SIG 15 meets SIG 28 [November 2023]
So on behalf of early 65 the special educational needs uh we are welcoming you to the very first uh Sig uh Sig 50 meets other Sig uh I’m kti s and I’m a coordinator one of the coordinators of our siik and uh I have here today with me I have NAD
Gomez and she has been running these Brownback seminars for a couple of years with the Erica Renato and then we have also inma F Bravo with us today and she will be hosting the next one so we got the idea in the last early early conference that uh that we
Had a really nice discussions with the other six and we decided to start uh the S sort of joint seminars with other s where we kind of a connect two uh research areas together SE what are research in our and also in the in the other ones and today uh we are having
The seminar with the s28 with play Learning and Development and uh we will have uh three uh really interesting presentations today um uh 15 minutes each and we will have the discussion after the all of the presentations and where where all of you can participate but we will all we are
Also having vesca gr gardenas uh from the uh s 20 coordinator of that one of the coordinators of that SI um um participating also to discussion but we are also welcoming you all all audience uh in that one so please nadina yeah now okay so thank you Katy for the
Introduction uh now I’m really happy to present uh Dr Hannah Jin how I don’t know if that’s the good pronunciation okay uh Hannah is an associate professor at estol University at the department of special education she has collaborated on projects concerning social emotional learning in early childhood education
And primary education Hannah has also been leading research projects on young offenders and is currently a principal investigator for ER promoting successful schooling for young offenders with ADHD a co-produce evaluation of the homework organization and planning skills intervention in Swedish social services today she will Enlighten us
With her insights in the talk guided play and narrative skills promoting participation and engagement for each child so thank you very much Hannah for joining us on our grb back seminars and I pass the floor to you thank you thank you um I will say I do this this
Presentation I have to I I shall now do one thing at a time otherwise it won’t work I share the screen first then I start a talk so now you can see my screen and then we shall have it inut so um thank you thank you very much and thanks for
The invitation um and I’m also happy to be here both with Florian and Winnie uh whom we together with another colleague Maria glan we had a symposium uh during the conference in Talon this summer or last summer so that was it’s really nice to be here with the two of you uh and
This work I’m doing together with David baklund who is here I think uh who is a doctor student our department and also Hades selenius who is like me an associate professor at the department of special education here in Stockholm uh and the uh the intervention we would talk about today is play for
Learning and narrative skills and I think some of you here are also familiar with that intervention and it is important to remember that this is a pilot study that we are doing uh so far so this is some results from this preliminary study a pilot
Study uh and um what you can say about narrative skills it’s that they are fundamental for academic achievement in general so that is why we have regarded this as a uh field that is very interesting for special education uh also um concerning that um it is also Challen challenging for many Str struggled
Learners uh if you have challenges when it comes to narrative skills that will affect your school situation um in general so that is how we we started to approach this field and why we found it so interesting um so the question we had uh was that can an intervention based on
Guided play that promote narrative skills be a possible primary intervention in Swedish multitud system of supports and seeing that Sweden does not really have a multitud system of support but of course we’re still working on different levels so our sort of working uh the idea we work from is that
If you can have classroom based intervention that does actually uh promote achievement also for those who are struggling both with with um uh participate to participate and to engage in classroom teaching and also when it comes to achievement and the method we um then came on to was playful writing H that is
A method focusing on the potential of playful writing to promote academic achievement and and participation and engagement for each child and that is actually not the the per se uh the inter the goal of the intervention but for us also this coming from special education participation and engagement and for
Each child was our guiding principle and we started to work with this method or this intervention um and that is um as we could see the potential for that when involving children in play and in guided play uh and this method for those of you who are not familiar with it is a
Structured Universal intervention that promotes narrative skills and the teacher guides the students to portray the story using Lego or other concrete materials and the student work together in small groups and create joint constructions of the red story and after the students have constructed the story together each student gets to create
Their own story based on the construction and the conversations with the pairs and these developed narrative skills uh support the developmental narrative skills by providing a personal experience of the stories and giving the students an opportunity to develop vocabulary and retelling skills by talking about the constructions and it
