This woman named Melanie J Rodgers has tried to scam us by ordering an assignment with us on SENCO and Autism. Melanie works at Watchetts Junior School.
This scammer was assigned this piece of work by her school which she decided to order from us and later tried to scam us by getting her money back through her credit card processor despite the fact that her assignment was delivered to her in time and as per her instructions.
Her personal information is as follows:
Name- Melanie J Rodgers
Email- melrodgers_7@hotmail.com
Phone- 07966875537
Address- 17 Melanie Drive, Stockport, Greater Manchester,
SK56XJ, United Kingdom ( GBR )
Below are the details of her assignment:
How can a SENCO increase whole school responsibility for supporting young people with ASC?
This assignment will critically examine whole school improvements and responsibilities of staff working in a mainstream primary school that support children with autistic spectrum conditions.
My school is situated in inner city Manchester; we currently have 14 children with a diagnosis of ASC. This has had implications for staff deployment and continuous professional development of teachers and teaching assistants alike.
One of my biggest challenges as SENCO at this school has been around staff attitudes and awareness of pupils who have ASC. I was asked by a senior leader if children with ASC had a disability. It became clear that much more training was needed for all staff in school around awareness and understanding of ASC.
The new teacher standards require teachers to take more responsibility for all children in their class to ensure that they adapt their teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils. (Teachers’ Standards: May 2012)
This seems like a common sense statement, however, we have increasingly seen more complex children in primary schools supported by teaching assistants. In recent years, the number of teaching assistants has grown significantly. The Centre for Studies on Inclusion (CSIE 2000) estimates that there are now as many as 80,000 teaching assistants working in mainstream schools. It is argued that the growth of teaching assistants has risen because of the increased number of pupils with statements in mainstream schools.
The new teacher standards should ensure that all teachers do take more responsibility for all children in their class; including those with SEN/D and other complex needs.
The Green Paper suggests a “overhaul teacher training and professional development to better help pupils with special educational needs and to raise their attainment”. (DfE)
As SENCO, I would like to suggest whole school improvements through targeted staff continuous professional development around teaching children with ASC. However, staff are under constant pressure to ensure pupil progress through a rigorous approach to performance management. Through this system teaching staff in particular are not honest about their training needs as it could be seen as a weakness in their performance.
Guidance published by the DfES relating to provision for children with ASC, recognises that many will be catered for within mainstream schools, with various forms of additional support. (DfES 2002) The Green Paper supports a move away from our more complex children being supported by Teaching Assistants and increasing teachers’ abilities to become responsible for all children that they teach.
The challenges teachers in mainstream schools face when teaching children with autism are vast. Many of our children with ASC require explicit teaching of skills which are not part of the National Curriculum. The way in which they learn and need to be taught sometimes might require a higher adult to pupil ratio. (Whitaker 2007)
These children have difficulties in a range of areas from social understanding including the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs and feelings. (Baron-Cohen 2000) They display difficulties in emotional understanding and reading facial expressions as well as understanding the emotions of others in social situations. (Downs and Smith 2004) This will have an impact on these children taking part in school activities and affect their relationships with their peers and teaching staff. (NAS 2006; Barnard, Harvey et al. 2000).
The ambitious vision for reform set out in this Green Paper includes wide ranging proposals to improve outcomes for children and young people who are disabled or have SEN, minimise the adversarial nature of the system for families and maximise value for money.(Green Paper)
Outline for rest
1. Professional standards + the green paper
2. Same goal or different directions?
3. Ofsted framework
Statutory requirement – all teachers and all students IN CLASS. Fear and hysteria re: ASC, staff attitudes, role of TA
Hidden disability – timetables reduced
Pressures on colleagues
Performance management
New professional standards.
