1 Exploring the context – Putting us all in-the-pictureJonathan Rix

2 What lead me to here A personal involvement in issues of disability and early intervention. A professional involvement in teaching and with people identified with learning difficulties. A literature review of identified traits within the aetiology of Down syndrome which can be regarded as relevant to issues of intellectual access. (Rix, 2005; Rix, 2009) Research by Heritage Forum in Liverpool with 25 people with learning difficulties visiting culture and heritage sites to identify how enhance accessibility. (Rix, Lowe & The Heritage Forum, 2010) Research into teachers production and use of simplified language materials (Rix, 2004; Rix, 2006; Rix, 2009) Systematic literature review to answer the question What pedagogical approaches can effectively include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms? (Rix, Hall, Nind, Sheehy & Wearmouth 2009) Two sets of interviews with nine parents and personal perspective as father of a child with Down syndrome engaged in early intervention programmes. (Paige-smith & Rix, 2006, Rix, Paige-Smith & Jones, 2008, Rix & Paige-Smith, 2008).

3 A focus upon the collective A need? A right? or a moral duty?Early childhood settings and practices are culturally constructed and include beliefs about the ‘proper’ way for a child to develop. (Woodhead 2005, p90) Human development is a process in which people transform through their ongoing participation in cultural activities, which in turn contribute to cultural communities across generations. (Rogoff, 2003, p37) States must ensure that all children “access an inclusive, quality and free primary education and secondary education on an equal basis with others in the communities in which they live”. (UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006, Article 24:2:b) It seems imperative to explore ways of understanding learning that do not naturalize and underwrite divisions of social inequality in our society. A reconsideration of learning as a social, collective, rather than individual, psychological phenomenon. (Lave, 1996, p149)

4 Studies using in-the-pictureStudy examining the experiences of two children and their parents within early intervention programmes, involving 10 visits ranging from one to five hours with each of the families over a period of five months. Study examining six children’s experiences of social connections in three different pre-school settings. Involving 8 observation sessions in each setting. Study examining four practitioners' views on using the ‘In the Picture’ approach to observe social interactions between young children. Each practitioner carried out one daily observation session with their key child over a three week period. Study examining five families experiences of the Bookstart Corner programme delivered by children’s centres within the homes of people experiencing social disadvantage. Involving six 90 minute visits to each home across a four week period.

5 In-the-picture – the agentive childItP draws upon the ‘listening to children’ paradigm which sees learning as a collaborative process between adults and children (Clark 2004). This paradigm draws on three theoretical starting points: • children having their own time, activities and space; • participatory appraisal including the giving of ‘voice’ to children; • the notion of the competent child. Clark’s (2004) research on children’s perspectives in early years settings showed that by listening to children they can be involved and empowered to participate in decision-making in their setting.

6 In-the-picture – observing the child’s perspectiveThe learning context and children’s participation are central in educational literature associated with pragmatism (e.g. Dewey, 2009), socio-cultural models (e.g. Vygotsky, 1967) and the relational perspective of special education (Hausstätter, 2007). Socio cultural assessment focus upon the child’s perspective in context such as that the narrative assessment model (Cullen 2005) using a learning story approach (Carr 2001) or the mosaic approach (Clarke and Moss, 2001). Practitioners are faced with the challenge of engaging with the child’s perspectives so that through this they may place the learning topic in context (Jensen, 2006). Detailed observation is recognized as being central to listening to young children, particularly those with learning difficulties or communication impairments (Clark 2005, Nind, et al 2010; Dickens 2011) ItP uses first person narrative in an attempt by the observer to be a more effective and attentive listener.

7 In-the-picture – the use of photographyUsing photographs as a focus is well established as an approach to enable children to participate in research by giving their own views on the phenomenon being investigated (Einarsdottir 2005, Smith et al 2005; Stephenson 2009). Beresford et al. (2004) carried out research with parents and their children identified with autistic spectrum disorders that was informed by Clark’s and Moss’s mosaic approach (2001). They used photographs taken by the child and concluded that researchers had to be flexible to accommodate participants so as to avoid the project itself becoming a barrier to participation. ItP uses photography in an attempt to capture the child’s focus of attention.

8 In-the-picture – sharing with the family and practitionersRecognising the funds of knowledge that families bring with them (Moll et al. 1992). Recognising parental centrality within policy and theorised service delivery. Evidence of greater effectiveness in services which focus upon “improving” child–parent relationships (Newman et al. 2009) The focus upon practitioner reflection. (E.g. The “common core of skills” included sections on Know how to reflect and improve, Self-knowledge, and Awareness of complexities. (Of course, when you examine training and qualification requirements for practitioners there is little to encourage them to engage reflectively.) Discussions with practitioners and/or the family are carried out after the observation sessions alongside reflection on the photographs. The images and narrative facilitate discussion involving the child and family. The images and narrative provide the family with the opportunity to make connections between the observer’s presence in their environment and the purpose of the observations.

