Inclusion, social networks and resilience: strategies, practices and outcomes for disabled children and their families

This paper explores the strategies of service providers and the benefits reported by disabled children and their parents/carers in three Children's Fund programmes in England. Based on National Evaluation of the Children's Fund research, we discuss how different understandings of ‘inclusion’ informed the diverse strategies and approaches service providers adopted. While disabled children and families perceived the benefits of services predominantly in terms of building individual children's resilience and social networks, the paper highlights the need for holistic approaches which have a broad view of inclusion, support children's networks and tackle disabling barriers within all the spheres of children's lives.

Supporting schools in identifying and safeguarding the needs of disabled children: the challenges for data collection

Conceptualisations of disability that emphasise the contextual and cultural nature of disability and the embodiment of these within a national system of data collection present a number of challenges especially where this process is devolved to schools. The requirement for measures based on contextual and subjective experiences gives rise to particular difficulties in achieving parity in the way data is analysed and reported. This paper presents an account of the testing of a tool intended for use by schools as they collect data from parents to identify children who meet the criteria of disability established in Disability Discrimination Acts (DDAs). Data were validated through interviews with parents and teachers and observations of children and highlighted the pivotal role of the criterion of impact. The findings are set in the context of schools meeting their legal duties to identify disabled children and their support needs in a way that captures the complexity of disabled children’s school lives and provides useful and useable data.

Educational robotics as a learning aid for disabled children

Severe disabled children have little chance of environmental and social exploration and discovery, and due this lack of interaction and independency, it may lead to an idea that they are unable to do anything by themselves. This idea is called learned helplessness and is very negative for the child cognitive development and social development as well. With this entire situation it is very likely that the self-steam and mood of this child. Trying to help these children on this situation, educational robotics can offer and aid, once it can give them a certain degree of independency in exploration of environment. The system developed in this work allows the child to transmit the commands to a robot. Sensors placed on the child's body can obtain information from head movement or muscle pulses to command the robot to carry the tasks. Also, this system can be used with a variety of robots, being necessary just a previous configuration. It is expected that, with the usage of this system, the disabled children have a better cognitive development and social interaction, balancing in a certain way, the negative effects of their disabilities. © 2011 IEEE.

Use of myoelectric signals to command mobile entertainment robot by disabled children: Design and control architecture

Severely disabled children have little chance of environmental and social exploration and discovery. This lack of interaction and independency may lead to an idea that they are unable to do anything by themselves. In an attempt to help children in this situation, educational robotics can offer and aid, once it can provide them a certain degree of independency in the exploration of environment. The system developed in this work allows the child to transmit the commands to a robot through myoelectric and movement sensors. The sensors are placed on the child's body so they can obtain information from the body inclination and muscle contraction, thus allowing commanding, through a wireless communication, the mobile entertainment robot to carry out tasks such as play with objects and draw. In this paper, the details of the robot design and control architecture are presented and discussed. With this system, disabled children get a better cognitive development and social interaction, balancing in a certain way, the negative effects of their disabilities. © 2012 IEEE.

Prediction of height from knee height in children with cerebral palsy and non-disabled children

Measurement of height or length is essential in the assessment of nutritional status. In some conditions, for example cerebral palsy (CP), such measurements may be difficult or impossible. Proxy measurements such as knee height have been used to predict height in such cases. We have evaluated two equations in the literature that predict stature from knee height in a group of 17 children with CP and 20 non-disabled children. The two equations performed well on average in the non-disabled children, with the mean predicted height being within 1% of the mean measured height. Nevertheless, the limits of agreement were relatively large. This was also the case for the children with CP. Thus the equations may be accurate at the group level; however they may lead to unacceptable error at the individual level. © 2006 Informa UK Ltd.

Care-less spaces and identity construction:transition to secondary school for disabled children

There is a growing body of literature which marks out a feminist ethics of care and it is within this framework we understand transitions from primary to secondary school education can be challenging and care-less, especially for disabled children. By exploring the narratives of parents and professionals, we investigate transitions and self-identity, as a meaningful transition depends on the care-full spaces pupils inhabit. These education narratives are all in the context of privileging academic attainment and a culture of testing and examinations. Parents and professionals, as well as children are also surveyed. Until there are care-full education processes, marginalisation will remain, impacting on disabled children’s transition to secondary school and healthy identity construction. Moreover, if educational challenges are not addressed, their life chances are increasingly limited. Interdependent caring work enables engagement in a meaningful education and positive identity formation. In school and at home, care-full spaces are key in this process.

A inclusão escolar de crianças com paralisia cerebral: a relação das características dos cuidadores familiares implicadas neste processo

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC

An examination of parental opinions regarding the inclusion of disabled students in regular education classes

This study investigated the opinions regarding inclusion of parents of both disabled and nondisabled elementary children from a large suburban county. An opinion survey combining Wilczenski's Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education Scale with additional questions was distributed to 1170 children from 24 schools. Three research questions focused on differences between mean parental responses as they related to the inclusion and disability status of the parent's child. Results from the 270 respondents indicated that parents with disabled children had more favorable opinions about inclusion than did those with nondisabled children. Parents with included children were more favorable toward inclusion than were parents whose children were not included. Parents with included disabled children were more accepting of inclusion than were those with nondisabled children in inclusive settings. Parents' answers differed depending on the type of disability being included. Regardless of their child's disability or inclusion status, the ranking for disability types from most acceptable for inclusion to least acceptable were: social, sensory, motor, academic and behavioral. Results across types of questions, including questions relating to acceptance and general inclusion issues, indicated consistently more favorable opinions of parents with disabled children, included children and disabled children in inclusive classes. Two additional research questions examined parental responses as they related to demographic characteristics of the parents and of the schools their children attended. Analysis of Variance found only one significant main effect for any parental demographic variable. This difference was for the number of parents' elementary children when comparing parents with and without disabled children. The only significant main effects of demographics of schools the parents' children attended were for the area of the county and for schools with differing percentages of severely disabled students when comparing responses of parents with disabled and nondisabled children. For all research questions, tests indicated low effect sizes and moderate to high power levels. These results, and the fact that means for all groups were in the middle range of response choices, indicate that there may be little practical significance to the overall results. Further studies should investigate the trends found in this study. ^

