continuity and progression in the development of wayfinding skills. There is an evident need for a coordinated approach which:
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begins early |
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continues over time, and |
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involves the developing child/young person, peers, parents, family, school staff and, subsequently, staff from colleges, day centres, etc. |
| and within which: | |
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attention is given to the development and progression of problem-solving and self-help strategies; |
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opportunities are provided for children and young people to make decisions, take the lead and apply their developing skills in real life settings. |
The development of problem-solving and self-help strategies.
Systematic strategies to promote the development of problem-solving and self-help strategies include:
developing awareness and use of landmarks when out in the local community. For example, through landmark observation, recognition and differentiation; activities which encourage children and young people to find their own landmarks which have personal meaning for them; the use of personal landmarks, both for planning routes and also for monitoring these routes in action.
developing preferences and choices
For example, through opportunities to develop skills for choosing between alternative routes and articulating reasons for the choice made.
the provision of spatial problem solving challenges
For example, wayfinding tasks which offer the experience of taking the lead, and opportunities for becoming 'lost' in a safe context in order to recognise uncertainty and practise recovery. These need to be phased with respect to both the complexity of what is required, and also the context in which it takes place.
Through activities such as these, children and young people can begin to develop an appropriate approach to risk-taking. Embedded within a systematic and coordinated approach the activities can be effectively used to enhance their active participation in their own community environments.
A heuristic framework
During the course of our research, we found that simple maps were a particularly powerful medium for many young people with learning difficulties. They appeared to make a lot of sense to them as an aid both to planning walks and also for reflecting back on the journey they had followed, helping them focus for example on the sequence of landmarks and events en route.
Further, we also found in our home-based interviews that they provided a fruitful means of mediating the shared perspectives of young people and their parents about the local environment around home. We therefore began to explore the use of large-scale maps as a heuristic planning device. Figure 2 provides a schematic representation of such a map, in which yellow shaded areas are those accessed (with varying degrees of support) around and from home, blue are those accessed around and from school, and purple are locations which could potentially be accessed from both home and school.
Figure 2: Schematic representation of a map used as a heuristic planning framework
| Such maps can be used by children and young people together with their parents and staff, in order to identify, for example: | |
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the range and extent of their environmental experiences; |
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the places where they already have a measure of independence, and targets for further extensions to this; |
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new or alternative possible connections that could be made between separate parts of their spatial world. |
References
Beveridge, S. and Wiegand, P. (1998) Strategies for Independent Wayfinding. Project report to the Nuffield Foundation. Leeds: University of Leeds.
Beveridge, S. and Wiegand, P. (1999) Developing spatial independence among children with learning difficulties. In M. Robertson and R. Gerber (eds) The Child’s World: Triggers for Learning Hawthorn, Victoria: Australian Council for Educational Research
Burkimsher, M. (1993) Creating a climate for citizenship education in schools, in, Edwards, J. and Fogelman, K. Developing Citizenship in the Curriculum, London: David Fulton.
Wiegand, P. and Beveridge, S. (1997) Rights and independence in travel for young people with learning difficulties. In M. Naish (ed) Values in Geographical Education. Proceedings of the special conference of the IGU Commission on Geographical Education. London: Institute of Education.
Wiegand, P. and Beveridge, S. E. (1998) Map support in wayfinding for young people with learning difficulties, Proceedings, International Cartographic Association Joint Seminar, Maps for Special Users pp.57-62, Wroclaw, Poland.
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