LEARNING BY DOING TOGETHER                                   

A Bartiméus – ICEVI publication on Functional Curricula for children and youth with multiple impairments.

Most children can profit from all the facilities developed for them from birth to adult­hood. After the school period they are ready for adult life. However, the majority of children and youth with multiple disabilities do not have access to regular services and formal education. And even if they had access to school, as slow learners they will have learned just a part of what we would like to have taught them, a part of what their non-disabled peers have learned. And also for them, adult life starts, with no backing-up from school, with an uncertain future. Their luggage for life is often just a small suitcase, with some helpful and some useless contents. And what they need is a suitcase full of strategies to attack this complex world, full of mechanisms compensating their limitations, and stressing their abilities.

“Learning by doing together” is a way to help these children develop abilities that are central to family and community life, so that they become able participants in their homes and wider social environments. It is based on the Functional Curriculum Approach. In this approach children learn relevant abilities by doing them together with others when and where these abilities are “naturally” imbedded in daily life.

Why is this so important? I will mention two main reasons:

The first one is based on the characteristics of people with disabilities. Children with both a visual and an intellectual impairment need special attention to learning. The number of skills they acquire, their speed of learning, their ability to transfer and generalise, it is all more restricted. All the more reason to work with these children under optimal learning conditions, to use the situations in which they live and play as a natural learning situation to acquire the skills they basically need now and in their adult life.

The second reason is based on the current vision on people with a disability. They should have the possibility to live their lives as every citizen, using their abilities, and compensating their limitations as far as possible. These compensations can have become a part of the skills they have learned, - can be lying in the support they get or - can have influenced the choices they have made in life.

The Functional Curriculum Approach supports parents, siblings, teachers, fieldworkers, community volunteers, educators, in fact everyone to create the best conditions for the multi-disabled child to develop making use of all his abilities and compensating mechanisms. Some people prefer the term meaningful above functional. They state that functional is related only to those things that have a necessary function in one's life. There are however things in the life of a human being that don't seem to have a direct relation­ship with living adequately or functionally, but are very meaningful. Listening to music is such an example. In this presentation I will use the term functional with the interpretation of meaningful.

The essentials of the Functional Curriculum Approach are assembled in the book “Learning by doing together”, which will be the central subject of our workshop next Wednesday.

Why do we find it difficult to help children with multiple impairments learn?

For children having one single impairment, a lot of expertise is developed. Educational programmes for children with visual impairment, for children with hearing problems or programmes for children with an intellectual disability are well known. However, when children have two or more impairments, it can be difficult to help them learn because each impairment affects the other one. The common way to help a deaf child is by showing him things. If this same child has also a serious visual problem, then the showing of things doesn’t give him any adequate information at all. The educational programme for the visually disabled child is based on verbalisation, on speaking about the world around him. No relevant information for that same deaf child. The educational programme for the visually and intellectually disabled child has comparable problems. This child develops, learns and functions in unique ways. He has abilities that are often hard to recognise. He often learns in ways that are different from non-disabled children. He will learn best by doing activities together with others in real life settings. And above all, he needs support to participate in family and community life. But, these children ALSO have the same feelings, wants, and needs as children who are not disabled. It is our duty and at the same time a challenge to apply our experience and expertise to support them and create the best conditions for learning and development.

Why is it important to help multi-disabled children learn?

Helping children with multiple disabilities learn prevents them from becoming more disabled or disabled in different ways. Learning activities that are meaningful for them and important to their families and communities will give these children dignity. It will make it possible for them to build on their strengths and abilities, to communicate and socialise with others and to make choices. As a result, their abilities and independence will increase. They will have more opportunities to participate in the daily life of their families and live a meaningful life in their communities.

By engaging the family and community in the learning activities, they will learn how to communicate and socialise with the child, learn to appreciate the child’s abilities and learn how to assist and include the child. As a result they will form positive relationships with the child.

What does it mean to help a child learn in a functional way:

Intellectually disabled children are slow and difficult learners. So all their energy and learning potentials should be spend on the learning of those skills they will need now and in adult life. The best way to help children with multiple disabilities learn is by doing activities together with them that are part of everyday life in a natural way and in the natural situation.

Learning by doing activities together makes it possible to give as much or as less support as the child needs to perform the steps of the activity at that particular moment. Pulling up his pants can be a complex activity to do. The condition of the child or the type of pants can make it necessary to give more support than the day before.

Doing activities together makes it also possible to start as soon as the child can participate in some of the steps. This helps the child who learns slowly to master the activity just like other children learn that same activity independently as they mature. For example, if we want the child to put on his shorts independently by the age of five years, we start to help him learn at a younger age to pull his shorts up from his knees to his bottom whenever we dress him.

Selecting activities that are part of daily life prevents children who learn slowly from wasting their learning potentials to skills they won’t need. They will easier recognise the activities and give meaning to them. For children living in a region where people earn their daily living by fishing, (parts of) the skill of fishing can be very useful. But for children living in the centre of a big city this activity won’t be recognised and learning this skill won’t be very helpful. Selecting activities that are part of daily life helps the child also to learn the activity when other children of the same age and sex are performing it. Listening to “house” music will help a fourteen year old boy more to participate in activities with peers than still listening to nursery rhymes.