Staff development
If colleagues don’t feel comfortable sharing needs – how can support best? Critical focus
KEEP REFERRING TO OPENING ARGUMENT***
Below is the assignment written for her:
Background
Autism spectrum conditions range from Aperger’s disorders, pervasive development disorders- not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), and autistic disorders occurring in childhood. The prevalence of ASC is 34 to 60 cases in every 10,000 children, yet recent reports have announced a remarkable increase in rates of prevalence. In school settings today, children diagnosed with ASDs require special education interventions in larger numbers than has been the case in the past. Based on the reports of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), cases of students with ASD designated for special services rose by more than 1300% from the period of 1991-1992 to 2001-2002 year of school. Contemporaneous, the assignment of students with ASDs in typical school context is increasing.
The employment of school-based Evidence-Based Practice for special groups of students with learning impairment and autism has been exemplified in mental health and education disciplines. Earlier Paige, the then Secretary of DOE released some principles to organise the DOE in its efforts to ensure an imminent reauthorization of IDEA. These principles are founded on an increased attention to educational practice and responsibility that are centered on EBP, advocating schools to implement research and EBP as arbitrary decisions limit selection of students with learning disabilities. In this vein a school psychologist can contribute significantly to narrowing the gap between practice and research by using EBPs in schools for students with learning disabilities especially those with autism spectrum condition.
One in every 200 children indicate autism spectrum. Moreover such children are increasingly being designated in regular classes, and that segregation rates are increasing. Consequently, it is expedient that schools psychologist must take a more active role in initiating the integration and inclusion of ASCs students into typical educational classes. The fame of inclusive education is driven largely by legal as well as ethical principles, such as minimally restricted settings and the wisdom that separate are unequal. Conferring realistic potency to the inclusion campaigns is the fact that designation in a mainstream education class is less costly compared to designation in special school programs. In addition, lack of specialized programs for students with autistics spectrum disorders promotes this trend. These factors couples with a need for increased adoption of empirically derived strategies in schools, cause increase demand on teachers and psychologist to be educated on evidence based assessment and intervention approaches for students with ASDs.
Educators and school-centered professionals usually confess of their inability to serve the special needs of students with ASDs and feel that further training could help them. Simpson et al (2003) argue that as increasing number of students are designated in regular education context; educators and parents have a responsibility of facilitating inclusion in the lack of explicit directions or knowledge on the process to achieve those objectives.
This paper is aimed at offering educators with information on solutions that can be applied in the conventional education classrooms for children with ASDs. It focuses on evidence-based intervention methods. Many interventions analyzed in ASD have been used in clinical settings although they are currently applied in classroom settings (Williams, Johnson, & Suskhodolsky, 2005). The kind of interventions that this paper addresses fall into three categories including techniques to address disruptive habits, techniques to enhance academic abilities, and techniques to motivate social cohesion. Importantly, this paper describes the process of translating the approaches identifies to classroom. In spite of the limited research base of most of the strategies, an understanding of these strategies and the way to apply them in regular education classrooms can be advantageous for school educators and ASD students in need of special attention.
Support and Consultation of ASD Students
Over and above the characteristic deficits in communication and socialization, students with ASDs usually depict serious behaviour issues including tantrums, agitation, self-destructive behaviour, destructive and disruptive behaviours, and noncompliance. This issue disrupts learning and can hinder the ability of teachers to manage the classroom. Consequently, educators are usually advised to offer interventions and/or suggestions in this area.
Analysis and Functional Evaluation
The literature on applied behaviour analysis (ABA) is abounding with research upholding the success of these techniques for ASDs patients. This model presumes that antecedent stimuli and outcomes affect the acquisition and preservation of behaviours. Studies recognising this approach have proven attenuation of behaviors that are problematic and skill learning. The important initial step in establishing a plan of behavior is finishing an assessment of functionality of the sufferer. All learners with considerable behavioural issues must be subjected to functional assessment as per the endorsement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Designing of behavioral interventions should be guided by the outcome of the comprehensive functional assessment of a pupil’s behavior, with the functional assessment aimed at identifying the variables that add to the behavior of interest. This assessment entails holistic examination of the fundamental functions, or motivations of the disruptive behaviour of the student. This functional assessment must detect environmental impacts for specific target behaviors. The environmental parameters evaluated are antecedents and outcomes that may be preserving the behaviors. Antecedents assessed involve the event preceding the behaviour, the context, and likely physiological impounders. The assessed outcome include the results of the behavior, for example, if the child escapes the condition, gets adult attention, gets a choice object, or is permitted to carry on with the activity.
