Inclusion of children with SEND

Whose needs should be considered when choosing the type of school a child with
Special Educational Needs (SEN) should attend?

How can psychology help explore and address the barriers to successful
inclusion of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in
mainstream schools?

What is inclusion? How can we ensure that all children are included in schools?

How can psychological theory be used to inform and improve inclusive practices
in schools?

Aims and objectives

 To discuss and define the inclusion of children with SEND within
education
 To reflect on the concept of inclusion from pupil and parental
perspectives
 To review research on the evidence of effectiveness of inclusion
 To explore how EPs can support inclusion

What do we mean by SEN?

 0-25 year olds
 Social and mental health difficulties – internalizing difficulties, difficulties
initiating social interactions
 Cognition & learning – e.g. working memory, literacy
 Communication & interaction – e.g. language skills, child may have
difficulty producing speech sounds or understanding language
 Sensory/physical needs – e.g. hearing/visual impairments
 Will influence child’s access to their education
Disability
 Long-term physical or mental impairment that has adverse effects on
abilities to carry out normal day to day activities
 E.g. dyslexia – lifelong condition
What is inclusion?
 Supporting children so that their SENDs don’t affect their education
 Includes social interaction skills
 Allowing child to have holistic education
 Removing barriers to learning or social development
 All education environments have legal obligation to make adjustments
 Role of educational psychologists – ensure that these adjustments are
being made to create inclusive environments
The push towards inclusion
 Salamanca statement – 92 countries from around the world signed up – to
support the idea that all children deserve to have an inclusive education,
enrolling all children in regular schools unless there are compelling
reasons for doing otherwise
  To allow children to still be with their friends
 Ensuring schools embrace the richness and diversity of their community
 UK has “inclusive education” and equality act in 2010
Social inclusion
 If the children, right from preschool, learn to develop and integrate with
each other, this will remove the stigma associated with disabilities and
segregated placements, enhancing the social status
 Inclusion is about increasing participation and removal of barriers
Becoming inclusive is not just tokenistic (Ainscow, 2014)
 Restructuring the cultures and communities of schools
 Responding to the diversity of needs
 Different backgrounds and ethnicities are all a part of being truly
inclusive
 Making sure that all children (not just those with SEN) (e.g. vulnerable
groups) are supported in a truly inclusive fashion
 But whose rights do we need to consider?

Reflect on the concept of inclusion from pupil and parental perspectives

The rights of parents and other pupils

 Arguments that having students with SEND can affect education of other
children
 Inclusion is riddled with controversies
 SEND code of practice became law in 2014 – parents of children with
SEND will not be able to have their preference for a state-funded school
met if it does not meet with the needs of the child, is incompatible with
the efficient education of other children, or is an inefficient use of
resources
Social acceptance
 Gresham & MacMillan (1997) – compared to mainstream pupils, pupils
with moderate SEN were more poorly accepted, more often rejected, had
lower levels of social skills, higher levels of problem behaviours
 Nowicki & Sandieson (2002) – based on children’s attitudes from a meta-
analysis of studies from 1990-2000, found that overall children without
disabilities were preferred to children with physical or intellectual
disabilities
 Including children with SEN has a moderate effect size on enhancing
attitudes
 Mainstream school settings result in higher achievement for students
with mild learning difficulties
Conclusions from comparative studies
1. Narrative review
a. Madden & Slavin (1983) – little evidence that self-contained
special education was superior to placement in mainstream classes
in terms of increasing academic performance of students with
MLD. Evidence that mainstream with appropriate support is
better.
 b. Hegarty (1993) – it is difficult to justify specialized provision if it
does not give rise to better outcomes
2. Meta-analysis
a. Baker, Wang, & Walberg (1994-95) summary of meta-analysis:
positive effect sizes indicate small to moderate benefit of inclusion
on academic and social outcomes
3. Target Journal Review
a. Lindsay (2007) review of inclusion studies efficacy from 2000-
2005. As with pre-2000 studies, weight of evidence was only
marginally positive overall. Identified need to research more
thoroughly mediators and moderators
4. Case studies
a. McLesky et al 2014) key factors supporting high pupil
achievement in inclusive schools: student support and quality of
teaching, administrative and organizational features
b. Teachers need to differentiate every learning experience for a
broad spectrum of needs
c. Shared decision making
Inclusion study (Buckley, Bird, Sacks, & Archer, 2002)
 Very significant gains in literacy and expressive language in mainstream
education compared to special school
 Children were fully included, accessing the same curriculum with
individual targets and in-class support

How do EPs support the social inclusion of children with SEND?