Also is providing visual support which gives students support to remembering and telling the story and also working together and having a dialogue about the joint work also means that an opportunity to train social skills in a structured and predictable ways and these are all Fields where many students
Struggling need support so what we saw in this in this intervention was that it was sort of a built-in support for many of those who might have um um have have not that easy to join classroom teaching when it comes to comes to reading and writing and this present study we have
Uh conducted it in 12 classrooms in two Swedish schools uh and it is a primary school and the ages are 6 to n for these children that have been working with it and approximately 250 children took part in this and also 30 teachers and they implemented Playford writing during one
School year and during this time they also went to visit teachers in Cambridge who work with the same method and they also these two schools they work very much together on it so it was also a lot of cooperation between the teachers um and the aim we had for this
Particular study is that we wanted to explore the teachers experiences of playful writing’s potential for promoting participation and engagement for each child in Swedish classrooms and Swedish classrooms they are expected to have the capacity to uh include all children basically uh with some exceptions so and
We also have a diversity when it comes to languages we have several areas in Sweden where you have really sort of a multi-lingual uh context so uh that was also that we wanted to see if this worked for inclusive teaching in Swedish classrooms with um lot of with a diversity of
Children and in this study we collected uh data from these two Swedish schools who work with playful writing data was collected by recording six focus groups with a total of 25 participants and we described the recordings of ver team and we analyzed them with the Thematic analysis so the the uh most the
Essential themes that we got out from the analysis was that playful writing offers opportunities for children in diverse groups to work together and mutually support each other so that was quite prominent when the teachers uh discussed together in the FOC groups that this really promoted um promoted cooperation between
Between the uh between the children and also that it this fixed framework that Lego has even evens out the individual differences it gives room for creativity but at the same time uh you know block of Lego is a block of Lego and it doesn’t change so at the same time that
It offers opportunities it also gives everyone about the same kind of conditions and even out the different differences between children and Building Together offers opportunities to engagement and participation for each child uh and that is was actually quite striking what the what the teachers reported um in these
Um um when when they where reported about the session they had to play for writing where they have had children that maybe did not had not participating at all maybe n didn’t speak weish that well but still they could participate um in these sessions uh and also that building
Together contribute to creative process and result in more detailed narratives so also this kind of where everyone could engag and participate together according to the teachers from the teachers perspective um this did uh create a learning environment which also produced more detailed narratives um so when it comes to gy play
Participation engagement in a Swedish context um according to what we have seen in in our interviews our focus groups the results indicate that Gia play can promote engagement and participation in Swedish schools and has potential as a primary intervention in the Swedish multi in a future Swedish
Multi Cher system of support uh which we haven’t got that a moment and also what was quite it’s not part of this study but was was striking was also how well the teachers said that this fits into the Swedish curriculum uh which also um makes it quite feasible to implement in Swedish
Schools and we are continuously working with this uh with the data we have and also with the intervention and what we want to do in the future of course is to explore children’s perspectives which is quite important particularly it comes to engagement and participation and we also
Want to what was used here was the English uh teachers guide for this intervention so we would like to of course develop a Swedish manual and to do that in co-creation with the Swedish teachers and also very far in the future we also need to of course evaluate the
Effects of an adapted version uh of playful writing but we are really on the moment at the moment on this more of pilot stage so and that was the end of my presentation so I think we now just continue and then take the discussion afterwards is that the idea so I just
Exit here from yes exactly thank you very much Hannah for the presentation uh keep your questions for the end uh to ask Hannah please and now uh we are having Winnie Garen I’m going to introduce her um uh so moving to the next presentation uh allow me to
Introduce Winnie H she’s a junior professorship for German didactics in an inclusive context specialist areas of language and communication lower secondary level literacy research linguistic performance in longer secondary level based on Intervention studies Reading Writing debating acting in inclusive learning settings using the design based research approach today she
Will present us her work everyone’s playing a part a parity a participat sorry theater project to promote reading competence so we are honored to have her with us and without further Ado uh Winnie the floor is yours yeah thank you very much um I want
To share my screen but uh first I have um to figure out the time because sometimes I’m um talking and talking and then I’m still at the end so I need the time for me okay um so let me check now you can see my screen a presentation