A functional assessment encompasses many elements, that an educator or psychologist can conduct in a sequence of activities. The initial step involves conducting an interview with the parents and significant others including fellow teachers, to verify their perspective on the possible antecedents and outcomes sustaining a disruptive behaviour. A possible phase in the functional assessment procedures pertain to observation of the student within the context of a classroom where and when the behavior of interest is most probable to express. This process enables first hand evaluation of antecedents and outcomes that contribute to the target behavior in their spontaneous manifestation within a school context. The sole purpose of this procedure is to analyze those variables that affects and sustains the behavior. The concept of functional assessment can be used to investigate the behavior of interest even further. During this phase of analysis, the educator need to control and manipulate the environmental factors to establish the mechanism by which they sustain a behavior or a collection of behaviors, and whether changing them affects the behavior. The educator can be instructed to overlook the target behavior instead of responding, as they would normally do, to detect if attention may be encouraging for the student leading him or her to sustain the behavior.
Once a functional assessment has distinguished the antecedents and consequences involved, behavioral remedies can be designed to target the problematic behavior through altering the environmental effects. For instance, a functional assessment may link screams and tantrums from students with ASD with class assignments that is challenging.
Challenging Behaviour
Challenging behaviours can hinder teaching, restrict opportunities for social relations, and bring about physical injuries. Affected children are usually involved in risk behaviours that are challenging to their parents and educators compared to normal developing kids (Matson, Wilkins & Macken, 2009 cited in Koegel, Matos-Freden, Land & Koegel, 2012). These behaviors have a high tendency of persisting into adulthood (Koegel et al., 2012).
Machielek et al. (2007 cited in Koegel et al., 2012) investigated interventions for challenging behaviour that researchers evaluated in school contexts and identified many potentially effective interventions that are function-based. Some of the interventions identified include instructing communication, enhanced instructional schedules and differential reinforcement.
Differential reinforcement concerns reinforcing desirable behaviours through rewards, while withhold the reinforcer in event of a challenging behavior (Cooper, Heron, & Heward 2007). Differential reinforcement in situations where the target behaviour isolated for reinforcement is mismatched with the challenging behavior. For instance, reinforcing seating of students may reduce tendency to abscond since absconding and remaining in an individual seat cannot happen concurrently. Thus, an educator may decrease a challenging behaviour without applying punishment.
Enhanced instructional scheduling through modifying instructions or assignments can alleviate challenging behaviour if the function involves escaping from the demands of one’s task. According to Koegel et al. (2012), occurs often because the students perceive a task demand eversive or not reinforcing enough. For instance, the child may regard a worksheet as a bore or may be lacking an important skill. Alterations such as reducing the time for accomplishing the task, verifying the instructions, simplifying the demands or affording extra instruction in reference to a necessary skill can decrease challenging behavior in such circumstances. Modified instruction or task may decrease the motivation to elope of the students.
Students with ASD who manifest challenging behavior and serious communication disability require teaching communication to substitute challenging behavior as the common and most efficient intervention for this problem. This technique is termed the Functional Communicating Training (FCT). This technique has four steps. The first step is to determine the communicative aim/function of the target behavior through functional assessment. The second step involves teaching a proper behavior to substitute the challenging behavior. The third step entails rewarding the substitute behavior with the reinforcing results detected in the course of assessment. The fourth step entails withholding reinforcement in event of challenging behavior. The teacher can design a unique intervention strategy to substitute the problematic behavior with a right behavior that plays an equal role, using the information derived from functional assessment. For instance, if a student involves in challenging behavior since the educational assignments is extremely overwhelming, he or she can be instructed to seek help. It is worth of note that when an educator teaches a replacement that is functionally equivalent the student should practice it often until they can use it successfully and easily while shunning the destructive behavior.