 Empowerment and self-efficacy
o Helping individuals understand they have a choice
 Four theories: theory of planned behaviour, contact theory, attribution
theory, social exchange theory
 They can all be used to try and empower young people
 Changing social attitudes of other children
4 theories to understand:
1. Theory of planned behaviour
2. Contact theory
3. Attribution theory
4. Social exchange theory

Theory of planned behaviour (Azjen, 1991)

 Behaviour determined by intention
 3 factors influencing intention and behaviour towards a classmate:
 Attitudes towards the behaviour
o Try and encourage positive attitudes
o Need to work with parents, students, and school staff
 Subjective norm
 Perceived behavioural control
o Do I know how to initiate an action?
o Skilling up children so they know how they can interact with SEND
students
 o Putting these things up in place actually leads to more time spend
with these children in the classroom and in the playground
 TOPB was used to instil and empower/change attitudes of students/staff
o Roberts & Lindsell (1997) – examined attitudes towards peers
with physical difficulties
o Children’s attitudes correlated significantly with attitudes of
teachers and mothers
o Roberts and Smith (1999) – attitudes and perceived behavioural
control significantly predicted behavioural intentions to interact
with and befriend children with PD
o Intentions predicted amount of time children reported spending
with PD children on the playground and in the classroom
 TOPB interventions:
o Used INSET (in service education training) to target teacher
attitudes and perceived behavioural control
o A more positive and inclusive school ethos was a result of this
intervention at whole school level
Contact theory (Allport, 1954)
 Holds that interaction between groups can change attitudes of in-group
members (e.g. pupils who do not have disabilities or SEN) towards out-
group and reduce stereotyping and prejudice
 Can encourage change in attitudes
 There are ingroups and outgroups
 Encouraging positive attitudes towards children with SEN
 Need to have 4 conditions: equal status, common goals, no competition
between groups, support of authorities, law, or custom
 If you get groups to do more cooperative learning, can engender more
positive attitudes
 FOR: Maras and Brown (1996) – primary school children in an integration
programme developed more positive attitudes, control group showed no
change
 AGAINST: Maras and Brown (2000) – difficult for these schools to meet
the conditions required
Attribution theory (Weiner, 1985)
 The way in which individuals attribute successes/failures
 Locus of control – internal vs external
 Stability – stable vs unstable
 Controllability – controllable vs uncontrollable
 Theory is useful is because often SEN children will have maladaptive
attribution styles
 Often these children will get into learned helplessness cycles
 Attribution retraining – studies show that you can challenge their
attributions. Encourages them to learn and feel successful, showing them
they have control – that it is about effort rather than ability
 Many studies evidencing success (e.g. Bosnjak, Boyle & Chodkiewicz,
2017)
Attribution theory (Wiener, 1985)
  An event triggers attributional processes in search for an explanation
across 3 dimensions
o Locus
o Stability
o Controllability
 Potential benefits of incorporating attribution retraining programmes
into schools (Bosnjak, Boyle, & Chodkiewicz, 2017)

Social exchange theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959)

 Desire for affiliation with others relates to the sum of the perceived costs
and benefits of interacting with them, set against some minimal level of
expectation – the comparison level
 Encouraging children to work with each other – children calculate costs
and benefits
 Avoid “helpee-helper” relationship with SEN students
 Instead promote and encourage cooperative learning – groups with mixed
abilities
 Collaborative learning
 Johnson & Johnson (2014) – large meta-analysis found superior effect on
motivation and achievement
 Nind et al (2004) – cooperative learning promotes successful inclusion in
class when diversity exists

EP input at the individual level – what can we do?

 Gaining individual pupil views and acting as an advocate for the child
 Making sure child has a voice
 Can make their own decisions
 Feed back pupil’s views to staff in a sensitive manner

EP input at the group level and whole school levels
 Social emotional learning programmes and mentoring (Morrison Gutman
and Schoon, 2015)
 Nurture groups (Garner & Mills, 2011)
 Whole school staff training (Shaw, 2017)
 Development of special-mainstream school partnerships (Shaw, 2017)
 Bowlby’s principles can also be used
 Embed whole school policy
 Making sure staff feel supported
 Helping special school practices being transferred to mainstream school
practices