1.
In Germany we can observe different roots of development for
changing roles of special education teachers in inclusive education.
One
root starts 1976 with the first "Integrating Classes"("Integrative Klassen") in
a primary school in Berlin. The setting "integrating class" units with 10 - 15
children without handicaps or disturbances and 3 - 5 children with handicaps
and disturbances. In the following years integrating classes in regular schools
came into being in many German countries ( Deppe-Wolfinger/ Prengel/ Reiser
1990), most of them by the wish and often the power of parents, who built up
initiatives and organisations for integrating education. This was the
consequence of the integrating groups in the Kindergartens, which worked
successful and earned increasing regard ( Klein/ Kreie / Kron/ Reiser 1987).
Many parents and teachers wanted to continue this form of " living and learning
together" in the schools.
In this setting a regular teacher and a special
education teacher work together the whole time in one classroom and share the
responsibility for teaching all children in the classroom. In the first years
of these attempts increasing awareness was brought up to the co-operation of
the two teachers in this " double staff" model, which appeared as the crunch
point of the professional work. The idea of transferring competencies from one
teacher to another working together a long period of time gave rise to
questioning the equality of the work and the competence of the differently
specialised teachers. The question of equality and difference between regular
and special education competencies led to a controversial discussion (Kreie
1985). Another form of "integration" is the continuous ambulant support for the
regular teacher by a special teacher, who does part of her job in the classroom
of the regular teacher. This setting has three different roots and forms.
There is the form of "Integrated Special Educational Help" ("Integrierte
Schulische Erziehungshilfe") for children with learning disabilities, behaviour
problems and speech disorders in regular schools ( Reiser et.al. 1984). In this
form special educational teachers work as members of the teaching staff of a
regular school dividing their time with several classroom teachers. This model
made it possible to expand the inclusive education in the form of "Integrating
Regular Classes" ("Integrative Regelklassen").
Another form is the ambulant
service provided by special education teachers, who are members of the staff of
specialised schools or multiprofessional Centres and available to be called for
special problems. There is a tradition of this form especially in the services
for physically handicapped or emotionally disordered children. In some parts of
Germany these services are called " Mobile Special Educational Services"
(Mobiler Sonderpädagogischer Dienst), in other parts " Ambulant Special
Education" ("Ambulante Sonderpädagogik").
Lastly with the expansion of
integrating education in schools there were not enough integrating classes to
satisfy the demands of parents who wanted to take there handicapped children
into regular schools. The result was that more and more handicapped children
were put into regular classrooms ( "Single Integration"- "Einzelintegration")
and a number of hours of a special education teacher were allocated to satisfy
the "special educational needs". Soon the school authorities tried to find the
less expensive solutions to satisfy the wishes of the parents such that the
integrating class with two teachers for the whole teaching time is becoming an
infrequently used model.
Due to the fact that Germany is a federal republic
with different school traditions, philosophies and developments there is a
colourful landscape of forms and terms regarding integrating or inclusive
education in schools.
We assume that in future the most favoured models of
co-operation between special educational and regular teachers in Germany will
be on the one hand the form of Integrated Help, in which the capacities for
special education help are located in a regular school without being bound on
specific children and on the other hand the form of Mobile Services, in which
the special education teachers are called in for help solve specific problems
with specific children.
2.
In both cases the heart of the change in professional demands is
the requirement to work for the child instead of working with the child. To
work for the child requires to work with the parents, the teachers, with social
workers and other professionals. In the traditional self-concept of the special
educational teacher the relation to the child is the middle of feeling and
thinking about the job and it spends the highest gratification to care for a
"good relation" to the child. In some cases there is the opinion to be the
"lawyer" of the child knowing his needs and standing in for his interests. The
radical change includes the necessity of neutrality moderating the interacting
processes between the child and his environment.
The idea of the support
teacher, who is able to diagnose the educational needs and to teach the
handicapped child better than the regular teacher or will be able to tell the
regular teacher what to do and how to do it misleads the attempts to help. The
result will be to make the regular teachers clients in a sort of a "doctor -
patient-relationship" instead of helping them to develop their own educational
competence.
The unsolved problem is the relation between co-operation and
consultation ( Erchule/Martens 1997, Sandoval 1996).
We observe these
problems by a systemic-constructivistic view with different shades. Rolf
Werning prefers the systemic-constructivistic point of view focusing the
environment the persons are living in ("Lebenswelt"), Helmut Reiser prefers a
systemic-psychoanalytic point of view based an the psychoanalytic self
psychology. Nevertheless it is clear that the fixation of special educational
teachers to be the expert in diagnosing, contacting, supporting and teaching
the child prevents them from working for the child successfully. The
constructivistic point of view emphasises the equal rights and the subjective
meanings of individual reality constructions and shows the necessity to
construct a consensual area in respect to individual perceptions and living
experiences.