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10 The initial study An ethnographic study to explore child and parents experiences of early intervention . Two researchers Two families Two boys identified with Down syndrome aged 18 and 30 months 33 recorded family observation periods 19 family and practitioner interviews 6 recorded reflective researcher discussions. The research involved different shared spaces such as: • playing in the park • parent-led early intervention • getting ready for bed • speech and language sessions • eating lunch in a café • physiotherapy sessions • at the child-minder • home visiting from a professional • playing in a play centre • a session in an early years centre • family meal times • a play session in a sensory room This included the presence of guests that came to stay – such as grandparents.

11 The initial study One researcher made narrative notes, whilst the other took photographs or engaged in child initiated play. We were not merely ‘observers’. Limiting our interactions only when ‘early intervention’ was taking place. The narrative notes of the child’s experiences were written in the first person, in an attempt to capture the child’s lived experiences. This was an emerging method intended to facilitate discussion rather than to present certainties. Observational approaches are open to alternative interpretations and potential misinterpretations, resulting from the observer’s efforts to represent the individual’s experience. We reflected on our different approaches in writing our first person narrative observations and compromises we might be making. For example, one researcher would include, within their written narrative, experiences in the room which they felt were relevant to their contextual framing of the observation and research, even though this involved thoughts the child was unlikely to have; whereas the other researcher focused only upon what the child was reacting to and engaging with.

12 The initial study Photography of the children during play and EI activities alongside the making of first-person narrative notes. Flash photography was not used and the children soon paid little attention to the processes of data collection. The children were keen to look at the photographs. These were presented on a laptop immediately after a play/early intervention session and in book form after a few sessions. Switches, a tablet pc and printed pictures were used to facilitate control. The parents were also interested in the photographs and these were used to discuss and reflect on what the child – and parent – was doing during the early intervention. The photographs included a variety of play activities (e.g. the child playing ball with his father and sister, reading a story with his father) and toys or objects chosen to play with or talk about (e.g. ‘daddy’s boots’).

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16 The initial study The parents were interviewed at the start and at the end of the research. These interviews focused on their perceptions of early intervention and how they carried out the activities with their child. Professionals involved with the children were also interviewed, both in the presence of the families and separately. Interviews with both parents and professionals took the form of responsive, extended conversations (Rubin and Rubin 2004). The data collected were analysed in a process based on grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss 2008). The ongoing reflective discussions and notes provided the recursive influence, informing the questions and discussions in subsequent meetings. The transcripts of interviews, observations and written notes were thematically analysed at the end of the research period.

17 How it can raise questions for discussion – E.g: Whose priority?I take the hat and look at it. ‘Picture’s finished’ says Dad. ‘Bye’ I say. I look at Dad, ‘what is happening now?’ He takes some picture cards; he shows me a picture card. The girl is hugging the baby. I do the sign hugging. I do the sign for baby. He shows me a picture the girl is kissing the baby. I blow a kiss, and then I have to choose. I hug the girl, I kiss the girl. I choose and I give the card a hug. I give the girl a kiss and everyone cheers, and Dad says ‘kiss Gran’, and I kiss Gran. Then he shows me two cards. One’s got two people swimming, and one is of a girl and he says, ‘where’s the girl’, but there’s a girl in the picture and two people swimming, and I choose and it’s the wrong one, and then Daddy says ‘choose the girl’ so I choose the other one and it’s the right one, and then he asks me and I look away and I’m not interested, and Dad tells me to look, ‘last one’ he says. I turn and look, I choose the right one, and everyone claps, and then Dad gives me the recorder, and I smile, and I’m glad to see the recorder and I blow it and everyone cheers, and I bang it on the table and it’s a good noise and I blow it again, and I pass it to Dad and he puts it away and Dad asks what I want, I yawn….

18 Revealing contradictions for discussion: E.g. Shifting contexts 20We do this sort of posting cards activity and I quite enjoy that, and then we do some more standing when she’s holding my heels together, but not leaning on anything, and then she wanted me to walk over, but I didn’t feel like standing up at the time, so I dropped down, so then she tells me to go and crawl across the beam on the floor, but before I do that I can play with the cars going up and down and she pushes it to me and I push the car back to her along the beam, and then one of the cars is a mini and I threw that and it broke, a bit of it broke off, and so my Dad told me to go and say ‘sorry’ because I’d broken this plastic car ’cos I’d thrown it, and then she got me to crawl along the beam which I didn’t like doing. I was crying out and tried to stop, and tried to get off the beam. It wasn’t very high, but I didn’t like doing it, and then she got some bean bags, and we were throwing the bean bags around, and then she was talking to my Dad about things that he wants to talk about, things like school and would I be able to manage school, because there are some stairs there, and would I be able to walk and climb the stairs as well, so she was telling him that ‘yes he’ll be fine by then’, that I’ll be fine by then and I played with Alice and my sister, and I walked a few steps because Alice was throwing the bean bag onto the other table, so I went to go and fetch it, and also then I’d throw it back, and then I’d walk to go and fetch it, and my Dad says ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing’, because he was watching me walking, and he was really clapping me and then it was time to go home.

