Contributions from: Barbara Burke & Colin Hardy; London Borough of Newham
Abstract
This paper will explore the impact on practice, of teachers attending accredited long courses mounted jointly between the London Borough of Newham and the Institute of Education's Outreach Programme for Special Educational Needs. Newham has now closed five of its eight special schools so that hands-on experience in a special school setting is no longer an option. However, support service staff, SENC0s, and teachers in resourced schools require specialist training. Both LEA and school development plans emphasise the importance of appropriate training opportunities for all staff.
After setting the scene of Newham's ongoing inclusive education policy and practice, now in its 12th year, the paper will explore the relationship between staff development and developing effective inclusive education.
The difficulties of collecting valid information, to demonstrate both the short and long term impact of training, will also be explored. Data used will come from a range of monitoring activities carried out by Newham and the Institute as part of their regular policies of evaluation. The ongoing partnership between the LEA's trainers and the lecturing staff of the Institute will also be evaluated.
Context and Background - Institute of Education
Between 1983 and 1987 The Institute of Education organised a set of one term courses for those wishing to co-ordinate special educational needs in mainstream schools. These courses were known as OTIS (one term in-service) They ran for four years, and up to 25 LEAs were involved. These courses were not accredited to an academic programme, even though course-work was required and in most cases a very high standard achieved. The courses ran parallel to the Advanced Diploma and Masters courses, but had no formal links with them. The funding was generous, coming from the earliest form of the Standards Fund, known then as In-service Teacher Training Grants, Circular 3/83-3/85. When these grants changed, it was no longer possible to fund these courses , but with the reduced money two LEAs jointly chose to run an equivalent course based in one of their Professional Development Centres (PDCs). Later, 3 other LEAs ran a similar course; these were called SENIOS (Special Educational Needs in Ordinary Schools) and were focused on training co-ordinators and others. The Institute of Education then began to accredit these courses as part of the Advanced Diploma.
As more children with significant SEN were integrated into mainstream schools, so the demand for some specialist knowledge for their teachers also grew. A second type of outreach course started in 1991 as LEAs requested help with the demand for specialised teaching for children with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD). A group of LEAs were helped in these courses by working with Klaus Weddell, the Professor in SEN at the Institute at that time.
When the ILEA broke up, an independent organisation known as Special Educational Needs Joint Initiative for Training (SENJIT) was set-up housed, in the Special Needs Department at the Institute. This was mainly to run short courses and to promote in-service about SEN in those London LEAs who subscribed to the scheme. By 1994, it also seemed a good idea for SENJIT to market the outreach courses to its members. To help organise this, an outreach co-ordinator was appointed from amongst the staff of the SEN department. In the last few years, the requests from the LEAs for a variety of courses has grown in both number and range,and there are now some 30 courses accredited as part of the Advanced Diploma in SEN, but run locally in the LEAs own PDCs Requests have been made for courses on emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), language and communication difficulties, autism, and on information technology for SEN. (ICT)
A feature of outreach courses is that they must give teachers working in mainstream schools sufficient knowledge and skills to feel confident and to be competent in teaching youngsters who might in the past have been placed in special schools. Teachers coming on these courses may only have one or two pupils with that particularly difficulty in their class. However, they want to know about children experiencing that disability ,and more importantly, they want to be effective in their assessment and teaching of the child or group.
Organisation of Outreach
The Institute organises outreach courses by appointing two types of tutor for each course. One is the Delivery Tutor, who is responsible for the teaching and tutoring of the course at the local level. Delivery Tutors (DTs) must have suitable qualifications and experience in the domain area in question (for example SpLD, EBD). The other tutor has to be a member of the SEN department and is called the Responsible Tutor. They look after the quality control and academic underpinning, as well as the general management of the course and marking the assignment work (typically a 4000 word report of practical work). As the demand for courses has grown, finding enough of both types of tutor has been a challenge. Training of the Delivery Tutors by the Responsible Tutor has often been undertaken when a number of LEAs are running similar courses.