Self-management is potentially effective intervention is for improving behaviour. This self-management has been used previously to promote behavior and the finishing of their assignments. However, this intervention needs some prior preparation. There are various consideration involved during the preparation. First, teaching affected student to distinguish between positive and negative behaviors. Second, involves developing a system of reinforcement to foster desirable behavior. The third consideration involves adding time or response augmentation. When these first steps are accomplished, the technique of self-management can be integrated into a general setting. The goal of self-management is to enhance the independence of the child and reduce the time required to instruct the child or encourage him or her to accomplish a task.
Educators can use self-management to decrease disruptive recurring verbalization in general settings and the educator can teach the affected student. To accomplish this task the educator will have to begin with short interval to allow the student to experience success, after which the educator can steadily increase, the interval. The educator can administer the reinforcer for right management of self and for positive behavior. It is important to note that while self-management can reduce effectively destructive behavior effectively, it may focus on functional connection between behavior and continuing consequences. Consequently, integrating self-management with the results of functional assessment is plausible for producing a rapid and lasting decrease in challenging behaviors. In addition, majority of the challenging behaviours have a function of communication, which suggests the importance of continuing intervention in communication in connection with this population.
Communication
Communication is interrelated with several different dimensions of education and development, such as academics, conduct, and socialization. Various school staffs work with different perspectives of communication. These staffs are speech language expert, educators and school psychologist. According to the National Research Council (2001 cited in Koegel et al. 2012), communication impairment in affected students differs in severity as exhibit in monotone speech, limited to a single topic, to a complete lack of verbal communication. Koegal et al (2012) affirms that approximately 61 per cent of the affected students manifest with dysfunctional speech that may present with specific challenges for personnel of the school, especially teachers, as communication dysfunction relates to an increased threat of disruptive behavior and minimized opportunity for active involvement in school (Sigafoos, Arthur-Kelly & Butterfield 2006 cited in Koegel et al. 2012).
Communication dysfunction is a core, prevalent and continuing characteristics of ASD. A lot of research has targeted development of successful technique for boosting communication in affected students. Not only does such interventions results in enhancement of verbal communication, the average duration of utterance, and naturalness of language application, but also decreases challenging behaviors, while it increases in the positive outcomes of communication, and increase extent of joint attention. Thus, the educator must always be cautious to incorporate goals connected to communication on the individualized education plans of the student.
In order to improve communication effectively in affected students, the educator must simply provide increased chances for the students with ASD to communicate, because majority of them get limited opportunity to communicate in school setting (Chiang 2009 cited in Koegel et al. 2012). Chiang (2009) reports that educator offer one chance of communication hourly across the entire school period, although studies have proven that providing and organizing for extra communicative chances within the period when the students is in school may improve communication considerably. The educator should be cautious enough to recognize motivation in the student to create opportunity for him or her to communicate. For instance, students with ASD may be particularly motivated to communicate verbally when they want an item they cannot get without the mediation of the educator, which item may be in the form of a snack, access to the computer, or toy on a shelve he is unable to reach. Therefore, during snack time, the educator could segregate the snack of the student into pieces and demand that the leaner attempt many verbal request for it rather than administering the whole snack devoid of a request from the student. As mentioned earlier, because the severity of communication dysfunction varies differently, interventions should be designated differentially to ensure proportionate use of school sources.
Socialization
Rogers (2000 in Koegel et al. 2012) argues that the incompetence to develop and sustain social relationship represents the most harmful as well as ubiquitous attributes of ASD. Despite existence of individual divergence, the most widespread social dysfucntion are driving and maintaining communication, taking turns, preservation topics or tasks, recognising and analyzing emotions, as well as perspective tacking. Current review of literature notes several interventions that are researched based techniques for improving social competence in students affected by ASD. Certain intervention techniques that are effective and efficient in general classroom environment include managing social activities capturing the interest of the students affected, priming, peer-mediated interventions, script-fading and self-management.
