Creating inclusive school cultures

The New Zealand Curriculum encourages schools to consult with their communities to develop a set of values that students can ‘encourage, model, and explore’. As an integral part of a school’s culture, these values will also inform school practices and policies.

Part of the process of schooling improvement is the exploration of the gap between aspirational goals and values and what is actually happening. This is the essence of culture change.

The  Educational Leaders website has a section on culture change – see especially the page on ‘Attitudes, values, and ethics’.

The Ministry of Education’s set of learning materials Ki Te Aotūroa: Improving Inservice Teacher Educator Learning and Practice includes extensive relevant discussion; for example on aligning  beliefs with practice, establishing a  culture of inquiry, and  change for improvement.

The  Te Kotahitanga project has useful information about how to challenge deficit theorising and improve the achievement and participation of Māori students. 

In practice, inclusion is about making sure that everyone in the school community is able to play an active and valued role.

This is more likely to happen if a student’s care community are prepared to share information and knowledge. A student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may have an extensive care community, for example, family and whānau, friends, teachers, teacher aides, school leaders, a Special Education Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO), and therapists. Each person contributes valuable knowledge, skills, and observations.

Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd (2009) use the term ‘educationally powerful connections’ to describe home–school relationships that are learning-focused. These reciprocal learning connections support students to experience continuity as they move between the different settings in which they learn:

The purpose of school-home involvement is to connect in-school and out-of-school learning in ways that will support valued outcomes for students. If effective connections are to be developed, teachers need to value the educational cultures of their students’ families and communities, and parents need to learn about and value the education culture of the school. The principle of ako – reciprocal learning and teaching – is therefore fundamental to developing connections that work.

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My mum came to school at the beginning of each year and talked to both the students and the teachers about autism and about me. I think that helped everyone understand me better. I especially liked it when she talked about all the things I am good at.

Student with ASD: New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline, Voices

Educationally powerful connections with family, whānau, and communities can have large positive effects on a range of student outcomes. RTLB Peggy Waite affirms the importance of this:

The most successful thing for parents and for school is a partnership. The parents can’t do it alone. And the school can’t do it alone. We actually have to all work together. It’s about us working in partnership for the best for their children. And that’s what they expect and should get. It’s everyone working together for what’s the best for every child.

Peggy Waite in Smith, 2009

You may have found that a barrier to the inclusion of students with ASD is the lack of connection between members of students’ care communities.

If community inclusion is a more generic issue in your school, then you may find it helpful to start by looking at Curriculum Updates 1 and 10, both of which focus on schools' relationships, with families, whānau, and community.

If you wish to construct more educationally powerful partnerships with whānau, hapū, and iwi, visit the Ministry of Education website Ruia: School–whānau Partnerships for Māori Learner Success. 

If you have decided you want to promote greater collaboration in the development of IEPs, the Ministry of Education resource Collaboration for Success: Individual Education Plans can help you.

The Strengthening Families and Whānau Ora websites both provide models for building care communities that centre on and empower the family/whānau and the child.

Annie Guerin’s award-winning Masters thesis illustrates how she (then a SENCO), a mother, a teacher aide, and a teacher built an authentic partnership that fostered the inclusion of Duncan, an 8-year-old student with autism. Duncan had previously been excluded from preschool and two primary schools because of his challenging behaviour. 

Disability advocate Katherine Rees believes we need to go ‘beyond inclusion’ to create an education system where everyone collaborates to solve problems. This would involve shifting from a ‘resource intensive’ model, in which resources are focused on an individual student, to using resources to better prepare teachers and support staff to cater for diverse students.

She draws on her personal experiences as a student with a physical disability:

Whenever my voice was heard and respected when making decisions about my support, I was happy. I felt capable of getting involved in my school community and in a variety of leadership positions. I felt respected. My peers didn’t alienate me because of my disability.

But usually my voice went unheard. It was assumed, wrongly, that if my support services worked I would automatically feel I belonged. But support services alone do not create a sense of inclusion or belonging. So after staff had put in place a support system they thought worked for me, I was expected to create a sense of belonging or ‘inclusion’ for myself. ‘Inclusiveness’ was seen as the responsibility, not of the school, but of each individual student.

2010, page 7

Rees argues that a more collaborative model of education would have benefits for all members of the school community, as it would grow the skills and competencies of lifelong learners:

People who feel a sense of belonging in their learning environment are more likely to emerge as citizens who are creative and can demonstrate initiative when interacting with their diverse peer group. A student using technology to communicate, for example, wouldn’t be feared by students who hadn’t seen this before. Instead, the situation could be recognised as a learning – therefore relationship building – opportunity between two students.

2010, page 9

Julia Osmond has ASD and is non-verbal. She wrote this poem when she was 9 years old and a year 5 student at Kelburn School in Wellington.