Therefore long time the idea of collaboration seems to be the
solution of the problem which role the special educational teacher shall play
working together with teachers, children, parents. Collaboration often is
emphasised as the highest grade of co-operation, which is characterised by a
deep correspondence of values, aims, feeling and methods between the
collaborating persons ( Luetje-Klose & Willenbring 1999 cite Marvin 1990).
The responsibility in solving educational problems should be jointly and
equally shared ( Dettmer, Thurston & Dyck 1993 cite Thousand et.al. 1992).
The collaborative style of consultation should be characterised by symmetric
relations. It is based on the idea that each person is the expert of his own
experiences and has the right to be respected.
Undoubtedly this idea is
fitting to the constructivistic point of view, but it is only the first half of
the whole ticket to co-operation. How to manage the exchange processes, how to
find decisions, which satisfy each participating person, how to clear
passionate involvement's and contraproductive emotions ? The model of
collaboration takes equality for granted: Two ore more professionals , who have
different experiences with the child, bring together there results and find the
optimal solution for his needs based on common values, feelings, aims, methods.
In the constructivistic perspective we emphasise the use of dealing with
differences. Operating the differences is the clue to find out and to respect
different individual constructions of reality and the different professional
backgrounds are a high good, which must not be wasted by levelling out for
equality.
Indeed, in earlier studies of co-operation in inclusive education
( Deppe-Wolfinger, Prengel & Reiser 1990) , we found the form of ideal
collaboration in integrative classrooms, where two teachers worked together in
the majority of time. In these settings regular and special teachers shared the
responsibility teaching all children in the classroom.
But the job of an
ambulant special educational teacher is meant to be for other aims. She shall
leave the regular teacher the responsibility for the child. She has the
responsibility for the process of finding solutions, without giving
instructions neither the teacher nor the child. In this setting the idea of
symmetric collaboration is a myth ( Sandoval 1996, Erchul & Martens 1997,
Reiser et.al. 2000)
But how to manage co-operation without making the
regular teacher a client ?
3.
We report the summaries of two investigations, which can answer
this question. Rolf Werning evaluated a group discussion with ambulant special
teachers working in primary schools. The project the special teachers are
working on is named " Regional Basic Supply with Special Educational Help"
("Regionale Sonderpädagogische Grundversorgung"). It is a model used by
the Education Department in one of theGerman states. In one particular school
district with a lot of social problems 14 elementary schools no longer send any
child to the special schools for learning or educational help or speech
handicapped further more. In place of the separated special schools the special
education teachers work in the elementary schools. Home base for the special
teachers is a school for learning disabilities, which decided to close their
age - groups 1 to 4 ( Children from the sixth/seventh year of age to the tenth/
eleventh) and to utilise their teachers directly in the elementary schools.
This study focuses the question of the significance and the handling of differences between special and regular teachers in the context of co-operative work in the heterogeneous classroom. The study involves sixteen special teachers who work in a "regional basic supply" support organisation. All teachers had been interviewed in a group situation. This discussion was analysed with a "interpretative-reductive content analysis" (Mayring, 2000).
The special educators describe the necessity of a particular special educational role profile, which they have to develop, during the teaching in heterogeneous classrooms. Therefore they bring explicitly there own professional perspective. Further they emphasise how carefully and slowly they have to apply their methods and their perspective during the cooperation with the primary school teachers.
"Well, I always have to check how open my co-operation teacher is to any possible proposals. Experience has shown me that it is very important to work slowly and not to let my colleague think that I am racing ahead like an express train"
On the one hand specific differences in the professional views are perceived and it is seen as very important to bring these differences to work. On the other hand the special educators have to take care that the primary school teachers are not going to be overtaxed. There is a danger that the regular teacher becomes a client in such a situation. The special educator constructs a pedagogical and therapeutic relation to the primary school teacher instead of a professional working relationship. Their aim is to professionalise their teacher colleagues, i.e. establishing an integrative perspective in their minds. The special educators take over the responsibility for this process.
" I see always the tendency and sometimes I hear it in our group: I am the more competent teacher and I am going to show you - little teacher colleague - how pedagogy works. You only now the way standing up front and teaching, I show you differentiating lessons."
This construction of relationship is not co-operative and professional, but pedagogical and therapeutically. The reason for this teamstructure is - so our hypothesis - the unsettled roles, which specifically concerns the special educators.
