Changing the way you learn

Inclusive Education: Background and Theory

History
1. First "special school" = Thomas Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf (1760)
2. Integration introduced in 1980s
3. 1994: Inclusion recognised as aspect of human rights
4. 1983: 1.87% in segregated education. 2001: 1.3%. Around 1.2-1.3% mark since. (Norwich, 2008)
5. Movement for comprehensive schooling (Norwich, 2008)
6. Context of the civil rights movement (Hodkinson, 2010)
Definitions
1. Mainstreaming = a one-off decision to place the child in mainstream settings
2. Integration = making changes to child and their support in fixed settings
3. Inclusion = making changes to the educational setting to make it more accessible; maximising the participation of all learners in mainstream schools
Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991)
1. Behaviour towards disabled peers influenced by attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control
2. Roberts and Lindell (1997): 8-12 year olds attitudes towards physically disabled peers strongly predicted intentions for positive interaction. Attitudes correlated significantly with those of their teachers and mothers.
3. Roberts and Smith (1999): attitudes towards physically disabled peers and their perceived behavioural control for interacting with those peers were significant predictors of intentions to interact. Intentions predicted time children reported spending with these peers.
Contact Theory (Allport, 1954)
1. Interactions between groups can change attitudes and reduce stereotyping/prejudice if criteria are met
  1. Equal status between groups
  2. Common goals
  3. No inter-group competition
  4. Authority's sanction of the contact
2. Maras and Brown (1996): integration programme between mainstream pupils + children with severe learning difficulties. Mainstream children in the programme showed more positive social orientation towards disabled children over time, control group did not.
3. Maras and Brown (2000): attitudes towards SEN children not significantly more positive in schools with integration than in schools without integrated provision.
  1. Large class sizes, limited cooperative learning activities - did it meet Allport's criteria for success?
  2. Integration vs. inclusion.
4. Types of contact
  1. Decategorisation model (Brewer + Miller, 1986): minimise salience of category difference, maximise individual traits.
  2. Intergroup contact model (Cameron et al, 2011): maintain salience of in-group and out-group boundaries, emphasising 'typicality' of outgroup members met to encourage generalisation.
    1. More sharply differentiated attitudes across groups, relatively less positive attitudes to children with SEN, BUT this did facilitate generalisation (Maras + Brown, 2000)
    2. Caused change in attitudes as well as intended behaviour in extended contact (see Extended Contact node)
  3. Extended contact
    1. Cameron and Rutland (2006): "indirect cross friendship hypothesis" e.g. knowledge of ingroup members being friends with outgroup members. 5-10y in British primary schools. Stories read and discussed in small groups once a week for 6 weeks - some decategorised, some intergroup. Positive changes in intended behaviour in both; positive change in attitudes for intergroup model only.
  4. Imagined contact
    1. Cameron et al (2011): children 5-10y. 3 mins imagining being in a park playing with disabled friend using photographs/pictures as prompts (park setting, park-related objects, in-group/out-group members). Reduced intergroup bias in general attitude and ratings of warmth. More positive intended friendship behaviour in 5=6y, but not 7-10y (amount of outgroup experience?)
TPB/CT Combined
1. Marom (2007): intervention for children (10-12y) intended to improve disability related attitudes + self-efficacy for interacting with disabled children. Phase 1 = information (specific + general), Phase 2 = interaction meeting Allport's criteria. Improvements in both aims, compared to control group.
Protective effect of labels?
1. "mentally ret*rded" had a protective effect when the child reading in a video was socially withdrawn, but was much weaker when they were aggressive (Bak + Sipenstein, 1986)
2. Labels such as "mentally ret*rded" served as a "destructive, self-fulfilling prophecy" (Dunn, 1968)
3. Videotapes of children engaging in positive or negative behaviours shown to 8-12yo. Half told that the child was in a "special class for the ret*rded". Child's social behaviours but not label had significant effect on viewers' attitudes. (Van Bourgondien, 1987)
4. Attitudes towards hypothetical peers with ADHD in vignettes found to be mainly negative. Significant relationship between attitudes and willingness to engage in social/academic/physical activities. Diagnostic/psychiatric labels had no additional influence upon attitudes or behavioural intentions. (Law et al, 2007)
Attribution theory (Weiner, 1985)
1. Perception of responsibility = key.
2. Sigelman + Begley (1987): peers in wheelchair/obese/learning disabled/aggressive. Causal info or no causal info. 5-6yo and 8-9yo responsive to causal information and assigned blame according to ascribed responsibility. With no causal info, held all but wheelchair user accountable (but increasing emphasis on external cause with age).
3. Juvonen (1991(: the more children perceived a classmate as different, the more likely they were to reject them. Perceptions of responsibility for deviance in judgements of both hypothetical and actual classmates predicted interpersonal affect, and how liked/disliked the 'deviant' child was. Those in turn predicted social consequences.
Social Exchange Theory (Thibaut + Kelley, 1959; Kelley + Thibaut, 1978)
1. Desire for affiliation with others relates to sum of perceived costs and benefits of interacting with them, set against a minimum level of expectation. Comparison level may be different for children with SEN.
2. Rejected abled children scored high on costly social behaviours, low on beneficial social behaviours. Opposite for well-accepted chidren. (Newcomb et al, 1993)
  1. Symmetrical = exchange relationship status (Clark + Mills, 1979; 1993)
3. Rejected SEN children scored low on beneficial behaviours, but not high on costly behaviours,
  1. for children with SEN, beneficial behaviours are not characteristic of good acceptance, only low levels of costly behaviours
  2. Asymmetrical = communal relationship. Responsiveness to SEN children's social needs and application of asymmetrical communal norms (Clark + Mills, 1993)
4. Can help to predict features of the environment likely to affect intention to interact with classmates with SEN
  1. Costs higher in classes that are less cohesive (Frederickson and Furnham, 1998)
  2. In classes where mainstream peers evaluate their work as dfficult, perceived similarities with SEN peers increased, relative costs of working with them reduced (Frederickson + Furnham, 1998)
School Ethos (McDougall et al, 2004)
1. Positive student relationships at school level and a school goal task structure promoting learning adn understanding for all (rather than social comparison and competition among students) is significantly associated with positive attitudes towards peers with SEN
2. "School-wide, ecologically based initiatives aimed at modifying the environment to create a supportive school should be an important element of any effort to enhance attitudes towards students with disabilities"

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	Created by Maisie Rose Woodward almost 9 years ago