Reverse mainstreaming in a first grade: a good way to learn together?

School Years: Inclusive Education

Nathalie Lewi-Dumont

Ph.D. Teachers trainer

Cnefei (National Centre for specialised teachers’ training)

58, av. des Landes

F-92150 Suresnes

France

+ 33 (0)1 46 21 34 64

nathlewidum@caramail.com ; laet83@club-internet.fr

France offers several models of schooling for handicapped children: they can attend special schools, integrated classes in regular schools with a specialised teacher (usually with some moments in ordinary classes) or they can be mainstreamed in ordinary classes, with a special support. Those choices are available for visually impaired pupils and their families, provided the local resources exist, which is not possible everywhere.

One of the pedagogical difficulties of individual mainstreaming in regular classes is when children have to learn reading and writing in Braille and regular print, since methods are different. When a partially sighted student needs adapted documents, the situation is even more complicated.

In France, since there is a choice, if the specialised support device is not effective enough, children who need Braille are often in special classes or schools at the beginning of elementary school. An alternative solution might be reverse mainstreaming. This situation has been experimented in other countries with different disabilities (deaf, physically disabled, blind children…): in articles and reports on the Internet, I noticed those experiences have often taken place in special schools attended by normal students, particularly at a kindergarten level.

In France, the practice is not commonplace, but has been experimented with physically handicapped students of different ages with no important additional disability. For blind children, it takes place in regular schools: instead of having in his class very few pupils, a special teacher accepts a small group of students with no handicap, for the whole year. I have observed that type of experience in a pre-elementary school including a few blind children in kinder garden, so that the prerequisite for elementary school would be achieved, and in elementary schools: one of them, including special classes for blind and partially sighted pupils, practices reverse mainstreaming for the last year before high-school, so that the visually impaired children get used to working all day with their sighted pairs. They eventually work faster and get more autonomous. It has been experimented less frequently at lower levels, for the reasons I have mentioned first: literacy in Braille and in print are not based on the same principles, on the same methods, although the aims are the same.

I will study a first grade, with one blind child, one partially sighted child and seven sighted children and their teacher, a specialised teacher for the visually impaired. The first reason for proposing such a class arrangement has been, for sure, that the class would have had only 2 pupils, which would have been very difficult. For this year, there was no visually impaired child in second grade. For some reason, it was not possible to integrate the two children in the ordinary classes of the school. One of the specialised teachers then proposed to integrate first grade sighted children in her class. Recruiting them has been done through the parents’ volunteering. There are always more parents than the number of places, since they know a teacher proposing such an experience must be experienced and motivated and a class with only a few pupils should be profitable for their own child. The sighted children, coming from different kindergartens, were not known by the elementary school team, whereas the two visually impaired did: the blind child, Mario, 9 years old, had arrived the year before in the school, in April, without knowing French. In his country, he apparently had never been to school. Until the end of the year, he has had an intensive immersion in French and has started Braille lessons. The partially sighted child, Grégoire, 6 years old, came from the pre-elementary school next door, where he was mainstreamed, with a special support. Both of them were sociable (for Mario, what we could say was that he was quite a smiling child, since he was rather shy) and had a great yearning for knowledge. The seven sighted children, like Grégoire, match the age standards for first grade (6 in France).

What previous skills children had got before attending this class?

Mario, who has minimal light perception, had had a particular treatment the year before, as I said before. But at the end of the year, it was difficult to assess his skills, since his French was still awkward and he was a little inhibited, since he was so far from his parents. At any rate, he had learned several Braille letters, which he could write on his Perkins Brailler, and certain words. At the end of the year, the teacher was not sure that the grapheme/ phoneme correspondence has been achieved and it was also very difficult to know what achievements would be ensured in September. But Mario’s major strong point was his determination and the fact he had forgotten almost nothing he had learned before the summer, whereas he admitted he had read nothing that had been lent to him!

Grégoire has been individually mainstreamed in a kindergarten. He has no perception in one eye, and uses very well the tiny potential he has in the other. He is able to read Arial 20-point type. Apparently, handwriting has been well trained in kindergarten.

The seven sighted children had heterogeneous levels. Some of them learned quickly, but we have been rather surprised, in the beginning of the year, when we proposed them a classical oral rime game, to see them in trouble. That type of game is very common in pre-school and psycholinguists have shown that it predicts quite well what the children will do when learning to read. The two visually impaired children did rather better, either because they had been more trained to auditory attention, or because they practised it as a compensation.

The teacher has already been responsible for a first grade with blind children only, but it is the fist time she teaches reading and writing to sighted pupils. When teaching blind children, she used to adapt in Braille one of the handbooks in use with sighted children. Naturally, she chose the same method in the reverse mainstreaming class, and having already worked on it with Braille readers has been a great help. It is always difficult to adapt a common handbook: all the methods start with short texts, sentences and whole words, which is difficult in Braille for perceptual reasons; besides, the understanding of the reading material is based upon images and, from a technical point of view, the perceptual difficulties in Braille and print are not alike.

What are the main adaptations the teacher has to think about?

She used the phonetic progression of the handbook, but always checked Mario knew the letters included in the whole words he had to read. The positive point was that he had a good stock of letters at the beginning of the year.

She used the blackboard a lot: then each visually impaired child had an individual adapted document (Braille and large print); sometimes Grégoire came close to the board and then can read. The difficulty with this type of lessons is the rhythm and the fact there is neither global nor remote perception for blind students. Sighted children have got used to waiting until their teacher showed Mario the word he had to identify or until she checked he had pointed the right word if the aim was to find a spoken word. Then one can see the interest of a small group, for it seems much harder to channel the energy of a 6 year-old pupils whole class. As a matter of fact, the children would do that in the beginning of the year, but had to be reminded how to behave during the year. The good thing was Mario accessed quite quickly to literacy and had very good spatial abilities, so he answered rather easily.

