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Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired
Reference number: 3554
Title:
A Place for Everyone – including children with visually impairment in pre-school, school recreation
There is an ambition in Sweden to include children with various functional impairments in compulsory education. Insufficient social involvement has shown itself to be a problem which, in certain circumstances, is used as a reason not to integrate children with, for example, a visual impairment.
The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired supports integration and has, therefore, worked for its implementation in a number of projects.
My name is Nina Sjöblom and the reason that I am here today is that I am not only the parent of a child born with a severe visual impairment, but I am also a teacher.
My daughter is now ten years old and is in her third year at school, individually integrated in the local authority school in the area where we live. As a parent I have been active in my daughter's childhood and I have also been involved locally in SRF's child and parent activities. During the years, I have met many children and parents within the field of visually impairment.
As a teacher, I have worked in the area of school children's socialisation and recreational activities since graduating from teacher training college at the beginning of the 1980's. Before I became the mother of a child with a visual impairment, I had no experience of this particular functional impairment but I soon realised that the functional impairment caused by lack of vision was an exciting and interesting area, not the least from my professional perspective. I have benefited immensely by being both a parent and a teacher, despite this being a complicated and difficult role on occasions. With time, however, this combination of roles has proved to be an enormous advantage.
For the past five years I have been employed by SRF on a project where I have among other things been responsible for a club for children who read braille, "Children's Braille Club".
It is not unusual for children with visual impairment, and particularly children with severe visual impairment, to become socially excluded as communication and interaction is made difficult because of the functional impairment.
One of the greatest problems for these children today is the shortage of appropriate situations and occasions for social interaction with children of the same age. As a teacher, it is not difficult to see that the degree of inclusion depends a great deal on how teachers at pre-school and school arrange class activities.
In Autumn 1998, together with Camilla Jönsson, who is a pre-school teacher and also has a child with a visual impairment, I began a project with the aim of finding teaching methods and ways of working which would encourage children to participate socially.
During the project we visited fifteen pre-schools and schools where we made observations focussed on interaction and play opportunities, both during lessons and break time. We also carried out interviews with the teachers involved. Their thoughts and conclusions were compiled and then linked together with the research being carried out in the area by, amongst others, Ulf Jansson, Gunilla Preisler and David H. Warren. This then became the book which we have called "A Place for Everyone" and which contains theories about inclusive teaching as well as specific methods.
It became clear to us during the visits we made to the schools that the way in which the teachers arranged their lessons was an important factor.
The term independence, as opposed to dependence, is something which, as a teacher and even as a parent, we must be aware of at all times.
We should ask ourselves over and over again:
Another constant question is:
As many of you know, the interaction difficulties exist just as much for the sighted children as for the children who are visually impaired, and to a great extent it depends on difficulties in interpreting the signals given to each other.
Sighted children are often dependent on eye contact while the visually impaired child is dependent on both verbal and physical contact. Another thing which can cause problems with interaction is difficulty in getting everyone to concentrate on the same activity at the same time, to have
a common focus.
I needed an instrument, a teaching method, to illustrate how interaction and communication is affected by the functional impairment caused by lack of vision and how, as a teacher, it is possible to provide support for the development of children's interaction.
As a part of the project, I trained as an instructor using Marte Meo, which is a way of analysing and supervising communication support development.
The short video film I am going to show you was made at a pre-school. We can see quite clearly how the teacher's choice of material, surroundings, number of children in the group etc, together with the supportive role of the teacher in the interaction, has provided the right conditions for involving the visually impaired child.
/Video film/
We feel we have succeeded in finding a great deal of usable and easily understood teaching methods for both parents and staff.
We have also carried out workshops using inclusive teaching methods for teams in schools and which have shown very positive results.
Our book and our workshops have proved useful to many people and who have found the new way of "thinking" inclusive.
Unfortunately, the book has not been translated into English, but we believe there is a great interest for this type of teaching method in countries other than our own and we will be happy to share our experiences with anybody who is interested.
Thank you
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