The group of Delivery Tutors meets regularly to organise the course, run conferences, discuss assignments but also so that tutors may have specific help with their own professional understanding and be kept up-to-date with current research findings. Such tutor development has been more difficult to provide for smaller groups when only one or two LEAs have made unusual or one-off requests for a new topic such as severe learning difficulties in mainstream schools.
Newham background information
The need for a high level of in-service training become apparent in 1987 when Newham adopted a policy of including pupils with special educational needs into mainstream schools. By 1999 Newham had closed five special schools and the future of the remaining three was being reviewed. The current intention is to leave just one special school open.
Newham is a densely populated urban area to the east of London. There are 39,000 children of school age. A rapidly growing population means that there is always pressure on school places. One benefit of this population growth has been that Newham has been able to build a number of new purpose-built inclusive schools. It is often described as one of the most deprived urban areas in the country. Around 40% of the total school population are currently entitled to free school meals. Newham is a multi-cultural authority where over half of the school population speaks a language other than English as their home language. The OFSTED inspection report of the LEA referred to "poverty and ethnic diversity" but praised Newham for not allowing these to "lead to failure at school".
Prior to the adoption of an inclusive education policy, special schools provided practical experience for special needs teachers. Although training was available, much of it focused on special schools and a deficit or medical model for learning. It was the absence of an inclusive focus that led Newham to develop its own training and to establish links with higher education. Originally, four courses were offered that would lead to an Advanced Diploma in Special Educational Needs. These focused on behaviour, severe learning difficulties, language and communication and special needs in the ordinary school. Last year, over half of all schools sent at least one representative on centrally run inclusive education courses. There was a cross section of staff from, nursery, infant, primary, secondary and the support services.
Training in inclusive education was supported by a number of other initiatives:-
Concepts of In-service
Outreach courses bridge two aspects of traditional teacher training. On the one hand, there are the academic courses based at Institutes of Higher Education, usually part of Advanced Diplomas or Masters courses. Their focus has been to teach the theoretical background of research and practice, while also enhancing the course members' practical application and reflective understanding of issues. On the other hand, teacher centre courses have focused on enhancing practitioner knowledge of the 'how to' kind. Teachers coming on these courses often want quick solutions to immediate challenges they are facing in classrooms. They want to know about strategies and resources to solve these problems.
These two apparently different approaches can present demands on outreach courses and their tutors. They must meet the professional demands of teachers and their schools, but also the demands of academic institutions to produce written work with sufficient rigour to pass the requirements of the exam boards.
The teacher as a craftsperson
There is an ever- increasing demand on teachers to become 'master craft performers'. Judgements are made about these performances through appraisal and monitoring. Teachers are also judged by pupil outcomes. Inclusion presents ever more challenges for teachers. Special needs pupils may not achieve standardised normative goals but nevertheless their inclusion and participation in the learning process can be enhanced. For this to happen, the teacher needs to be good at the teaching craft; but also needs a solid foundation of knowledge about children's development and individual differences.
The threat of theory
Elliott (1991) examines the threat theory presents to teachers. One of the reasons he thinks that theory threatens is that it comes from outsiders who appear to be ,or are powerful. He explains that this disabling effect on teachers needs to be overcome. They need to remain curious and ask questions about the underlying theoretical models being suggested by research. This needs time and motivation. For this reason, longer courses are needed to help teachers overcome their fears and begin to enjoy working at this deeper level.
Writing an academic report presents an even greater threat because teachers fear being judged in academic terms. They are usually happy to report their practical work , and indeed this is an important aspect of assignments, but the extra requirement to write about what they have read presents another challenge.
Assignments for an outreach course covers both practical work and its theoretical underpinning. They require coherent writing and evidence of teaching a child or group, or of developing a policy. This is a daunting task to many teachers who only want to attend courses to get the general idea about a topic.
Eraut writing in the 1970s, described four levels of in-service which still seem a useful model to discuss. These were:-
| 1. | Information dissemination |
| 2. | Problem awareness |
| 3. | Problem study |
| 4. | Problem solution |
All the Outreach courses cover these levels - the first two through lectures and seminars, the last two through work on case studies and action research projects. Therefore it is important for teachers to carry out their projects on courses.
Inclusive Practice
Newham requested the Institute to take over the running and accreditation of all their courses .Newham currently runs seven of these courses.