Okay I hope you can see it um yeah um yeah thank you very much um here and yeah and now at the moment we have snow outside so we are very happy here in Germany to have snow and to have a lovely weather but um yeah and so greetings from the University of
Poon to my project I will show you the agenda so first I want to tell a little bit more about about the challenges and the mission of our share and here in the school system in Germany and also I will um give you some um slides to the
Projects and uh I want to give you the conclusion the keywords um of the next 50 minutes are design based research teaching model reading skills Rama social interaction peer collaboration participation and literacy first of all um in Germany we have um a historically ground differentiated school system and
Therefore it’s a challenge because in every uh County we have other names for the schools in the secondary um at the secondary level and um so it’s a little bit um yeah different to other countries so we are not um we don’t have only one system and that is um more complex for
The inclusion way for teaching because um since 2009 we have a signature and um we are still through the ratification of the UN that um the school um system in Germany we have to change more to the inclusion system and um that that um the reason why you know
Is uh the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and um that is for a new story so um in the historical um way we have um special schools and the normal schools and now we want to um conclude about about school schools and uh on the other side um we
Have the challenge uh to promote literacy you know of the P Resorts and reading so we are still uh going on to promote it um and the secondary level too and we are not very fine with the results and that is the mission um of my
Share too um that um we have a focus on literacy so here you see the quotation of the European literacy policy Network and they said everyone in Europe has the right to acquire literacy and it should be provided with the necessary resources and opportunities to develop sufficient and sustain enable literacy skills and
Knowledge in order to effectively understand and use written communication and print and digital media so it’s our aim and Mission um that we want to close gaps between those who have good literacy skills and those who struggle and that in in uh schools with um um students with and without learning
Disabilities and uh special educational needs and other ways so so um in for um yeah two years ago I that was um my yeah my first um year here at the University and I asked them okay do we have um any book or any um guided sentences for
Inclusive learning here and at the center of teaching and education at the University of poam and um they didn’t any they didn’t have anything so uh that was my first um working area to um bring different um datactics and the psychology together here at the University and outside in schools
Together with principles and teachers um to know more okay what is uh our aim and what is good defination for inclusive learning what is our aim and goal setting for this and here you can see um the conclusion after two years it’s a definition for conclusive learning and uh the term inclusion in
The school context stands for Learning and working together within the school Community for teaching this means that the individual learning requirements of all students are recognized in an appreciative Manner and are taken into account and the systematic design of learning opportunities so that was a b beginning
To think more about um um learning and teaching and inclusive settings here in Germany and the next one was the um that we have seen in in the schools that um the school kids in the secondary schools they have a lot of trouble not even the cognitive trouble in
Literacy just being in the classroom and um seeing that bu scholing is a big big Topic in secondary schools but also in the primary schools too and um we have um we we we have spoke uh we have spoken with a lot of teachers and principles
That they um said okay that is um definitely a big big problem in our um classrooms so I only one dates um in fact 80% of the female students want to learn how to treat each other better and bullying is um in the with the adolesence 80% within the schools but uh
We know um from uh the work of tomovski um in her dissertation that playing theater has a positive effect on the cohesion of a group not just for bullying but also for the cohesion group and that was um yeah a sign for our share to think about this to bring it
Together the inclusion uh to promoting the literacy skills um to stop bullying and um to have good program and um that uh you you can see um that we wanted to promote and still we want to promote the reading skills um with this um um with this multile multi level model of reading
From Bros and NX and here you can see on the social level that um the school and PE are very um powerful for reading too and um that on the subject level the knowledge the participation motivation reflection is um a relevant factor and and at the
Process level it is a word and phrase identification local cence and Global cence and um recognized super structures but we have seen in the uh reading test that we could also um figure out the reinc competence on the process level not on the subject or social level so if
You gave them or if you want to give them um question there then perhaps but um it’s a little bit more diff difficult so it was to think more about the um about the research and um so the solution was okay we have to combine uh different test instruments and the mix
