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Chair, colleagues, I would like to start by thanking the Committee for accepting my request to make a presentation at this most prestigious world conference.
Today, I would like to talk
about what has become known as "Inclusive" further education provision
and the role of the "additional" curriculum in post 16 Education for Visually
Impaired people in the United Kingdom.
Under this title, I want
to explore some of the different ways of thinking about inclusiveness in
post 16 education to see if it is possible to be, truly "inclusive" and,
at the same time, to meet those particular, additional needs that are "exclusive"
to visually impaired learners i.e. learning needs that relate specifically
to visually impaired learners but not to learners in general. Finally,
I shall say something about possible structural models for organising an
inclusive further education system with particular reference to the relationship
between specialist and mainstream provision.
First of all, however, I think perhaps I should say something about my own approach to the whole field of education for blind and partially sighted people which has been influenced by 2 aspects of my own background and experience - one personal and one professional. At a personal level, my own education took place within residential schools for the blind until the age of 19 when I went to my local, mainstream college of further education to retake the advanced Level qualifications that I had failed at special school and that I needed in order to get into university. At university, I took a degree and trained as a teacher. Following this experience of what might be described as "unsupported" but nevertheless successful integration, I began to work towards the broader integration of visually impaired young people into the wider education system. In particular, in 1970, I was one of the founder members of the Association of Blind and Partially Sighted Teachers and Students (Abapstas) which, amongst other things, campaigns for what we used to call "integrated" education for blind and partially sighted children and young people. I am still a member of ABAPSTAS today.
Secondly, in my professional career in further education, I started as a lecturer and pursued a career path through to college management. Now I am Principal of RNIB's Vocational College in Loughborough, a national, residential college of further education which provided a range of courses and direct support services to a total of 400 blind and partially sighted people last year. The college is uniquely situated on a mainstream campus along with a university, a college of art and design and Loughborough College of further education with which we enjoy a working partnership and where we supported nearly half of our fulltime students on mainstream courses last year. In addition, we supported 64 visually impaired students included on mainstream courses at 10 other colleges and centres across the region. I will say more about the college later but you will realise from what I have said that I am both personally and professionally committed to the principle of inclusion and I believe strongly in the benefits it can bring for most visually impaired people and for society at large. But enough about me.
I was fascinated to read in an article recently that inclusion means the welcoming of disabled children into mainstream education whereas integration means that disabled children are merely fitted into mainstream schools. The author went on to observe that the assessment which precedes integration tends to be based on the medical model of disability, focusing on the need for change or specific intervention around the individual child. Full inclusion, on the other hand, she says, is based on the social model of disability which emphasises the need for changes in social attitudes and structures rather than trying to change the disabled person. Integration was thus characterised as a "bad" thing whilst inclusion was seen as "good". In reality, of course, the picture is much more complex but this attack on integration because it implies paying particular attention to disabled individuals tends to undervalue the specialist input. Those of us who have been working for what we used to call integration for the last 25 years have, I believe, always recognised that the process of change must involve both changing mainstream institutions and maintaining a specialist input so that visually impaired individuals can acquire additional skills.
In my view, the argument for integrated further education and training as an ideal and as a guiding principle has been won not just on philosophical and social grounds because it leads to a more inclusive society, but also because it gives access to a wider range of educational and training opportunities and thus to a wider range of occupational areas and social roles. The important issues now revolve around what it means in practice and how it can best be implemented so as to ensure that everyone derives the maximum benefit. In England and Wales, the legislation and policy governing post 16 education and training now starts from the assumption that, where practicable and provided excessive cost is not incurred, children and young people with disabilities should be educated and trained amongst their able bodied peers and a trend towards integration or inclusion as the norm has gathered considerable momentum. In it's pre-election manifesto, the new UK Labour Government said "we support the greatest possible integration into mainstream education of pupils with special educational needs, while recognising that specialist facilities are essential to meet particular needs".
This encouraging statement appears to acknowledge the need for some kind of specialist arrangements as an essential ingredient for full inclusion.
