Week 24: Inclusive Practice - Collaboration

Collaboration to Meet Learner Needs:

This weeks Lesson was all about collaborating with others to ensure inclusion and so meet the needs of the learners. This associated with the work we have done on Inclusive Practice (you can read more about that in weeks 18, 19, 20, 21).

The Warm Up Activity:

Make some quick notes based on the following image:

Inclusive Practice:
To design lessons that include all learners requires collaboration and working with other professionals/experts and making referrals where necessary.

Meeting Learner Needs:
Works hand in hand with Inclusive Practice. It can't be achieved alone, we must use all the resources available to us, this would include other professionals and would demonstrate that we understand our professional boundaries.

Professional Boundaries:
Know our limitations. Work with and share information with other professionals to meet the two points above.

This practice just warmed us up for a more comprehensive activity and discussion of collaboration. Which started with a Post-It note activity. See next image:

We each wrote down a couple of examples and placed them on the white board and then selecting one that wasn't ours. The one I selected was 'Interpreter'. Rather than discuss just the one. I plan to list all the ones we discussed and include the discussed comments.

PDF of Collaboration - click to view

Pastoral Care:

We had a discussion of Pastoral Care followed by a review of some case studies to highlight where the line had to be drawn.

Pastoral care is about looking after students outside of lessons, being concerned for their well-being. As a teacher, you will also to some be a Personal Tutor. Our lesson quoted Carl Rogers who was a Humanistic Psychologist. He suggests that for a person to 'grow', they need an enviroment that provides them with 'genuineness' (openness and self disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being listened to and understood). Rogers believed that every person can achieve their goals, wishes and desires in life.

"The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing organism” (Rogers, 1951, p. 487).

Congruence:
The development of congruence is dependant on unconditional positive regard

Unconditional positive regard is where parents, significant others (and the humanist therapist) accepts and loves the person for what he or she is.  Positive regard is not withdrawn if the person does something wrong or makes a mistake.  The consequences of unconditional positive regard are that the person feels free to try things out and make mistakes, even though this may lead to getting it worse at times.  People who are able to self-actualize are more likely to have received unconditional positive regard from others, especially their parents in childhood.

"When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic."

"The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it" (Rogers, 1961, p. 351).

"I have gradually come to one negative conclusion about the good life. It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted or fulfilled or actualized. To use psychological terms, it is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis" (Rogers, 1967, p. 185-186).

"The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination" (Rogers, 1967, p. 187).

Case Studies - Where to draw the Line

Boundaries and Points of Referral

During the lesson we used some sample case studies to look at Boundaries and Points of Referral. There were 4 in total and we divided in to pairs and worked through each. We followed this with a class review/discussion.

The following is a record of each sample with annotations.

• Narsi.PDF
• Ian.PDF
• Jess.PDF
• Oliver.PDF