19 Revealing contradictions for discussion: E.g. Shifting contextsAmongst many observations, we noted how a child who had said only 2 or 3 words during an hour long speech and language session, spoke over 21 words in 9 minutes when looking at photographs of their day. Taking the child’s perspective also meant that one of the fathers in the study came to realise that his attempts to stop his child throwing things were somewhat unfair. Across a six day period the following meanings could be identified from the child’s point of view.

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21 Revealing contradictions for discussion: E.g. shifting contextsUnderstanding start and stop and turn taking in a SaLT session… Now the woman has the box and opens it, and there are bells, and it is in front of me, and I am not sure I am allowed to take this, and mum helps me, and I take some, and now the woman is shaking, and they’re telling me to shake, and then the woman is doing it, and I am looking but they are making me shake, so I feel the shake around my hands, and then they tell me to stop. I start shaking but mum stops me. Now the woman is looking at me telling me it is my turn and I stop. She shakes and asks me to copy. I do, then they make me shake. They shake my hand and tell me ‘well done’. They keep saying ‘Samuel’s turn’, and the boy is shaking so I shake, and I look at Gran and shake, and they say ‘its not my turn’, and then everyone is shaking, and I look at them and they tell me to shake so I do, and they say ‘well done’, and then they say ‘stop’, and they’re making me put them in the box. I don’t want to. Mum makes me do it. They say ‘well done, good boy’.

22 Revealing contradictions for discussion: E.g. shifting contextsUnderstanding start and stop and turn taking in a play session… We’re back in this room, here are the shapes. I’m sitting on the floor, I’m banging the shapes. They make a good noise, I bang them together, and the man is helping me put some shapes back in the block. We put one in, two in and then I’m banging, and so is he, and when I stop he stops, and this is fun and we do it again, and again, and again. When I stop he stops, and he says ‘stop’ and when I go he says ‘go’, louder and quieter, and faster, and slower, and harder, and softer, and he does the same as me, makes me laugh, and then I drop the brick behind me and the man finds it. It’s in the books, so I then pull the book out. I put the book back and we start banging again, and I swap brick shapes and so does he, and we’re banging again, and he says ‘go’ when I go I stop and I stop, and I do a very long bang, and he asks if I’m going to stop, and I do stop very quickly and look at him, and he stopped and that is fun.

23 Revealing contradictions for discussion: E.g. shifting contextsSoftplay sensory room : Fibreoptic cable – Chewed? - ‘yes’ Electric switch – Can be turned on and off ?- ‘no’ Home: I’ll say to him like if I’m drying my hair he used to just come up and chew the wires, and I’ve been like ‘no, no’ and now he does pause as though to see what my reaction was going to be. (Rachel, 2009)

24 A practical application Making friends research – A spotlight on connectionsThrough using ItP, observers noted: outgoing behaviour where children seemed keen to test social connections with peers persistence and individual strategies repeated with different children a social dimension to common play choices more sustained and reciprocal connections if the approaching child was prepared to follow rather than lead recurrent playmates who featured in the exchanges for two of the lead children. presence of certain peers who were often on the periphery of the lead child’s activity

25 An offshoot in thinking- But is our focus on the context?Witnessing the individualistic in-child deficit within parents and practitioners People like seeing ticks in boxes, if there aren’t any ticks in boxes they certainly get very down, upset, worried. (Practitioner, 2009) Rachel said: ‘The Portage checklist is my Bible, and I even got a scoring grid off Jane as well …. Yes, oh yes, we worked hand in glove’. (Rix & Paige-Smith, 2008) Following instructions – ‘L’ for Lolly We were actually going to get round to doing some lollies or licking. I think she bought bread sticks and chocolate spread, we just never got round to doing that, but ‘yeah’ you’re right, you’ve not actually experienced a lolly, so it is a bit sort of futile isn’t it? (Parent, 2009)

26 Contradictory values and ways of thinking(Practitioner, 2009) With Tim because of his Down Syndrome he doesn’t necessarily learn exactly the same as other children, but by giving that one-to-one help and the experiences he’s able to really develop to his full potential, but it is a matter of lots of repetition, starting things at an earlier age than you would do with another child, so as you’re laying those foundations for him, and so you’re starting you know could be months before another child would be ready for it, for doing that particular thing, and you build it up little by little, step by step until you have reached your final goal. I think sometimes you do get caught up in what you’re supposed to be doing, and sometimes it’s what’s the parents expectations of you are as well, that they want to see learning, but I do find myself often saying well you know, trying to get the child to do this I often say to all parents ‘we wouldn’t be doing this with another child, they would just playing, we would not be expecting them to sit down, do this, it’s not a natural thing for children to be doing’.