As I said earlier, much still
revolves around what is meant by inclusion.
I do, however, want to respond
positively to a particularly extreme formulation of the notion of inclusion
which I believe may carry some serious dangers.
Until recently, discussion around provision for students with disabilities and learning difficulties focused on what was called the "inclusionist" debate. As is often the case, discussion was polarised around an assumption that an inclusive system in which all students are automatically accommodated into standard, mainstream provision is by nature "good" and any kind of "special" provision was "bad". Whilst it is important to have a vision which includes students with disabilities within a broad further education framework, it is equally important that the debate should not be reduced to 2 simple, polar opposites - inclusion and exclusion.
Firstly, it must be recognised that there are major practical limitations on including all visually impaired students in all mainstream provision without fundamental changes to that mainstream offer. Secondly, the vision itself requires some clarification. A model is needed that goes beyond this polarity and offers a framework which allows for visually impaired students to follow patterns of learning that are most appropriate to their individual requirements.
This raises questions about teaching methods as well as appropriate modes of delivery both of which can be adapted in ways that build on patterns of learning that are already well established in further education practice. These methods and modes of delivery are now well established in further education colleges and known as "learning support" and "access courses".
The notion of "learning support" is rapidly becoming a part of the normal, standard offer to all students who want it and can include help with study skills, additional resources, modified teaching and learning methods and materials and also different modes of learning. Some specialist provision for visually impaired students can thus be seen as a part of "learning support". This recognises the specific needs of these students as forming part of a spectrum of learning support which any students might require at some stage of their education.
Access courses, too, are an essential part of a college's offer in that they allow learners, including visually impaired learners, who have often had an unconventional educational experience the chance to gain or regain their place in the educational system. However, they often feel their particular learning needs require a programme of learning which will help them fill in the gaps they have missed and have the chance to receive extra support - for example through the explicit teaching of a variety of study skills; through an emphasis on individual tutorials; and through having the chance to share a period of education with other students who experience difficulties similar to their own.
It can, then, be argued that so called "discrete" provision made for blind and partially sighted students, whether in a mainstream college or as a preparatory course in a specialist college, can be seen as a kind of access course. Visually impaired students do have distinct needs both in content and teaching methods which are at times most effectively addressed through their being taught in a distinct group. Too often the options for blind and partially sighted students are seen as either provision which is totally segregated or that which is totally integrated. What needs to be addressed is not a polarised integration/segregation debate but the specific needs of students and what is the most effective practice which will lead to them experiencing an enhanced quality of life.
Some people would go further
than this and focus on the right of particular groups of individuals to
choose to have times when they can identify as a distinct group drawing
parallels, for example, with the women's movement. Their belief is that
a model in which total
inclusion is seen as the only way forward can deny the specific identity, and hence undermine the dignity, of people with disabilities. Much has rightly been said about the importance of people with disabilities having the right to choose to integrate into the mainstream. However, less is said about the right of people to choose to spend time and receive education with a peer group of people with similar educational needs as themselves. If a choice is only one way it does not in fact constitute a real choice. The extreme model of inclusion as it is sometimes formulated denies the option to spend time, and sometimes to learn, within a peer group environment.
But as well as considering methods and modes of delivery such as learning support and access courses, there are also major issues around the content of the curriculum and the amount of curriculum differentiation that is required to make full inclusion a practical reality. As well as making the "standard" curriculum offer fully accessible, the total curriculum offer must be sufficiently highly differentiated also to include those elements that meet the specific requirements of visually impaired learners, those elements that are sometimes called the "additional" curriculum.
