1,720,957 research outputs found
Critical communicative methodology and collaborative research to enhance the education and inclusion of students with SEND in mainstream schools
No full textThe relationship between education practice and education research is a longstanding one. This paper considers the relationship between inclusive research (Nind, 2014) and inclusive education practice and how inclusive research can become more meaningful in influencing practice. We will discuss some methodological reflections on the findings generated in an empirical study on the delivery of resourced provision in mainstream schools for students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Based on a collaborative research project with teachers, learning support assistants (LSAs), parents and students in three primary mainstream schools with resourced provisions in one Local Authority, we will describe i) the use of critical communicative methodology (CCM) in generating findings with the participants, and ii) how we used these research findings to create a practical tool to enhance the education and inclusion of students with SEND in mainstream schools. The aim of the empirical study was to describe and evaluate with the participants the effective practices and challenges in educating students with SEND in resourced provision and mainstream classrooms (i.e. mixed provision). Based on the findings, the researchers and the school participants decided to co-create a toolkit with effective practices as a tool for schools to evaluate and transform their practice. The toolkit includes the practices that schools need to consider when educating students in both resourced provision and mainstream classrooms and practical examples that were generated during the collection of data. Having reflected on their practice, the school participants offered specific examples of practices and processes that they consider important to enhance their inclusive provision. The toolkit aims to improve educators’ learning about mixed provision and to increase the collaboration among mainstream and resourced provision staff, parents and carers and external professionals.In this paper, we will describe, though the use of CCM based on the principles of close-to-practice and inclusive research, the main steps in co-constructing the toolkit with the research participants to enhance the education and inclusion of students with SEND in mainstream schools. In particular, we will describe how we approached schools and the roles of the researchers and the research participants. We will discuss how careful consideration of power relations and the collaboration between researchers and research participants created knowledge co-construction to develop both theoretical knowledge and practice. Using practical examples, we will show how the generation of qualitative research data through the use of reflective conversations, communicative focus groups and communicative observations, informed the co-creation of a practical tool (i.e. the toolkit) which aims to improve the services that schools offer to students with SEND in resourced provision and mainstream classrooms. CCM positions dialogue as the basis for understanding and explaining social reality to improve the participants’ situation (Gomez et al., 2011). Based on an egalitarian approach between the researchers and the research participants, the voices of all were heard to consider ways to understand their own social reality and ways to transform it. We will highlight the use of CCM as an ethical and inclusive approach in working with school staff, parents and students with SEND. We will provide the participants’ reflections on the use of CCM with authentic examples to depict how through dialogue the participants reflected and transformed their practice. In addition, we will highlight how some of the main principles of CCM, such as the use of academic knowledge in communicative focus groups, enhanced the dialogue and helped both the participants to transform their practice and the researchers to reconsider their theoretical underpinning about inclusive education. We will discuss the impact that this methodology had on us as researchers and how it shaped our theoretical underpinnings about inclusive education and inclusive research. A distinctive characteristic of the process was the translation of research data into a practical tool that was created with the participants. We will argue that through the use of reflective conversations, communicative focus groups and communicative observations, CCM can enhance inclusive research and the co-construction of knowledge with practice rather than on or about it (Parsons, 2021). <br/
Enabling Dominic’s voice and participation through the co-creation of an ‘I am’ Digital Story for supporting his post-19 transition from special school to adult social care
No full textBackground: Transitions into adult services for young people with complex communication needs are often experienced as challenging and rarely include the voices of young people. Methods: We piloted a person-centred method to enable one young person's (Dominic) voice to be included in his transition to adult services. An ‘I am’ Digital Story is a short video (c.6 min) that provides a strengths-based representation of a young person that is designed to be shared with and between settings. The process and outcomes of story cocreation were evaluated through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Findings: The process of story creation was evaluated very positively by key stakeholders. The information about Dominic's strengths and preferences helped the new setting to prepare for Dominic's arrival. Conclusions: The ‘I am’ Digital Story method provides a powerful and accessible method for including the voices of young people with complex communication needs in their transitions.</p
Inclusive provision for students with special educational needs and/or disabilities: a resourced provision toolkit
No full text'Resourced Provision (RP) classrooms in Mainstream Schools: A Partnership to promote the Inclusion of Students with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities (SEND)’, funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and ESRC-IAA, is a collaborative research project including RP managers, teachers, learning support assistants (LSAs), parents and students from three primary mainstream schools with RP in Hampshire.Led by Associate Professor Vasilis Strogilos with the support of two researchers, Ms Cleo Barron and Dr Becky Ward, the project aimed to describe and evaluate with the participants how RP can enhance the education and inclusion of students with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools. One of the aims of the project was to co-develop with the participants a guidance document/toolkit to support school staff in the inclusion of these students in their schools. Many students with SEND with an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), which describes the support a child requires to meet their needs, are educated both in RP and mainstream classes. In England, RP is described as the use of additional staff or classrooms that offer specialist facilities within a mainstream setting for children with SEND (Department for Education, 2017). Although the Department for Education (2015) notes that pupils in RP tend to receive individual or smallgroup support from specialist teachers and support staff, it recognises that there is considerable variation across schools with regard to the RP structure
'Our Stories...': co-constructing Digital Storytelling methodologies for supporting the transitions of autistic children - study protocol
Get PDFThe voices of autistic children and their families are routinely underestimated and overlooked in research and practice. Research is challenged methodologically in accessing the views of autistic people who, by definition, are characterised by social and communication difficulties. Consequently, many voices remain unheard and experiences undocumented. This has important implications for the validity of research that is interested in improving the life experiences of marginalised groups since the representation of those experiences is partial and dominated by research perspectives that prioritise particular kinds of evidence. This situation matters because there remains a substantial gap between research and practice such that the longer-term outcomes for autistic people across social, educational and economic indices remain poor. We argue that research can only make an impact on practice if there is a genuine commitment to gathering and understanding these different sources of evidence in ways that connect research and practice from the start. This protocol describes a methodological project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. The ‘Our Stories’ project applies and extends a participatory Digital Stories methodology to explore the research challenge of gathering a range of views from autistic children, families, and practice in authentic ways and at points of transition. Digital Stories is an accessible and inclusive methodology that supports the sharing of views and experiences in visual, video form. We describe the rationale for, and design, of the project across four pilot studies in different contexts as well as our approach to analysis and ethics. While our project focuses on autism, the knowledge we gain is applicable to research and practice much more widely and to any voices or groups who are marginalised from the traditional ways of doing research and to any contexts of practice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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