27 Recognising the child in context - 35Vygotsky advocated the use of collective learning, focus upon the disabled child’s social strengths and not their weaknesses. He recognised the importance of situating disabled children the same sociocultural environment as their peers. Bronfenbrenner (1977) called for research which explored human development in the context of the ‘dynamic relation between person and situation’ (p515) Hedegaard (2009) suggested child’s development is an institutionalised process. Children are always participating in a dynamic interaction with social structures, practices, traditions, conditions, and discourses. Hedegaard suggested that research needs to examine the traditions of institutional practices and the values and norms of those involved in everyday practices with children.

28 Recognising the child in contextDo parents and practitioners recognise the wider role played by the context around the child? Do parents and practitioners apply their understanding of context within their formal assessment processes?

29 Methods To answer the question: Do parents and practitioners recognise the wider role played by the context around the child? We revisited 19 interviews with parents and practitioners to seek out reference to context. The assumption prior to exploring the data was that these discussion of context would emerge from the data as asides and in passing.

30 Methods To answer the question: Do parents and practitioners apply their understanding of context within their formal assessment processes? Access was gained to a life time of paperwork associated with a boy with Down syndrome in a Year 5 English primary school. A preliminary and relatively cursory examination of 5.82kg of his paperwork identified 750g (12%) which made some kind of reference to context. This selection was analysed in detail. It contained over 150 pages of documentation: early intervention activity sheets teacher and teaching assistant annotated lesson plans evaluation reports from speech and language therapists, paediatricians, other medical practitioners, Portage Home Visitors, occupational therapists, teachers, nursery workers, educational psychologists and parents minutes of meetings with all of these individuals letters to and from practitioners and managers within these support systems.

31 Consideration of context by parents and professionalsEveryday learning opportunities in informal situations The importance of a child’s enjoyment The importance of understanding their interests The impact of practitioner priorities (particularly developmental model and parental concerns and/or lack of ‘knowledge’) Power base & relationships between parents, practitioners & children Parental relationships with other parents Parental capacity to prepare a child for professional settings Parental negativity & Practitioner negativity Formal assessment processes Negative impact of therapeutic settings Automatic assumptions about a child Child’s sensitivity to parental mood Relationship with parents confronting complex social support systems How services differ from borough to borough, How access to services depends on local processes How joined up services result from investment A lack of resources A recognition of other profession’s silo thinking

32 Consideration of context by professionals and parents within the documentationDescriptive comments focussing child on a task or in a situation, with occasional judgements on his performance Comments about appropriate activities in relation to a generalised adult (not other children) being in attendance. Comments on child’s behaviour and compliance Brief description of child’s interaction with peers (but only 5 mentions of specific relationship moments with another child) Strategies which are typically no different to other children’s. Only 1 mention in 150 pages Reflection upon how to scaffold his participation and learning with others Child’s enjoyment Activity in a home school context Policy Strategy not working

33 Consideration of context by parents and professionals

34 Consideration of context by professionals and parents within the documentation

35 Our thought world… The document framing of the child ignores the continuously changing circumstances that arise from the moment by moment negotiations and decisions that involve all the participants, their support networks and the policies and established practices and resources with which they work. As with nurses (Bowker & Leigh Star 1999), the systems used to record information socialise us into a ‘thought world’ which integrates top down criteria into day to day practice

36 Our thought world… Practitioners (and parents) are also trying to simplify a complex world: Part of the skill of work, all work, then is routinization, adapting the particulars of the world so that they fit within the general schemas of the organization. The gap to be bridged lies between reality and process, and it is bridged by the improvisation inherent in practice – so deeply inherent that the practitioners themselves are barely aware of it.…This adaptation is aptly reflected in the wonder and the problems of forms, Forms are the crucial means by which an organisation brings the heterogeneous world into line with its processes. (Brown & Duguid, 2000 p108)

37 …and a final thought It is useful to develop strategies which enable us to engage with the child’s perspective upon everyday situations and their interaction within them. But If our systems and processes do not require us and support us to engage with the child’s perspective and the wider context out of which learning and development occurs what is the value of such strategies? Is the danger of strategies such as ItP that despite best intentions their selective focus will reinforce the isolation of the child within the learning space?

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