Session Information
ERG SES F 01, Inclusive Education
Parallel paper session
Contribution
The role of the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) in England was established in the 1994 Special Educational Needs (SEN) Code of Practice (DfE, 1994) which stated that all mainstream schools must have a SENCO responsible for coordinating services around children with SEN and helping teachers develop and implement appropriate provision for these children. A similar role exists in other European countries such as Sweden and Ireland. Since 1994, the SENCO role in the UK has changed as various policies continually redefined SEN provisions (DfES, 2001a; DfES, 2001b; DCSF, 2004).
This paper focuses on the data gathered through questionnaires and interviews relating to the impact that SENCOs have on teachers’ capacity to address SEN in their classrooms. The issue is timely now that the intended legislation, ‘Support and Aspiration: a New Approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability’ (DfE, 2011) plans to end “the bias towards the inclusion” of children with special needs in mainstream schools. This particular statement has caused much furore within the Special Needs community, particularly amongst SENCOs, whose principal guidance, the Revised SEN Code of Practice (DfES, 2001b) promotes the inclusion for children with SEN in mainstream schools.
Since SENCOs are central to supporting children’s inclusion and achievement, the research centres around three specific research questions:
- Are SENCOs able to motivate teachers to take the initiative in addressing the needs of children with Special Education Needs in their classrooms?
- Do SENCOs skill or inhibit teachers from becoming effective teachers for children with Special Education Needs?
- How is the impact of SENCOs currently assessed within primary schools?
This study investigates how SENCOs enable teachers to take ownership of SEN teaching in their classroom, and to what degree teachers feel that SENCO’s support enables them to ‘successfully’ and independently meet the needs of children with SEN. Moreover, the study also explores whether the teachers’ views are shared with the views of the SENCO in question in each setting.
The theoretical framework within which I am conducting my research is that of interpretivism, as I have “...(begun) with individuals and set out to understand their interpretations of the world around them... (and) particular situations.” (Cohen and Manion, 1998, p. 37)
I also believe that through an interpretivist approach, I am acknowledging the various ‘relative-ness’ of diverse elements and social issues that impact upon my research findings. As Robson (2002, p. 24) maintains, “(the) behaviour, what (people) actually do, has to be interpreted in the light of (their) underlying ideas, meanings and motivations.”
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bell, J. (2005) Doing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education, Health and Social Science. 4th Ed. England: Open University Press. Cohen, L. and Manion, L. (1998) Research Methods in Education. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Creswell, J. (1994) Research Design: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London: SAGE Publications, Inc. Creswell, J., and Plano Clark, V. (2007) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. London: SAGE Publications, Inc. Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). (2004) Removing Barriers to Achievement. London: DCSF. Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). (2009) The Education (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2009. London: DCSF. Department for Education (DfE). (1994) Code of Practice for the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs. London: HMSO. Department for Education (DfE). (2011) Support and Aspiration: a New Approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability. London: TSO. Department for Education and Skills (DfES). (2001a) Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. London: DfES. Department for Education and Skills (DfES). (2001b) The Special Educational Needs (SEN) Code of Practice. London: DfES. Robson, C. (2002) Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers. 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc. Silverman, D. (2010) Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook. 3rd Ed. London: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.