BACKGROUND

Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) experience severe congenital impairments to cognition and consciousness stemming from neurodevelopmental disorders or brain injury (Carnaby, 2007). These impairments are typically framed in terms of ‘global developmental delay’, and children with PMLD are described as operating at the pre-verbal stages of development. Whilst inclusive education has been a major theme in European and international-level policy literatures (e.g. UNESCO, 2009), there has been little work undertaken to understand its realisation for the PMLD population. This is reflected in the dearth of empirical research literature in the field, as well as the lack of theoretical and methodological advancements regarding the meaning of inclusion for children with PMLD, how it could be researched and supported in practice. By contrast, a major area of research in the PMLD field concerns the development of social awareness and communication skills in children with PMLD (Simmons and Watson, 2015). This work has typically been informed by psychological theory and aimed to develop strategies to support children in their progression through the preverbal stages of communication. However, the work is typically undertaken in segregated settings such as special schools, and the potential impact of mainstream education on the social skills of children with PMLD has thus far been overlooked. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND AIMS

This paper presents the emerging findings of an on-going (2014-2017) British Academy-funded project which explores the intersection of ‘inclusive’ education and communication of children with PMLD. Specifically, the aim of the research is to explore how different educational environments in the United Kingdom support the enactment and emergence of sociability in children with PMLD. Sociability is understood in terms of agency (intentional action towards others), intersubjectivity (awareness of the subjectivity of others), and symbolic communication (deliberate exchange of information). 

The research addresses three questions:

1. How do different educational environments (special and mainstream, from pre-school to secondary school) afford alternative opportunities for social interaction?

2. How do children with PMLD respond to such opportunities to interact?

3. How does such interaction impact on the growth of sociability, understood in terms of agency, intersubjectivity and symbolic communication?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The theoretical framework guiding the research draws heavily from the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). By exploring how sociability is bound to context, activity, and people, the research will build upon phenomenological understandings about the situated cognition of children with PMLD (Marratto, 2012). Classical psychological accounts found in the PMLD field hold that children with PMLD lack the ability to explicitly represent the world and so cannot act in it (Simmons and Watson, 2014). From a phenomenological perspective, first meanings are not thematically represented but enacted; it is through action that we make sense of the world, and this sense is intuitive. Instead of presupposing that some children are too disabled to participate in mainstream life, a phenomenological perspective asks how different environments afford alternative opportunities for engagement and learning. Hence, this framework opens up debate about the nature of learning for children with PMLD, and situates consciousness and cognition in embodied, intercorporeal, and relational-contextual factors.

Carnaby, S. (2007) Developing good practice in the clinical assessment of people with profound intellectual disabilities and multiple impairment. Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 4: 88-96. Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (2005) Sage handbook of qualitative research, London: Sage. Marratto, S. (2012) The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press Merleau-Ponty (2002) The Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge. Simmons, B., & Watson, D. (2014) The PMLD ambiguity: Articulating the life-worlds of children with profound and multiple learning disabilities, London: Karnac. UNESCO (2009) Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education, France: UNESCO.