Advertising courses at the start of a new academic year reveals another sources of discord. From the point of view of hard-pressed teaching staff 'practicality' is what is being looked for and immediacy of results in the classroom. Yet evaluations of courses over the years reveal that although staff would not have voted for doses of 'theory' at the start of the course, they often appreciate the benefits of the 'medicine' in the end. Frequently mentioned by staff is how a course has helped them to reflect on current practice and consider change.
This last point very much relates to the changing INSET needs following the delegation of SEN funding, which occurred in Newham after Easter 2000. In the absence of a large central support service will individual schools have the inclination, the time and the expertise to devise improvement plans that reflect this dual need for theory and practice?
Will we see the renaissance of the special school in a more advisory and support role as envisaged by the DfEE (1999), as, "confident, outward-looking centres of excellence"? This seems unlikely in a borough as heavily committed to inclusion as Newham and, as Mel Ainscow points out (1997),
"As we have tried to integrate pupils seen as having special educational needs into mainstream schools, we have tended to adopt practices derived from experiences in special provision. Many of these approaches are simply not feasible in primary and secondary schools."
The implication is that specialist training with the mainstream setting in mind will be needed. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the uniqueness of much of inclusive education training and the inappropriateness of basing this on special school experience. This was not an easy task and not one that Newham could do alone. For this reason, in 1987, when the Inclusive Education policy was adopted, Newham forged links with higher education. There was a need for a wider perspective beyond the borough.
Questions and methods
From 1998 to the present time all these courses have run once or twice. It therefore seemed timely to examine their effectiveness in terms of Newham's inclusive policies, and ask -
Our questions arose from a wish to find out how effective courses we offered Newham were in helping the LEA enhance their Inclusive Practice. This would need to be looked at from the individual course members' perspective and that of their school. Although courses are written so any LEA can adopt them, Newham tutors (drawn from support services) delivered courses in a way which interpreted Newham policies.
Methods used for collecting data
There was very little time and money for this research , so we needed to collect data from activities we already did as far as possible.
Findings
Course Participants
The graph, Take up of Diploma Courses, was based upon the registers for the latest complete run of the courses, 1998-1999. It is proportional in that for each group the number of staff attending courses was divided by the total number of staff in that group. The number of permanent full-time staff working in the special school sector is now so small that this has been included with support services. In the past it was the special schools that were looked to as a reservoir of expertise in relation to pupils with special educational needs. More recently it has been the central support teams that have assumed this role so it is not unreasonable to combine these two.
The delegation of the support services, inApril 2000 and the closure of one on the three remaining special schools (July 2001) ,will quite soon impact on the availability of trainers and this forms an important impetus behind this current review of the role of the outreach courses.
Based upon a questionnaire given to all participants in diploma courses, the following generic information was gained. A typical participant profile is of a senior member of staff with 15 or more years experience of teaching. Many participants held senior positions as Head Teachers, Heads of Department, Advisory Staff etc. There was a cross- section of phases represented.
Reasons for doing the course were typically to improve knowledge, understanding and classroom practice. Individual professional development was a common theme : it was seen as useful to gain formal or accredited qualifications to add to a Curriculum Vitae. Most people felt that these aims had been achieved.
There was widespread agreement about the personal gains from the courses which related to an improvement in confidence and competence in dealing with individual children. A typical comment was "Increased awareness of individual difficulties and how to plan for them". Likewise the number and range of comments confirmed that participants ability had been improved in dealing with individual parents: "awareness raised of importance of involving parents".
As regards whole-school gains from the course participants had a lot less to say and the answers to associated questions were quite negative. For example in response to the question relating to school planning and policy development, "did not help", or "not yet but could in the future", were typical responses. Few schools had thought out how they were going to feed back information from the participant into the school improvement plan. For most schools a single staff meeting and a brief report was the only structure for engaging with the whole school.
In two schools an incidental gain had been that other staff had observed good practice from the course participant, for example the setting up of language groups in a classroom and had subsequently asked about this and copied it.