In a specialist college or
in a special class in a mainstream college, the curriculum is delivered
to blind and partially sighted students by experienced and specially qualified
staff using, where necessary, special equipment and distinct methodologies
that make the curriculum immediately accessible. Teachers will, for example,
work with small groups, automatically use tactile or enlarged maps and
diagrams, handouts and notes will be in large print and braille, special
technology will be on-hand, 3 dimensional models will be available and
the whole learning experience will be structured around the use of these
materials. Classroom activities such as discussion, question and answer
sessions, brain-storms will be conducted and lead using appropriate verbal
cues and prompts in such a way as to enable blind and partially sighted
people to participate fully. Teachers, as well as being experts in their
subject or skill area, are also experts in the specialist techniques and
study skills that are used by and with visually impaired students and will
naturally be able to integrate special skills teaching with subject teaching
in the same session. The curriculum is thus delivered in a way that makes
it immediately accessible to visually impaired learners. Such an approach
would, of course, be entirely inappropriate for non-visually impaired learners.
For visually impaired students in mainstream classes, however, the experience may well be different. In an ideal, post-inclusion situation, the mainstream tutor will have had some prior training and support around how to include visually impaired students into classes and will have materials prepared and will plan classroom sessions accordingly. It is much more likely that, at best, the subject lecturer will have had some basic awareness training but the curriculum will be delivered in a fairly standard and undifferentiated way and other staff, specialised in meeting the needs of visually impaired students, will be involved in making specific adaptations and in supporting the individual student to enable her/him to gain access to it - old fashioned integration! In either case, there are special skills, knowledge and understanding required by the visually impaired learner to permit her/him to operate effectively and that do not have to be learnt by learners who are not visually impaired.
This additional curriculum has to be taught/learnt just like the standard curriculum and this can take place in discrete groups of visually impaired learners, on a one to one basis or in the mainstream classroom with additional staff support. Components may include
* braille - becoming competent in reading and writing braille and using it in a classroom environment;
* low vision training - making the most effective use of residual vision for reading and writing, using low vision aids for desk work and distance work in the classroom;
* information technology - selecting suitable equipment for particular purposes, learning how to use it appropriately in a classroom and for private study;
* tape recorders - for recording information in class or from readers and organising and retrieving that information;
* use of readers - directing
readers in research and handling
information gathered;
* use of classroom assistance - knowing when an assistant will be helpful and understanding what an assistant can and cannot do;
* forming appropriate relationships with readers and assistants;
* making notes - selecting the best method: braille, handwriting, it device, assistant;
* plus learning to participate in other classroom activities such as making a presentation, working with a partner or in a small group, and joining in discussions. Making relationships with others, personal presentation and mobility and orientation could also be added. These are all additional skills and competencies that visually impaired students need over and above those that are required by their academic or vocational programme and different in substance or degree from those required by their sighted peers although they might come one the generic umbrella of study skills.
I believe that further work needs to be done on acknowledging the additional curriculum as a body of skill and knowledge worthy of recognition. Just like other areas of curriculum, progress can be measured and achievement accredited although, in the UK at least, as yet, there are few standards either at college level or at the level of national awards. Accreditation here would provide a quality standard that would assure the presence of the additional curriculum in inclusive provision.
Interestingly, there are
some ways in which, as the standard curriculum offer in a mainstream college
becomes more highly differentiated and more accessible, elements of the
additional curriculum will become absorbed into the standard offer. For
example, If a college establishes a policy that all classroom materials
will be produced in clear bold print, this will be of benefit to all students
but it will also enable some visually impaired students to participate
without any additional support such as enlargement or transcription. Thus
the frontier between the standard and additional curriculum is a dynamic
one.
On top of the additional curriculum which is needed to access the standard academic or vocational curriculum, there is a further area of learning that may be required by students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities including visually impaired learners that has become known as the "extended" curriculum. This term has been used to describe certain aspects of the unique curriculum offer normally only available at specialist residential colleges. It requires that the residential experience is used as a way of promoting personal and social development to an extent that is not possible in a non-residential setting. Each student's personal action plan can include learning objectives that are related to the achievement of goals that are associated with physical independence and autonomy and with the personal and social aspects of adult status including, for example, independent living skills, confidence building, assertiveness. There can be a structured programme geared towards the achievement of those goals and a formal mechanism for monitoring and recording progress. The extended curriculum also benefits from mutually supportive links between the daytime curriculum and the learning that takes place outside normal college hours. This will be especially the case where the daytime curriculum concentrates on what are sometimes called "life skills" i.e. independent living skills and personal and social development.
