When teachers re-focus on pupils with special educational needs they might be forgiven for thinking that these perspectives have little, if any, relevance for the teaching of pupils whose development is atypical. As practitioners, researchers and theorists, we agree that seminal texts on child development have much to offer but argue that they cannot claim to provide inclusive and comprehensive accounts of key aspects of development unless they have been interpreted in terms that can encompass atypical patterns.
Education can be narrowly or broadly interpreted: it might be regarded as a series of aims that are defined at national levels with specified outcomes in terms of knowledge, skills and understanding, to shape the learning experiences of groups of individuals. Alternatively, the educational implications may lie in identifying the content, the process and the timing of learning as well as the influence of other people and their contribution; a practice referred to as ‘teaching’ in the learning context. Current views on education, particularly in relation to pedagogy, tend to emphasize the active role of the learner and the ways in which ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’ interact, but this was not always the case, as accounts of different theoretical perspectives show. In the final section we take the educational implications of each theorist further, and consider the learning and teaching of children and young people with special educational needs in four major areas of development:
- Communication and interaction
- Cognition and learning
- Behavior and social development
- Sensory and physical development
Social interaction, and interpersonal communication on which it is predicated, underpins both individual development and the advancement of society. Education has a significant role in the development of the individual and in relation to the wider society, especially, some argue, in creating the circumstances for empowering the individual to assume an active role. It is, therefore, crucial that those who work with children and adults with significant learning needs understand the skills and processes involved in communication and the potential impact on development when communication is compromised. In providing a framework for thinking about communication and people with learning disabilities, identified four paradigms. Each outlines a different view of learning disability, which, she argues, has implications for intervention aimed at enhancing communication. Briefly, the four models involve the following approaches.
- normalization;
- functional;
- behavioral;
- Developmental.
The evidence for an innate, or inborn, disposition for social interaction and has concluded that, by approximately 3 months of age, infants have a firm preference for people’s faces over other visual stimuli and are attracted to watch people’s movements in preference to non-human activity. The evidence also suggests that this orientation may have either developed in utero or is genetically acquired. In either case, as far as researchers can tell, it is present at birth. Similarly, very young infants have been shown to respond more readily to the modified speech that adults employ for talking to children-’motherese’
Promoting Language/Communication Development Program
Level 1
- Talks with children and stimulates conversation among children.
- Demonstrates realistic expectations for children’s understanding and use of speech.
- Reads to children, representation appropriate variation, importance, and significance.
Level 2
- Actively communicates with children.
- Helps children communicate with each other.
- Encourages and supports children’s verbal interactions with others.
- Uses conversations to enrich and expand vocabulary.
- gives breaks and support to assist children comprehend, obtain, and employ oral and non-oral ways of conversing ideas and emotions.
- Uses a variety of songs, books, and games, including those from many cultures.
- Encourages the relationship between spoken and printed words.
Level 3
- Interacts with children in ways that aid the growth of meaningful language and ideas.
- Uses concrete experiences and play to enhance and extend young children’s language development and early literacy.
- Demonstrates an understanding of how children use language, as well as other forms of communication, at all ages and stages of development.
- Strategies, execute, and assess language familiarities and actions.
- Immerses children in a print-rich environment.
- Facilitates the relationship between spoken and printed words.
Level 4
- Uses ongoing assessment and evaluation to adapt and modify interactions with children to meet the specific language development needs of individual children.
- Plan curriculum constant with present theories of language application and language acquirement.
- Recognizes and responds to the general warning signs of communication/language delays and communication/language disorders for children of various ages.
- Informs others, including families, about the importance of adult-child and child-child interactions in children’s language development.
- Depicts children to different signs of literacy.
Level 5
- Collaborates with language specialists to modify and adapt curriculum activities and experiences to meet individual language and literacy development
- Needs of each child.
- Articulates, analyzes, evaluates, and applies current theory and research on emerging trends in language acquisition, development, and early literacy.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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