Talking to you

How do you do the only thing that makes me scared

That makes me hesitant and ill prepared

I cannot think how I can be that bold

How the tale I treasure can be told

Only the danger of a clumsy tongue

Prevents my unformed song from being sung

And all the things that I cannot forget 

 Will speak for me one day, but not just yet.

Several items in the resource library consider inclusion from the perspective of students with disabilities. These include:

• an article by MacArthur, Sharp, Kelly, and Gaffney (2007) that reports findings from a three-year study on 11–14-year-old disabled children’s experiences of primary and secondary school
• Learning Better Together: Working towards Inclusive Education in New Zealand Schools by MacArthur (2009); see especially chapter 9
• an Open University unit on What Children’s Perspectives Tell Us About Inclusion 
• the documentary film Bully, which shows what students actually experience. 
• examples throughout the You’re Going To Love this Kid! DVD and professional learning package (Kluth 2011).

There is a close connection between pedagogy and culture. Students will be more engaged if their teachers choose pedagogical practices that create a sense of belonging and foster reciprocal learning.

This is reflected in one of the dimensions of quality teaching identified by Adrienne Alton-Lee:

Pedagogical practices enable classes and other learning groups to work as caring, inclusive, and cohesive learning communities.

2003, page 89

The Best Evidence Syntheses provide numerous examples of building communities of practice. Chapter 4 of the Mathematics BES focuses on the creation of ‘mathematical communities of practice’, and chapter 5 of the Social Sciences BES explains how effective teachers of social sciences build and sustain learning communities.

While not ‘how to’ manuals, the syntheses provide considerable information about what happens when teachers implement inclusive teaching and learning strategies. For example, the Social Sciences BES describes the following strategies in practice:

• supporting dramatic play (pages 144–145)
• training teacher aides to adopt facilitative strategies and behaviours (pages 145–146)
• Circle of Friends (pages 146–148)
• publicly assigning competence to low-status learners (page 149)
• explicitly teaching the skills needed for co-operative learning (pages 155–156).

One way of fostering social inclusion is by carrying out an ecological assessment – a study of the student’s physical, social, and learning environments and how these affect their development, learning, and behaviour. This gives teachers information about the social skills that individual students with ASD need to develop in order to participate in the school community.

The Autism Web Course offers an online module, ‘Ecological Assessment for the Teaching of Social Skills’. This approach involves closely observing how non-disabled students carry out an activity in an authentic setting (for example, how joint play is initiated). This information can then be used to select goals and design an approach that will support greater participation for students with ASD. Additional modules include Circle of Friends, peer-mediated instruction (or ‘peer tutoring’), teaching the ‘hidden curriculum’, and social stories.

Adapting Ecological Assessments to Students with ASDs (The Inclusion Notebook, Spring 2010) describes how an ecological assessment was used to design an IEP for a student with ASD.

Effective RTLB Practice: Annotated Case Studies from Resource Teachers Learning and Behaviour (Hancox and MacDonald) is a case study describing how an ecological assessment was used to foster inclusion for a year 6 student with ASD. The teacher and peers increased their understanding and empathy for the student, and he became more involved in the classroom and playground.

Sustainability is one of the values that contribute to the development of inclusive schools (Booth and Ainscow, 2011). The Education for Sustainability TKI community includes a description of co-operative learning and related activities.

Schools provide a natural setting for friendships to flourish. However, there are many different types of friendship, with differing outcomes for students with disabilities.

Meyer and Bevan-Brown (2005) describe four approaches that teachers can use to support friendships.

1. Child repertoire
   Teachers prioritise the social skills that are relevant to their students’ school and community environments. This provides students with multiple opportunities for learning and mastering social routines with their peers.
2. The social ecology
   Teaching and learning in the classroom has great potential for facilitating social interactions. However, it is important that those classrooms are inclusive. Teachers can seat students in pairs and groups based on knowledge of shared interest and skills, teach students how to collaborate, and set learning tasks in which students with disabilities have a clear role to play.
3. Adult mediation
   Teachers, teacher aides, parents, and other adults can either facilitate or be a barrier to inclusion. Teacher aides can unintentionally form a barrier to inclusion if they are constantly alongside the student. Students with disabilities are best served ‘if the aide blends into the flow of classroom activities and supports classroom membership for the student’ (Meyer, Minondo, et al., 1998, page 178). Encourage students with ASD to participate in social, sporting, or community activities.
4. Peer skills, support, and expectations
   Discuss all issues openly to avoid discomfort. Use books and DVDs to explain ASD to peers (for example, the In My Shoes DVD or the picture book My Friend with Autism). Interventions can be formal (such as Circle of Friends, peer tutoring, and peer training) or more integrated (for example, teaching peers how to use a communication board or implementing a simple rule such as You can’t say 'You can’t play’). Students learn from observing adults. Everyone in the school community has a responsibility to value and respect students with disabilities.

There are many support providers that offer resources and therapies to support social inclusion (for example, through social clubs, leisure activities, and games).