The natural way and situation in which the activities are done lets the place and time become ways to help the child remember when, where and how to do the activity. It facilitates to learn the cues for starting and ending an activity, because it makes sense for the child. If after the meal the dog gets the remainders of the food then the ending of the meal will be the natural cue for feeding the dog.

The child does the activity in the place where the activity usually is done. If the family has an area for eating, the child should also eat there. So there is no need for transfer of the learned skill to the situation in which the activity has to be performed. Having learned to use the stove at school adequately is no guarantee that the child can prepare food at home when there is a different stove.

It is also important to do the activity in the way the family or peers are used to do it. It facilitates learning and increases the participation of the disabled child in family or community life. If the family will all eat together, then the child should learn to eat together with the other family members.

And, most important, doing an activity together in the natural way and situation will evoke natural rewarding elements in the actual situation that stimulate the learning process. Learning to prepare food is more rewarding when the family is in due time coming home for the evening meal.

What do we need to know to help the child learn in a functional way?

When we start to teach the child through functional activities the most important things we need to know are the abilities and the needs of the child. We need to know what he likes and dislikes, what motivates him. We need to know his situation and daily routines and especially we need to know the way he learns. This information will help us to decide what the best way is to help this child learn the activity so that we can make learning the activity a natural part of daily life.

Very, very important are also the unique compensatory skills that almost every child has developed to compensate parts of the negative effects of his disabilities. Identifying them gives important additional information on the way the child learns.

It is also very important to know what the multi-disabled person finds rewarding. The success of acquiring the skill is strongly dependent on his motivation. If he is eager to learn a certain skill, he will be collecting all his energy to try to acquire it. But if he is not motivated, you have to look for reinforcing elements, or else you can better forget it. Sometimes, nature will come for help. I have known a multi-disabled young man we helped preparing for Supported Living. When you live on your own it's very functional to know how to get something to eat. He told us that he would like to make his own dinner. So we started a program to teach him cook his own meal. We assumed that he had the ability to learn to cook but very soon it became clear that he wasn't really motivated. So we decided to start looking with him for other ways to get his meal: eating with friends or at work. But then he fell in love with a young woman who he liked to invite. Within a matter of weeks he learned how to prepare several meals. I will not say that falling in love is a functional skill, but sometimes it might help as a kind of prerequisite.

It can be helpful to know about each of the child’s impairments because some impairments may require special medicine, surgery, therapy, exercises, or equipment. A child with Hydrocephalus needs surgery for placing a drain.

It may also be necessary for making devices that help the child perform the activity. If the child can’t use his legs properly caused by spasms a walking device will greaten his world and give him more opportunities for learning and participating in the community.

But above all, the most important things to learn about children with multiple impairments are their abilities.

We also need to become familiar with the family of the child, the environment and the activities that take place there. To know the family is important because they have a significant role in the learning process. Knowing the family’s wishes for the child helps us identify his future opportunities. Choosing activities that are important to the family motivates them to help the child learn, because they will often be involved in the learning process. As participants in the learning activities it is useful to know how the family interacts so that the plan can fit with the family’s way of being with each other, which makes it possible for them to do the activity with the child regularly. Knowing the family’s schedule and way of living will help us to plan when and how the child will learn the activity. It will also give information on the language they use.

Information on the environment helps us to identify the places where family members and other children participate, the materials they use and the stimulating or distracting conditions for the child.

To make the plan activities need to be identified that are important to child and his family. The activities that are chosen need to be activities that increase the child’s abilities and his participation in his family and community. They need to help him become more independent and safe. For all, they should give the child more opportunities for the future.

It will be clear that the actual chosen activities and the strategies to help the child learn will differ from child to child. The functional curriculum only gives a framework, but a very essential one, for making individually based plans that offer the best opportunities for multi-disabled children to make best use of their abilities. 

Wednesday in our workshop we will go through the essentials of the Functional Curriculum Approach as presented in our book “Learning by doing together”. This book is based on the results of development and field-testing of sample functional curricula in rural areas all over the world. What has struck me most in working with a functional curriculum was the shift in the way parents, teachers and caretakers were looking at the multi-disabled person. They were used to the fact that the multi-disabled child was behind the performances of his peer group. Not unusual if you consider them as slow-­learners. It is only human to be more directed to the disabilities of the child. The functional curriculum however caused a change: they had to look at what was possible for the child, to look at his abilities, to spend all their energy to invent adaptati­ons to teaching strategies and devices so that the disability was compensated as much as possible. A very positive way of dealing with the future.

I’ll hope to see a lot of you in our workshop Wednesday.

Name: Marlies Raemaekers

Position: Director

Institution: Bartiméus

Address: Oude Arnhemse Bovenweg 3, 3941 XM Doorn

Telephone: 0343526650

E-mail: m.raemaekers@bartimeus.nl