The links are rather less direct where the daytime curriculum is a more academic or vocational course although there may be elements of additional curriculum that may be tackling issues such as relationships with others or personal presentation that could be reinforced in the non-residential context. The idea is that the whole of the students time in a specialist residential college should be used to maximum advantage to facilitate the development of the whole person although sometimes I suspect that the real reason is more concerned with justifying the funding of residential provision from an education budget. With a little imagination, the extended curriculum could be incorporated into local, non-residential provision, however, without the recognition that might flow from some kind of accreditation, my concern is that there is no way of assuring it's inclusion in the individual learning programme of a visually impaired learner.
So, how can these additional
and extended elements be incorporated into an inclusive curriculum? One
possible approach is to adopt and apply the internationally respected concept
of adult status.
Developed primarily with students with learning difficulties in mind, the concept of adult status nevertheless provides a powerful rationale to underpin these aspects of provision for visually impaired students. The concept, promulgated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Oecd) in a 1986 publication, offers a description of the main characteristics of adulthood in a developed society. These characteristics are
* physical independence and autonomy
* financial self-sufficiency through paid employment
* participation in the local community
* enjoying a variety of roles within the family.
These characteristics readily
translate into a further education curriculum which develops adult status
and so it is worth considering how this might specifically effect blind
and partially sighted young people. The further education curriculum can
make a major contribution to the development and support of each aspect
of adult status but the focus of the contribution will shift depending
on the particular requirements of the particular learner. Preparation for
financial self-sufficiency through paid employment is central within the
curriculum but for most students, physical independence, participation
in the community and roles within the family do not usually figure much
in the taught post 16 curriculum. In addition, for most students, aspects
of adult status are being developed naturally in the corridors and the
canteen or at home in the family or with peers. For some visually impaired
learners, however, this cannot be taken for granted, partly because of
the additional learning needs that arise directly from the effects of the
disability itself and partly, perhaps, because of delays in social and
emotional maturation, through the possible effects of longterm institutionalisation
or hospitalisation or as a
result of a sustained inability
to recognise and respond appropriately to visual communication cues in
interpersonal relationships. A curriculum that supports progress towards
the achievement of adult status for visually impaired students may need
to include, for example
* training in mobility and independent living skills
* a structured programme
of personal and social development that
ensures students are able
to interrelate effectively with their sighted peers
* training in self advocacy skills that includes strategies and techniques for disability objection handling.
I am very concerned that, with unemployment amongst visually impaired people in the UK running at 4 times the rate for people with disabilities generally (and much higher for people who are multi-handicapped and visually impaired), some practitioners are bound to ask if financial self-sufficiency through paid employment is a realistic and attainable goal. What is more, some might argue that because the three other aspects of adult status are so under-developed in some individuals, addressing these must take priority over economic aspects. Nevertheless, I believe that the potential of paid employment to unlock an individuals capacity to enter into at least two of the other adult dimensions: that is, roles in the family and participation in the wider community must be acknowledged and progress toward at least some degree of financial independence through paid employment of some kind must wherever possible remain a long-term aim.
The further education curriculum, then, has a very important part to play in supporting and developing wider aspects of adult status for visually impaired learners and can do this by providing learning programmes that directly address all the aspects. In other words, the taught curriculum, whether in specialist colleges or in mainstream colleges, must concern itself with knowledge, skills and understanding that, for other learners, may not form a major part of the taught curriculum. Where this particular type of curriculum is provided, it is likely to be delivered through discrete elements of a programme or may even provide the justification for total discrete provision on a separate course or even in a specialist setting. For those who cannot easily participate in all aspects of college life, there does need to be a formally recognised curriculum element that prepares them and supports their inclusion in those activities that for other students might be regarded as extra-curricula.
I may be in danger of labouring the point but what I want to get across is the importance of finding a way of thinking about inclusion that goes beyond merely making a standard curriculum accessible to all learners.