The question on 'Enhancing Inclusive Practice' evoked virtually unanimous agreement on the usefulness of the course. The value of the reflective nature of the courses was nowhere better seen than here. A typical comment from one participant was that she felt that the course had given her "greater confidence to 'sell' inclusion of pupils with severe learning difficulties to the mainstream staff," and from another participant, "fully supported the ideal of inclusion".
Links to the Institute of Education were viewed positively with both the Institute of Education library and the book box being well used. Tutorial support from both local and Institute tutors were in most cases said to be of a high standard and an important support to participants. A number of respondents mentioned that in addition 'distance learning' methods could enhance this support.
The theoretical element of the course and the requirement to complete a 4000-word assignment were the main worry for a large number of participants. However a number of participants acknowledged at the end of the course that it was these factors that enabled them to better focus and reflect on their current practice. All but one respondent was intending to do more modules, so they can't be that bad!
SENCO Questionaire
The questionnaire to SENCOs "SENCOs what are your training needs?" was put out some time towards the end of courses and gives an insight into how SENCOs and school see their training needs.
The perceptions of training needs of SENCOs reflects the areas of training chosen for the diploma course. In particular the Language and Communication course, the Behaviour course and the Dyslexia (SpLD) course address areas that are perceived as needed. Informal discussion with SENCOs supports the view that these courses are welcome ,along with other National Advanced courses.
For some areas, notably hearing, visual and physical impairment, the low number of schools expressing training needs merely reflects that fact that these are relatively incidence areas of disability.
The very low score for INSET on IEP writing is an interesting example of the differences in perception of INSET need. Both Newham's SEN panel locally, and OFSTED (1999) nationally, put IEPs much higher up the priority list for INSET. Who is right? The high score for 'Whole School Approaches', over 20 schools mention this and the fact that it is the third most popular area, perhaps reflects the findings of the diploma questionnaire and the focus group meeting that there is a need to ensure that INSET impacts at a whole-school level.
Focus group feedback
All the delivery tutors met at the Institute in April for two hours .There was a structured discussion covering our main research questions ,but other issues were covered as they arose. Tutors thought that:-
Tutors themselves valued
Tutors thought that course members valued:
There was much less evidence of school impact. Tutors also commented that sessions with staff in schools needed to be planned and built into the course structure and assessment procedures, to allow more feedback to happen. One also said that headteachers were not always co-operative and would block dissemination of ideas.
Tutors thought these things could be improved:
Implications for the intitute
This suggests that the Co-ordinator might work more closely with LEAs:
For Institute practice the research suggests that
OFSTED Report
The SENCO Training course was inspected by our HMI ,working with the TTA. The inspection was judged under four headings, which were:-
The HMI visited the Newham- based course as part of the inspection. The report judged the provision to be excellent. The inspection found the content to be a well-judged blend of essential practical work, supported by research perspectives and an appropriate focus on professional skills. There were stated learning outcomes for each session, which made evaluations more focussed and which also gave a full picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the course. These could be addressed in re-runs.
There were lessons to be learnt from the inspection process. These were:-
Implications for Newham
The partnership has been enhanced by the very process of our evaluation. Dialogue has brought out aspects which were not noticed or sufficiently valued. Improvements will need to be made in Newham:-
Conclusions
Bibliography:
Ainscow M. (1997) 'Towards inclusive schooling', British Journal of Special Education, Volume 24, No. 1
Elliott J (1991) Action Research for Educational Change. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Eraut M (1972) 'In-service Education for Innovation'. Council for Educational Technology Occasional Paper 4. Councils and Education Press.
DfEE, 1999, Statistical First Release. Data on Special Educational Needs (SEN) for all schools in England as at January 1999, accessed 29/05/00 20:34 PM, http://www.dfee.gov.uk/news/sfr_v2/sfr010.htm
London Borough of Newham, 1996, The Strategy for Inclusive Education.
London Borough of Newham, 1998, Inclusive Education Charter.
London Borough of Newham, 1998, Audit of Inclusive Education.
London Borough of Newham, 1999, Key Educational Statistics .
OFSTED, 1999, The SEN Code of Practice: three years on, The contribution of IEPs to the raising of standards for pupils with special educational needs London: HMSO
TTA (1999) National Special Educational Needs Specialist Standards. London: TTA
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