The process of writing is parallel to reading acquisition. The teacher adapted it for the two visually impaired pupils. Grégoire did the same activities as the sighted children, with a particular attention from his teacher to his general attitude, the handling of the pencil, his understanding of the model. This year, Grégoire did not use a computer in the classroom, but learnt the keyboard outside. Mario used the Perkins Brailler: when the other children learn handwriting, he learnt the characters he did not know or remember. In first grade, the texts produced are not very long: the teacher used a lot the dictation to adult and the copy technique. Being specialised, then perfectly mastering Braille, allowed her to write texts very quickly in Braille for Mario, even when this was not anticipated in the preparation of the lesson.

When the work dealt with image analysis, it was very interesting, because the sighted children had to be very precise in their descriptions so that the visually impaired understand. Sometimes, Grégoire, could do the same work as his sighted friends, which required a lot of concentration, but it was useful for him to be trained to use his low vision potential. In the exercises where the children had to colour a word where one heard a certain sound, for example, Mario uses stickers of different shapes.

I had previously followed a similar experience of reverse mainstreaming in first grade, but I find this program better than the previous one in terms of learning performance because two conditions were combined:

- The visually impaired children, particularly the blind one, had solid prerequisites attending fist grade. Mario had been used to working when he arrived in France and had no adaptation problem in elementary school this year since he attended this school before: he knew why he was there for, whereas Redouane, one of the children I studied (Lewi-Dumont, 1997), did not get an appropriate support in pre-school years.

- The class has only one grade. In the previous experience, the teacher, who was very experienced and motivated too, had a first-and-second grade reverse mainstreaming class, and it was a difficult task. In second grade, integration is easier because the children are a little more autonomous and have achieved the first stages of literacy.

Reverse mainstreaming, of course, is not the only way to deal with the schooling problems of visually impaired pupils, because individual mainstreaming is always better when possible with special support, and also because it is difficult to implement this program if the special teacher does not volunteer. For that, he must have some experience, since it requires a lot of work and thinking. Besides, the learning abilities of the visually impaired students should be close to the normally sighted children. If the handicapped and sighted children have learning disabilities, as it happens often in the reports I have been reading, the purpose is totally different. Here the aim is to pull the visually impaired up  to excellence in a progressive way.

When it works out well, it is an enriching experience for all the partners:

- For the specialised teacher, who may tend to be isolated in the school where she works: thanks to the program, she can show her colleagues that her role as a teacher prevails over her specialisation, so she can participate more actively in all the school team plans. Besides, she is completely responsible for her pedagogy, which is impossible when she is a support teacher, when she must adapt her processes to her colleagues’ who mainstream the handicapped children in their regular class, even if she would had never chosen those approaches. This device allows to limit the total number of the pupils in the same level, which is usually appreciated.

- For the sighted children, it is interesting not only for educational reasons. In such a class, civics is done in a natural way, even if, sometimes, the teacher has to recall certain rules: handicapped children, needing a special attention, may sometimes make other pupils jealous, and one has to explain the reasons of the special treatment, even if the children are young. They will learn then, hopefully, to respect the differences between human beings.

Regarding knowledge achievement, regular children become more autonomous in their work when the teacher is busy with the visually impaired pupils, more precise in vocabulary, more accurate in their observation abilities: they often have to describe the visible world for their blind schoolmates, who don’t have visual access to it. They also often improve their spelling, because they must often spell what is written on the blackboard or what is not directly readable. The small number of pupils allows each of them to be often stimulated by the teacher. However, it is very important that the sighted children also take place in a larger group for other activities, for example sports. The experience, if it is renewed for the visually impaired children, should take place with other sighted children.

- For the visually impaired students, the program enables their social abilities to improve radically, which would not be so definite in a special class, even in a regular school: they get to know sighted children, by studying and playing with them all the day long and they have to confirm to the regular school rules and codes. The academic skills improve too, for example emulation and speed. The benefit, of course, is to be, full time, with a specialised teacher who is fully aware of the needed adaptations, but also to be with sighted children, which is impossible when the child is individually mainstreamed. This “half-way” situation is likely to help them for a later individual integration, for academic and social skills are stressed. The experience is almost more interesting for the partially sighted children: it is more common to integrate low vision than blind students in the beginning of elementary school, because they can learn with the same methods as the sighted children with less radical adaptations. Often, they get less support since their difficulties and needs are less obvious: they see badly, but they see. To be integrated that way with a specialised teacher allows them to get what they need. Also, when blind and partially sighted are in the same class, it can be interesting for the partially sighted to realise that studying in Braille is not a tragedy and one can learn and be happy by this medium. It can be a great help if a child has to change his reading medium, which will be soon Grégoire’s case.

My country offers to choose between several programs to take care of handicapped children: if, respecting the families’choices, we adapt the programs to the institutional constraints, to the teachers’ capacities to innovate and to the particularities of each child, reverse mainstreaming might be a good way to help the handicapped children achieve a personal and intellectual fulfilment.

References

LEWI-DUMONT, N. (1999). L'apprentissage de la lecture chez les enfants aveugles : difficultés et évolution des compétences  (Learning to read with blind children : difficulties and evolution of skills), Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion (1997).

MOSER, I. (2000). "Inclusion ‚the other way round‘, unpublished in English, but on the web site of the European Agency (Austria), German version in the Special Needs journal Der Spitzer,  7, 2000, Salzburg.

THEYTAZ, P. (1996). " Integration einmal anders: Regelklassenschüler in heilpädagogischer Institution ", in Schweizerische Zeitchrift für Heilpädagogik, 11, p.19-22.