He won’t go in there and say, ‘Can I play?’ If they’re playing sport, he’ll go and stand around. His teacher aide has rearranged her programme with Joel, she is more or less out with him at lunch time too. She told me the other day that the senior boys were playing basketball and he was standing in there, arms folded and they were saying to her, ‘Why is Joel standing by us?’ She said, ‘Maybe you should throw the ball to him and involve him.’ Last week he was outside playing basketball with the boys. It was exciting.

Parent, in Bevan-Brown, 2004, page 84

The ‘hidden curriculum’ refers to the informal, unplanned learning that takes place as students interact with the people and places around them.

Social secrets

The hidden curriculum includes what Paula Kluth calls ‘social secrets’ – the norms and expectations that are unspoken but somehow understood, and that may change at different times and in different circumstances. Students with ASD generally find this confusing. This confusion can be one of the causes of problem behaviour and a barrier to social inclusion.

On her website Kluth recommends telling students the secrets. They can be told when you notice a student having difficulty (perhaps wondering how to join in a group) or shared before a problem arises:

• Kids can get up and sharpen pencils any time but Ms Right gets crabby when we do it when she is giving directions.
• If she stands near your desk it means you should stop talking and listen.
• If you give an answer then you should let someone else give the next answer; don’t be a know-it-all.
• If everyone works hard on Friday afternoons, Ms Right will sometimes give us free time at the end of the day.
• You can’t always be the line leader; give everyone a chance to be in front of the line.

Ms Right found this helped all her students, not just the two students with ASD.

Social Stories™

Social Stories™  is another approach to supporting students with ASD to understand and participate in social interactions. Developed by Carol Gray, it uses a story format to provide students with information about what to expect and how to respond in a situation they are likely to encounter.

The stories are individualised and may be written, illustrated or recorded so that students can access them throughout the day.

When constructing social stories:

1. Think about and picture the goal of the Social Story™. The main goal is to teach social rules and cues. Accurate information and descriptions must be provided.
2. Gather information about the topic, including when and where it occurs, who is involved, what to do in the process or sequence, and so on.
3. Tailor the text. Write in three parts, introduction, body, and conclusion. Provide accurate information about the ‘wh’ questions for the target behaviour and write with a first-person perspective. Use positive language and use literally accurate words. Consider the Social Story™ ratio of two to five descriptive, perspective, and/or affirmative sentences for every directive sentence.
4. The title should address the main concept of the story.

Kluth, 2010, page 110

Social stories are described in section 3.2.b of the New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline (Ministries of Health and Education, 2008). There is an explanation of the approach, with examples, on the iCommunicate website and on pages 63–64 of the Effective Pedagogy in Social Sciences/Tikanga ā Iwi BES (Aitken and Sinnema, 2008). You can also go to Carol Gray’s own website. 

The  Do2Learn website has resources for fostering the emotional, social, and communication skills needed to understand the hidden rules governing effective interaction with others.     

Many New Zealand schools are seeking innovative ways of addressing the problem of bullying. Cromwell High School has introduced a blame-free bullying programme, which is documented in the DVD Autism at School (Smith, 2009). The DVD shows how the school has used this approach to improve inclusion for Jordan, a year 10 student.

As part of the programme, Jordan explains to his teacher aide what he is going through and what is worrying him. A meeting is organised with Jordan’s teacher aide, the RTLB, and the school guidance counsellor. Some students also attend. They have been nominated by Jordan as being part of either the problem or the solution. The students are asked if they would be willing to help him. They are not told that some of them have been making him unhappy – their goodwill is assumed. The discussion is an opportunity to build their understanding of what Jordan is going through and why he behaves as he does. The students are asked for their ideas about what to do.

Guidance counsellor Vicky Patton reflects:

I think since we’ve introduced the blame-free bullying approach, because they’ve understood more about what is going on for him, they’ve been good at supporting him. Just saying hullo, trying to have normal conversations with him, encouraging him in his work. Also limiting his speech sometimes. He can talk a lot about a particular topic that is of great interest to him – just helping him to identify that not everyone is interested to that extent. To start to understand what is socially acceptable and what is not.

The new Ministry of Education website Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) offers programmes and initiatives for parents, teachers, and schools to promote positive behaviour in children and young people, including a section on how to deter bullying.

The NZCER website Wellbing@School offers a self-review tool that schools can use to build a safe and caring climate that deters bullying.

The resource library includes several items on bullying – for example, see the entry for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the resources accompanying the documentary film Bully, by Lee Hirsch. 

• What is it like to be a student with ASD at our school? How does that differ for different students with ASD, and why?
• Are we aware of deficit thinking in our school community? What are we doing about it?
• How would we respond to a teacher who doesn’t want a particular student in their class, or a parent who doesn’t want a particular student in their child’s class?
• What can we do to improve our responsiveness to the diverse identities, languages, and cultures of students with ASD?
• How can we support students with and without ASD to engage positively with each other?
• What can we do to improve communication between the people responsible for students with ASD?
• What does our school culture look like?