Critical communicative methodology and collaborative research to enhance the education and inclusion of students with SEND in mainstream schools

Abstract

The 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).

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Identifiers

ORCID for Vasilis Strogilos: orcid.org/0000-0003-1754-4306

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