Priming concerns giving opportunities for the affected students to perform social activities prior to the expectation for the student to take part in spontaneous social setting. For instance, when a class is scheduled to play kickball during break time, the educator could arrange for the student with ASD to be taught in advance the basics of the game including the rules of the game, the way a player is expected to play, the manner to respond or to say when a teammate scores. Based on a research by Gengoux (2009) priming can be effective in enhancing socialization especially when educators or parents, under the suggestions of the educator, train board games at home or other setting prior to the actual playground play. Choosing and organizing activities should be enjoyable based on the purpose to familiarize the student with ASD with the imminent activities.
Teacher Training
Even though the number of peer-reviewed documentations upholding effective interventions for affected students, barely enough have been focused on training of teachers as well as their competencies. Koegel and LaZebnik (2004) argued that teaching assistants and aides for students with ASD report feeling under-qualified and undertrained to tackle the problems associated with ASD. Nevertheless, research studies indicate various methods by which effective training can be administered to the professionals responsible for kids with ASD. Because of the escalating prevalence rate of ASD in children and deficiency in trained staff, distance methods videoconferencing can provide a successful means for training educators to aim obstructive behaviors. Focused and intensive weekly programs during the summer holidays have been indicated to enhance teachers’ competency across a broad range of areas (Lerman, Tetreault, Hovanetz, Strobel, & Garro 2007 in Koebel et al. 2012). Moreover, short practice with feedback and video-feedback sessions may cause fast improvement related to teaching in aides for peer-to-peer interaction (Machalicek, et al., 2009). Feedback in this case involves giving the trainee direct feedback on the implementation of an intervention strategy.
Nonetheless, training is costly and time-consuming, such that a high turnover of special education personnel is a common experience for public schools. Yet, pre-professional curriculum and autism-unique training at the university level have been proposed, in order to enable persons applying for post of teaching in schools start their careers already with the necessary training to handle this special category of students (Koegel et al. 2012). Some laws have been enacted in some states in the United States requiring educators working with students with autistic spectrum disorder ASD to have a level of specialized autism-specific training. Nevertheless, training, or absence thereof, persist as a challenge for systems of schools, and there is need for research to distinguish the major areas to train, reliable teacher training techniques and techniques for updating special education personnel on the latest research findings related to there are of specialty.
Educators and Classroom Variables
Certain classroom factors have a dimension on the effectiveness of teacher-based interventions for reducing obstructive behaviors in students affected by ASD. Teachers do not give significance to consideration of whether an intervention was research-based. They elected interventions that were easy to apply in the classroom, depending on their pedagogical believes, the perceived relevance of an intervention for a specific student, and the resources availability. For instance, educators can rarely choose to adopt a behavior initiative that depend on giving rewards if they perceive the system to be some form of bribery or the process as time-consuming at the expense of the classroom schedule.
With the significance of teacher-related and classroom-related variables in the effective adoption and maintenance of evidence-based interventions in the context of classrooms, it is expedient to give continuing training to in-service educators on research-centered strategies and possibly involve educators in purposeful ways in the process of research (Koegel et al. 2012). With reference to training of educators, it is inadequate to attend an annual ongoing educational lecture. Processes like video modeling, wherein educators view themselves or someone else applying a specific intervention, combined with an inside feedback given by an expert support staff, tend to be reliable techniques (Robinson 2008 in Koegel et al. 2012).
School coordinators have employed videoconferencing in preparing and supporting educators over the previous two decades. Latest advancement in this technology may promote development of novice approach of applying it in training and supporting educators in schools (Machalicek, et al., 2009).
Reference List
Koegel, L Matos-Freden, R. Land, R & Koegel, R 2012, “Interventions for Children with Austim Spectrum Disorders in Inclusive School Settings”, Cognitive and Behavioral Practice , 19, 402-412.
Machalicek, W O’Reilly, M Chan, JM Rispoli, M Lang, R Davis, T et al. 2009, “Using Videoconferencing to Support Teachers to Conduct Preference Assessments with Students with Autism and Developmental Disabilities”, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorder , 3, 32-41.
Williams, SK Johnson, C & Suskhodolsky, DG 2005, “The Role of the School Psychologist in the Inclusive Edcuation of School-age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders”, Journal of School Psychology , 43, 117-136.