"My problem is that the primary school teacher has her role in the school and I am the new teacher who has no role and I have to find it."
It is expected from the special educational teacher to find his or her
place in the primary school - or better - to construct it. Furthermore the
regular teachers and the special teachers have to build up an structure of
co-operation which make it possible to deal better with the more complex and
heterogeneous situation in the school and in the classroom.
It is not
possible to deepen the complex relational structure between regular and special
teachers. What we can discuss is the hypothesis which we extracted of the
analysis of the group discussions with the special educational teachers: The
situation that there are minimal institutional structures for cooperation leads
to the fact that cooperative relations have to be developed on a personal level
of relation. Therefore it is not surprising that the special teachers describe
the quality of their personal relations with the primary school teachers as the
most important aspect to support the creation of the concrete cooperation.
We see two difficulties in the development of a more-perspective approach for the context of cooperative structures in the primary school. On the one hand it is problematic to minimise the differences between the professions and build up a model of a harmonious situation. On the other hand it seems to be dangerous to maximise the differences and divide the cooperation in two parts (see Werning, 1996). In both points of view differences as an result of differing professional perspectives be seen more as a disturbance than as a resource. For increasing professionalism in the co-operation between primary school teachers and special educational teachers it is necessary to clear up the methodological approach and find cooperation modalities in which the differences of problem solving and perceptive ways could be used in a constructive way (see Heuser, Schütte & Werning, 1996).
4.
The second case study we report investigates another setting. The
"Centre of Educational Help" of Frankfurt am Main ( Zentrum für
Erziehungshilfe) is a co-operation project of the special educational services
and the youth welfare administration ( "Jugendamt") specialised in behavioral
problems in schools. It was founded nine years ago as an ambulant
multiprofessional service as an alternative to building new special schools.
In each district teachers specialised in behaviour disorders and social
workers work together. The schools in the district can call the experts of the
Centre, if they feel they are not to able to cope with the behavioural problem
of a particular pupil. In each case a social worker and a special teacher work
together as a "tandem". They contact together the regular teachers, the school
( the headmaster), the child and his family and the services involved in this
case. Their task is to construct a co-operating network between school,
district youth welfare services and the family. Their job is done, when the
school operating within this network is able to handle the problem without
their further support.
In the last years the organisation passed through
two counselling processes, in which the aims, the methods, the course of
interventions, the forms of reports and the controlling of quality had been
developed with the team.
In 1999 we separately interviewed five tandems of
special teachers and social workers and the leadership tandem ( the leading
social worker and the headmaster) by tandem interviews and evaluated them with
methods of the Grounded Theory ( Strauss/Corbin 1990 ).
We found out that
the staff of the Centre has developed a defined strategy to deal with the
controversial demands and wishes they meet when they are called. First they try
to analyse the implicit and explicit orders from the different persons and to
formulate a transformation of orders which can become an agreement by all
involved persons. The staff moderates round tables to find out possible
agreements. The procurement of support through the school itself or the
negotiation of help or services existing in the district take priority over
support through the staff of the Centre. In the contracted orders the staff
performs teaching support, counselling with the family and consultation with
the teachers. The social worker and the special teacher are leading the
meetings and conversations with rotating roles of moderating, assistance and
recording.
The procedures are described in a plan of action and have to be
reported to the station team and the superiors. If resistance arises from of
the parents or the teachers against the co-operation the staff tries to pursue
a friendly persistence offering new possibilities of working together. They
search to find " minimal interventions" , i.e. little changes of habits dealing
with the problem to irritate the self regulating stabilisation of the problem.
Whether and to what extent the staff will be seduced to grasp at direct
instructions in cases of persistent resistance is one of the crunch points of
the job.
The results show, that the firm regulations of the procedures
stabilise the professional work of the staff and the co-operation in the
tandems. In few situations we found confusion between the tandem partners in
describing their positions, tasks and favoured solutions of problems. In these
situations the firm frame of the procedures gave the partners the possibility
to work together, even when it had been better, if they would have cleared the
differences which emerged during the interview.
Sometimes there was a lack
of cleared concepts of counselling and/ or consultation ( see Davenport/ Reid/
Fortner 1999). This showed us the necessity of conceptual training for the
whole team. While training is important to facilitate the changing roles of
special education teachers the structural framework is considered more
critical. This is because structural frames stabilises the procedures and
interventions of the organisation. When they are missed, then the staff may be
an accumulation of experts with different abilities, but together unable to
deliver the services required.
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