Methods um approach to figure it a little bit more out and to bring it together so the research idea was a play for engagement with the drama TCH promote reading skills on local and Global cerence at the process level participation at the subject level and PE interaction at the social level and
Uh theat stage as shows space offers linguistic and nonlinguistic possibilities of realization that go beyond the reception of the play the global research question is how can a theater project promote the reading competence and the social interaction and here you can see only some yellow highlighted uh questions the
First one is which reading skills reading speed and comprehension do the participating students show in Reading literary text at the B the beginning at uh at the end of the theater project compared to the control group and the fourth uh highlighted question is how do participating students and trainers evaluate social
Interaction from their perspective within the theat project so objectives are promote the reading skills the sing interpretation the social interaction and the expectation of self-efficiency and um in this Thea project um we are still going on this in this project so we um analyze um our data in and in
Different project and in different Cycles so in the design based research approach we um have still we are at the moment still in the seven cycle so in every cycle it’s one research project and then we um have analyze all the data together um in the secondary school and
Also um in um in with uh children outside of the school in extracurricular um projects but uh the beginning was the Cy zero um that’s um that was the text um align from our Claudia Kum it’s a um text for 10 girls with 20 scenes 36 pages and it’s a play
Time over 60 until 80 minutes included two songs so that was the beginning um we have used this um text um basis and here you can see some pictures of the py zero 2017 and um yeah in this is inclusive learning group in the seventh grade we
Have figured out um that there um were still all reading and um still motivating after years um um of this theater performance but I want uh I wanted to know more about um the effects so first of all we have analyzed um the structure of all lessons and we have figured out
Out that there is still a checkin through which the mood of the learning groups was quered and then there was following a warming up with various games related to the theat and um yeah to the social interaction the reference was AUST W in this book theer of the
Oppressed and after that there was a phase of playing and also combining with um peer feedback and teacher and uh peer feedack the teachers are not the teachers in the Thea project they are still a coach yeah they are they are involved in the Thea project but not to
Say okay this is the first scene you have to go there and and then you have to go there and please read it out and so now he isn’t the regur he is still the the coach for this SE um project and um we have figured out that
The check out is very important for the school um kids too because then in this phas we can reflect about the phases of playing and reading and uh to go through the theat project uh project to perform at the end of the project the length of the phases always depended on the mood
Motivation and wishes of the groups and was adjusted accordingly and as a first after this zero cycle we have um we did as a cycle one in an exra cicular test phase in Brandenburg with 13 um guilds and um we have uh still um analyzed um field notes of two trained teacher
Students and uh that was very interesting because um we have figured out that um it’s a good combination to um know more about the reading competence on not even on the process level also in the social and on at the um subject level and here you can see
Only three cases the first case is one uh students two eight year olds in shared a role and did not want to read at the beginning but after two days they asked to be assigned a role and they performed case b a big sister explains that little sister read voluntary during
Vacations never read before during free time and the last one in Delia students didn’t want to read promised um promised not to perform after two days tandem reading savy always read to mother in the evening was not a reader at yourself self um um concept but um they all
Performed on stage yeah and that um is um yeah a little bit uh only some little introduction to um to my project um so we want to combine um the the relevant topic uh uh reading and we want to promote reading through a cata project and we uh use um to take text
With the topic of bullying to speak speak about this topic and to play uh in in different roles to promote uh the reading competence U with this um very important topic so thank you very much thank you very much Winnie for showing us this really interesting
Project I’m sure there will be lots of questions for that um so now um to conclude these presentations uh uh we have Florian ra maker who is an assistant professor in the faculty of Behavioral and social sciences at the University of Groningen I don’t know if that’s the good pronunciation you can you
Can okay that one with expertise in inclusive education social participation Cooperative learning and intervention development today she presents talk titled room to play promoting the social play of kindergarten students with disability so thank you very much for accepting our invitation and uh the for floor is yours again thank you nadina
For the introduction I will first share my screen as well hope that everything goes okay hopefully you can see my screen for full now some some people nodding on the right that’s very helpful thank you um I’m honored to uh talk to you today uh maybe
Good to know that the the Symposium Hana talked about that we presented in Thessaloniki had well the topic was play as a means and a goal uh for for students with disability or within inclusive education and I try to uh well I reflected on my own research I’m handed in my uh PhD