This problem may be overcome, at least for the time being, by the adoption of the concept of Inclusive Learning. "Inclusive Learning" is the title of the report of a Government sponsored committee of enquiry into further education provision for students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities in the UK that was published last Autumn. This enquiry, the first of it's kind, drew upon a huge evidence base and made recommendations that will shape the future of further education not just for students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities but for all learners in the further education sector. Of particular interest here is the concept of inclusiveness that lies at the heart of the report.
It is hard, in a few sentences, to do justice to an excellent and potentially revolutionary report but essentially it offers a conceptual framework that can underpin a system that meets the individual learning needs of each learner and thus includes all learners. According to the chair of the Committee, Professor John Tomlinson, the underlying political theory is that everyone should have access to what is provided in common for society; none should be excluded. Education is about growing in adult status, living independently and contributing to the family and to society. The emphasis is on learning and the learner.
As Tomlinson himself says "at the heart of our thinking lies the idea of "match" or "fit" between how the learner learns best, what they need and want to learn and what is required from the sector, a college and teachers for successful learning to take place. By "inclusive learning", therefore, we mean the greatest degree of match or fit between the individual learners' requirements and the provision that is made for them. PUT simply, we want to avoid a view point which locates the difficulty or deficit with the student and focus instead on the capacity of the educational institution to understand and respond to the individual learner's requirement. This means we must see people with disabilities and or learning difficulties first and foremost as learners". From this perspective, blind and partially sighted learners are placed alongside other learners and any distinction between learners lies not in how they are described but in how their learning environments match their individual learning requirements.
From an organisational point of view, inclusiveness operates on 3 levels: on an individual level, the learner is included in an appropriate learning environment; at institutional level, the college raises its threshold of inclusiveness; and at the further education system level, all kinds of provision, integrated and discrete, are included. Again, to quote Tomlinson, "A match between a learners' learning requirements and the right learning environment might lead to the person learning alongside people with similar disabilities or it might not. The right match is more important than any predetermined ideas about where the learner will learn."
The challenge now is to develop a structure of provision that is sufficiently diverse and flexible to allow for the best possible match between individual learning requirements and the learning environment. A system that crudely divides students between integrated and segregated provision cannot meet this challenge. Nevertheless, we inherit a dichotomous system of specialist and mainstream providers neither of whom, working on their own, can offer a sufficiently diverse and differentiated curriculum to meet the wide range of different types of learning needs presented by all blind and partially sighted learners. Effective partnerships must be established so that the 2 sectors can begin to work together to create a continuum of provision that gives blind and partially sighted students access to the same variety of training and educational opportunities as their sighted peers but with all the additional curriculum inputs that have traditionally only been available in a specialist, segregated setting.
At Loughborough, we have begun to exploit the potential for partnership through our links with a mainstream college on the same campus and with whom we share premises, staff and students. Over the last 6 years, visually impaired students have studied successfully on every course offered by the mainstream college many of which are not available in specialist colleges. Students' individualised daily learning programmes can comprise learning in an integrated and a specialist environment according to appropriateness and to need. Learning programmes can include a full range of additional and extended curriculum inputs to meet all aspects of progress towards adult status.
Furthermore, with the aid of government funding, we have set up an outreach service which makes the specialist expertise and facilities of the Vocational College available to other mainstream providers in the region. We offer extended assessment and preparatory courses from which students return to study at their own local college; we offer short courses in adaptive technology and other specialist areas; we offer a curriculum and learning support service to students and their tutors in other mainstream centres; we adapt and transcribe learning materials; we sell specially designed learning materials and we provide training for mainstream staff.
The provision at Loughborough
is only one of many possible models for partnership and I know that there
are many other ways in which specialist and mainstream providers of education
and training can work together. I am convinced that the future of quality
education and training provision for blind and partially sighted people
lies in the direction of partnership and merger so that it is no longer
a question of choosing between specialist and mainstream, segregation or
integration. In common with all learners, visually impaired students are
entitled to have their learning needs met in whatever way meets their individual
requirements. As providers, we must rise to that challenge.