Examining the inclusion experiences of students with intellectual disabilities : a study focusing on the transition from elementary to secondary school

Transitioning from elementary to secondary school is a major event in adolescents' lives and can be associated with academic, social, and emotional challenges (Shaffer, 2005; Sirsch, 2003). Considerably less research has focused on the transitional experiences of students with intellectual disabilities (lD) as they enter secondary school and the role of educational inclusion in this process (Noland, Cason, & Lincoln, 2007). Conceivably, students with ID who leave inclusive elementary schools, where they have been educated alongside their peers without ID, and who enter segregated secondary educational placements may experience unique social and emotional challenges (Farmer, Pearl, & Van Acker, 1996; Fryxell & Kennedy, 1995; Shaffer, 2005). This study examined the transitional experiences of 6 students with ID and the role of educational inclusion, with a focus on elementary to secondary school transitions from inclusive to segregated settings and vice versa. This study included the collection of multiple sources of data. Semi-structured interviews with 6 caregivers and students with ID were conducted. Students' Individual Education Transitional Plans were discussed in caregivers' interviews to determine how they shaped students' educational inclusion experiences (Ontario Ministry of Education & Training, 1999/2000/2004). Parts ofthe following questionnaires were "qualitized" (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998) and administered orally: "Youth Self-Report" (YSR; Achenbach, 2001 c) and "Child Behaviour Checklist Caregivers Form" (CBLC/6-18; Achenbach, 200la). The findings of this study contribute to the literature on educational inclusion by highlighting the positive/negative social and emotional impact of congruent and incongruent transitional experiences of students with ID and the role of educational inclusion.

Children's sociospatial (re)production of disability within primary school playgrounds

There is a contemporary shift in the institutional context of 'disabled' children's education in the United Kingdom from segregated special to mainstream schools. This change is tied to wider deinstitutionalised or reinstitutionalised geographies of disabled people, fragile globalised educational 'inclusion' agendas, and broader concerns about social cohesiveness. Although coeducating children is expected to transform negative representations of (dis)ability in future society, there are few detailed explorations of how children's everyday sociospatial practices (re)produce or transform dominant representations of (dis)ability. With this in mind, children's contextual and shifting performances of (dis)ability in two case study school playground (recreational) spaces are explored. The findings demonstrate that children with mind-body differences are variously (dis)abled, in comparison with sociospatially shifting norms of ability, which have body, learning, and emotional-social facets. The discussion therefore places an emphasis on the need to incorporate 'intellectual' and 'emotional' differences more fully into geographical studies of disability and identity. The paper has wider resonance for transformative expectations placed on colocating children with a variety of 'axes of difference' (such as gender, 'race, ethnicity, and social class) in schools.

Factors associated with breastfeeding in disabled and phenotipically normal children

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Ambientes inclusivos na educação infantil: possibilidades e impedimentos

Este artigo discute os resultados de uma pesquisa realizada em uma escola municipal de Educação Infantil - EMEI - da cidade de São Paulo, que teve como objetivo identificar os indicadores de envolvimento no trabalho com as crianças e aqueles que determinam a construção de um ambiente inclusivo. A coleta de dados foi feita por meio de observações dos três estágios da Educação Infantil e do levantamento da documentação pedagógica. O trabalho com as diferenças apresenta contradições importantes de serem pensadas, que se expressam como desigualdades no tratamento junto às crianças. A concepção de inclusão se restringe ao atendimento de crianças deficientes, enquanto as necessidades das demais crianças e dos profissionais que trabalham na escola são muitas vezes desconsideradas. O isolamento e o envolvimento com questões marginais do trabalho pedagógico são pontos centrais a serem considerados no enfrentamento das barreiras atitudinais para a construção de um ambiente inclusivo.

Percepções dos professores quanto à inclusão de alunos com deficiência em aulas de Educação Física

The purpose of this study was to verify regular schooling teacher's attitudes toward inclusion children with disabilities in the classes. For that, 90 physical education teachers, from private and public schools, answered to a scale with 18 affirmations. It was observed by results that general tendency of teachers was negative toward inclusion. This pessimism wasn't related to teachers sex and time experience. Stronger teachers pessimism was about their lack of preparing to work with handicapped students. Teachers with less experience time showed more optimism about the benefits of all students in inclusion settings.

Social adaptation of children with mild intellectual disability: Effects of partial integration within primary school classes

is study examined the social adaptation of children with mild intellectual disability who were either (a) partially integrated into regular primary school classes, or (b) full-time in separate classes, All of the children were integrated in sport and play activities with the whole school. Consistent with previous research, children with intellectual disability were less socially accepted than were a matched group of control children. Children in partially integrated classes received more play nominations than those in separate classes, brit there was no greater acceptance as a best friend. On teachers' reports, disabled children had higher levels of inappropriate social behaviours, but there was no significant difference in appropriate behaviours. Self-assessments by integrated children were more negative than those by children in separate classes, and their peer-relationship satisfaction was lower. Ratings by disabled children of their satisfaction with peer relationships were associated with ratings of appropriate social skills by themselves and their teachers, and with self-ratings of negative behaviour. The study confirmed that partial integration can have negative consequences for children with an intellectual disability.