Dissertation before the summer and I’m about to defend it in February so last few weeks have been a lot of reflecting on my own research and uh today I want to talk to you about how I dealt with play as a both a means and a goal uh in
Promoting the social participation of kindergarden students with disabilities a little bit bit of background um as Winnie already mentioned internationally they have a global Trend towards more inclusive education and the idea behind it is is that uh we have or we will establish equality of opportunity for all students
So also students with special educational needs and disabilities preferably within an inclusive or a general regular setting uh and as you all know play is important for the Social Development of every child and luckily we see that in inclusive education uh students with and without disabilities uh play and
Interact together so that’s very good news and we also know that students with disabilities interact more in inclusive settings than they do with within specialized settings so far it’s very good news however if you look at the equality of opportunity and you compare them with their typically developing
Peers uh their social participation lags behind and within the field I study social participation is often defined as acceptance by peers um interactions Within between students with and without disabilities so friendship and relationship and the the way they perceive their social acceptance themselves uh and doing research on this
Topic I found many studies which uh looked into well uh acceptance and friendships measured as measured by sociometric procedures but I haven’t found a lot of studies uh that tapped into the topic of play which is quite odd to me considering play has such an important plays such an important role
In The Social Development of children um the few studies that I did found uh well they say well children with disabilities in general more often play alone than with Hors whenin within inclusive settings and they have found this for multiple types of disabilities for example physical disabilities intellectual disabilities and or
Developmental delay hearing impairment but also for students who uh struggle with emotional and behavioral difficulties so interventions are needed uh to establish this equality of opportunity because just simply placing them together within one education system will not uh result in them uh well to participate equally on a social level
And many authors uh have mentioned or suggested that Cooperative learning or cooperative play activities if you talk with the younger age groups um can play an important role in this and the IDE behind this stems sort of also from the contact Theory Gordon aler which with some of you might be familiar
With and the basic idea behind to contact theory is that if you uh well interact or have positive uh interactions face-to-face interactions with somebody who you consider as an out group or somebody who you consider different from yourself will Reser in a well a better positive attitude less
Prejudice and uh in the end also improved interpersonal relations um Cooperative learning well Taps also into equality um everybody has their own equal share in in uh within Cooperative learning um you also uh work work towards the common goal which is one very uh helpful factor in this process uh
And there’s interpersonal dependence so there’s a lot of factors which might uh explain how this intervention could work and research on General or typically developing children uh establishes has established that uh well working cooperatively together in schools can indeed improve peer relations for children without disabilities however for children with uh special educational
Needs or disabilities the the results are mixed some Studies by find positive results prefer well mostly in the higher age groups but no effects or negative effects are found in early childhood which made us think okay well maybe this has something to do with the four criteria of optimal contact that Alber
Established um so that’s where my project came into place uh where in which we took both play as a means and as a goal uh the project is about well the further development of an educational intervention uh to promote the social participation of students with disabilities uh and we make use of
Coopertive play activities uh in which children in very small groups of mostly four students work together on a very little task a playful task uh but they also receive information about the various disabil I ities via animated picture books and guided discussions with the teachers and they do that for a
Period of 16 weeks with three lessons a week resulting in 18 lessons of approximately half an hour to 45 minutes in total um so play as a means comes there uh Within These cooperative play activities but we also wanted to look at the effect on social play uh as I
Mentioned before researchers so far have mostly focused on well uh interactions in very structured settings or social metrics but what does that really say about the social interactions and the voluntary child initiated informal interactions on for example the schoolyard or within the during recess the well the the interactions that
Really matter in Social participation not being said that the other ones are not important or are not important building blocks to establish it but eventually you want to reach the children voluntarily uh initiate soal bits themselves towards another peer uh and we decided to take a long
Shot and also uh well look at Social play as an as an outcome measure and we did that via observations during free play uh both in school and uh in in in the classroom and outside and we focused on social play versus non-social play and we also coded for example solitary
