scottish learning association

Scottish Support for Learning Association

If you wish to download a copy of the 2011 newsletter please click on Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 &4

Newsletter 2011

Autumn Conference – Free!!

In times of financial cutbacks, SSLA is bucking the trend and offering a free half day conference on November 12^th 2011 at the Holiday Inn, East Kilbride. The title is “Revisiting Behaviour Support” and our speakers are Hazel Swanston, PT Behaviour Support in West Lothian, who will talk about “Using ICT to promote Positive Behaviour and Billy Redmond from the Irish National Behaviour Support Service who will talk about “Positive Behaviour Management and Low Level Disruption”.

We are hoping for a good attendance, so see you there!

Good Practice Awards 2011.

The six finalists will showcase their efforts for the judges on September 30^th at The Cairn Hotel, Bathgate. The schools are: Cathkin Community Nursery; Crieff H S; Croftcroighn; Harrysmuir P S; Kirkcudbright Academy and Windyknowe P S. Good luck to them and thanks to all the other entrants for their efforts. We were most impressed.

As you know, we have strong links with Support for Learning in Ireland and our President, Margaret Penketh recently attended a conference there. Since we are focusing on Behaviour Support at our Autumn conference, she took notes from a couple of speakers about the approaches used there.

Creating Positive Behaviour Systems

Dr. Ger O’Hanlon (Post Primary)

Dublin City University

Ger O’Hanlon is a behavioural analyst and specifically focussed on concerns in inclusion within the secondary school with a strong message that its success is highly reliant on the attitudes of the people surrounding a school whether it be the local authority, community, staff etc. and that these stakeholders need to be proactive in behaviour management as opposed to reactive and that early identification is crucial. Support systems in, and for schools, are crucial and scenarios where teachers perceive some students as being subversive before they actually enter classrooms can cause teachers to dread the morning – teachers therefore need to be supported at optimum levels considering that it has been found that 1/5 children have mental health problems and 43% of those have anxiety disorders.

There are of course many reasons for the presentation of subversive attitudes and Ger continued to explore some of these; family, culture, peer group, school settings, motivation, opportunities, neurology, cognitive differences and social characteristics. What is important to remember is that these rarely come as separate entities; there is usually a complex combination of factors which cause subversive behaviour. As all early years practitioners will tell you, a child can be identified at school entry if not before and the same symptoms may still exist at age 18 unless they can be included in some sort of social skills training.

One of the key ways forward is to improve teachers’ skills in handling these children (Buse 2008, La Russ et al 2008) and it is said that teachers who convey emotional warmth and respect for pupils will have a positive effect on EBD even though that can be hard to display at times; if a child has not been

Ger also suggests that all Headteachers need to have clear expectations of staff e.g. no teachers roaring at pupils and that parents must sign up to the rules of a school. School management must make it clear that everyone is in the programme together and that some children may require more ‘modelling’ than others. A particular reference site which can be used is the National Educational Psychology Service Ireland site which holds quite a few documents on various types of EBD and mention was made of the American Incredible Years programme which is used for social skills training.

This programme uses triangulated intervention which is school wide and utilises the pupil, parents, teachers and school management and builds on the existing practices specific to the community. It has an instructional focus and concentrates on teaching social behaviours that increase academic engagement where absolute rules relate to consistent consequences and good behaviour is acknowledged. The team must include the parents – even the ones you might not expect. The 3 rules the children are expected to work to are; be safe, be responsible, be respectful but they are only given one thing to work on at a time and it is applied in an age related manner e.g. using the ‘Transformers’ characters if suitable.

Two examples used by Ger were:

Safe Responsible Respectful

Hallway keep right hold door open use quiet voice

allow others to pass have a pass during class time keep hands to self

Playground keep in boundary be aware of people around include everyone

Building a Happy and Resilient Class

Dr. Nicky O’Leary

Educational Psychologist (Dublin)

Nicky took us through a whirlwind visit to building a happy and resilient class. She started by clarifying what she saw as the 7 main reasons for misbehaviour and these were; seeking attention, power contests, frustration, a child getting what it wants, revenge, approval of friends, feelings of inadequacy. She believes that these are labelled as behavioural disorders and given labels such as; Asperger’s syndrome, ADD, ADHD, ADD, CD, ODD, Depression, Anxiety and OCD. She also stated that of course a lot of these may link to one another and that there are 3 levels a child can be classified as; difficult, has behavioural problems or displays behavioural disorders. She considers that 20% of children have social, emotional and behavioural problems and that 5% of those have a serious clinical behaviour.

A difficult student may appear this way because of their personality type or environmental issues – lack of basic needs, neglect, hunger, lack of sleep, poor social development etc.

Nicky then went on to explain that one of the key ways to ensure good behaviour is to consider what is required for happy children. Being happy is affected by genetic influences, the environment and can also be under personal control but is helped by children believing that life is meaningful and by them being resilient as this helps them develop coping skills which open the door to learning; if you can’t cope you can’t learn. She clarified how being unhappy affects learning (although there was the qualification of course that some things which make us happy are bad for us). If a child lacks resilience they might then experience difficulties understanding and managing their feelings, have difficulties working in groups and motivating themselves and be unable to handle learning setbacks. It helps tremendously if we succeed in giving them the ‘I Can’ attitude. A fitting analogy was given as she described a couple who had won the lottery but became unhappy because the meaning of their life lessened, 12 months after the win they returned to being ‘miserable gits’. She described how Asperger’s children often lack this resilience as they need and want control; they are not sufficiently resilient to cope with change. If we succeed in creating resilient people then this:

· Increases productivity both at work and at school with better academic success

· Improves longevity and health with better social relationships and better career success

· Increases a peacefulness and calmness (Lyabomirsky et al 2005)

She also described the US army emotional resilience programme based on Fellingham’s 5 pillars. At the start of this programme you try to see the talent in the student and chip away at the rubbish in between. You look at the whole school ethos and whether such things as Circle –time, buddy schemes, mentoring programmes are in place as well as specialised PSHE curricula. She also suggested teaching Positive Thinking Skills and Penn Resilience (UKRP 2010), the Friends Anxiety programme (2010) and Friends for Life and Fun (Barrett 2006). You might also want to have a look at the ‘RULER APPROACH’ from Yale University.

Just as a final comment, you might be interested to know that the latest research shows that the following makes us happy:

· random acts of kindness

· gratitude visits

· regularly meeting friends to eat

· having a personal mission statement

Counting your blessings!!

Hopefully, reading these will focus you on the behavioural side of Support for Learning and encourage you to come along to our Autumn conference.

And finally…we are still looking for new members for the Trustees. We meet about four times a year, organise two conferences, an annual journal and the Good Practice Awards every two years. Please come along to the AGM and join us, as we really need some younger Trustees to carry on the work. Our last two retiring members were from the Secondary sector so anyone from there would be very useful but anyone keen and committed to Support for Learning would be made most welcome. In a time of cutbacks, we need to maintain the presence and strength of SfL every way we can!