Play not play onlooker Behavior but consider we did it live uh uh we in the end we ended up merging them all together for play as a means we were really curious uh to what extent students with special educational needs and disabilities were considered equal play partners and for that we did a
Multiple case study in which we um or two case studies in which we looked into the interactions that happened during the uh cooperative play activities we followed two groups both consisting of three typically developing children and one student with an intellectual disability and for student one that was
A boy with Down syndrome and for student or group two that was a boy with a developmental delay and all children were aged four to six years and we took the Cooperative learning uh activities of the uh group program um from week one week three and week six which lasted
Approximately 12 minutes and uh we coded their behavior on two AES uh one uh which stepped into the dominance and one which stepped into the affiliation as you can see here and it’s based or inspired by the interpersonal circumflex by uh lii what we found was that luckily most
Students were very uh their affiliative interactions uh were more prominent than their antagonistic behaviors uh in both group you can see the differences between the two groups but all in all they were quite positive towards each other which was good news considering positive interactions contribute to uh improved interpersonal relations um but
For dominance we did see quite a difference between the typically developing students and uh students with uh disabilities uh students with disabilities were way more submissive uh uh than dominant and the acceptable acceptable ratio for students to feel comfortable uh within a dominance uh hierarchy is between 40 and 60 so for
The students with disabilities this was way uh beyond the or beneath what what would expect it to be um positive but luckily uh we also calculated the the percentage or the proportions of time spent within dominant or uh submissive behavior and we did see that uh over the
Period of six weeks if we if you calculate a reliable change index so a person centered effect size that the their behavior of the typically developing students became less uh dominant and the behavior of students with disabilities became more dominant and less submissive so even in a short
Period of time you can see some changes we also looked into the effect uh on social play with a quasi experimental design um as I explained before we looked into the social play on the schoolyard and outside but what we saw there is that was there was great variation between
Students but already quite High percentages of free play uh at the first measurement so maybe uh they’re not that lagging behind that much as we were expecting before most students already spent between 40 and 60% of their time in Social play which is comparable to what typically developing students do
Most students of this age group spend about 50% of their time in Social play and the majority of students with the acceptance of the students with Down Syndrome also had the same uh proportions um we also looked at the differences between the groups and as you can see here there was quite some
Overlap and variation between participants so we also looked into a a person centered approach and what we saw there is that we again calculated reliable change indexes um and we saw that the inter uh the experimental group there were a little bit more increases there than in the control group but we
Could not attest it due to the the the small numbers we had about 20 students in total and also for long term uh there were not that much differences so we cannot really say that the inventions had the inter the anticipated effects to reflect um and to to well
Make some room for the discussion leave some room for the discussion question uh play as a means I think it’s a very useful approach to use play in intervention like this as Hana already said it’s very good for students working together supporting each other cooperating together and you can see
That if they do they do it and get used to it that you can see a slow Trend evolving hopefully towards equal status um so play can be a very valuable tool to change group dynamics if you do it in a structure well U well organized
Way and I think for play as a goal I think researchers in the field of well special educational needs and social participation uh will have to investigate more on the areas that really matter such as social play and see what really happens during this in well voluntary child initiators
Interactions it’s an important aspect of social uh participation and one of the reasons we may not have found the effect we anticipated is that well as I already mentioned about half the students were already uh participating in Social play quite often so perhaps there was a sealing effect uh
But also maybe they were not able to transfer or not yet able to transfer the effects of the intervention uh the structured setting during the Cooperative learning already to the free play in the well more unstructured settings that is all for now let’s continue with the discussion thank you very much fian it
Was really interesting your talk uh so now uh uh I’d like to thank our presenters today you brought richly different perspectives with the different age groups uh to to your theme which was the social play as a means of goal of learn for learning in inclusive education and thank you Hana for
Pinpointing that you had the Symposium in the in the Thessaloniki perhaps in the next uh 615 or the early meet uh early conference there will be uh another one or this for the similar theme or to topic um I also like to thank for our active audience