Why building a positive classroom culture can support students with special education needs
Introduction
Out of the 400,000 Students in Singapore, around 35,500 are reported to have special education needs (SEN) (CNA, 2023). This is about 7% of all students in Singapore. This percentage has increased from 4% in 2014. There is a general trend across the world that the number of students with SEN or learning disabilities has risen and will continue to rise. As discussed by Pendharkar (2023), more students are diagnosed with SEN because there is better recognition and diagnosis of common conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. Also, there is less stigma among parents around disabilities.
Many initiatives have been created to support students with learning disabilities in Singapore since 2004. For example, 10% of all primary school teachers and 20% of all secondary school teachers are trained in special needs (TSN), and every school has at least one SEN officer (Poon et al., 2013). The Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST) also conducts many professional learnings on inclusive education. In Physical Education and Sports Teachers Academy (PESTA), we conduct a few workshops on inclusive physical education (IPE) each year.
The first step — finding the root of the problem
The first topic we discuss in every IPE workshop is finding ways to understand the students first. When I was a beginning teacher, whenever I had challenging students, I would look for quick-fix solutions such as taking away their phones or calling their parents. Most of the time, these solutions did not work. The students sometimes became even more frustrated and went into meltdown. When one strategy did not work, I would often look for another quick fixed solution, and again, usually, it did not work.
“What matters is not whether the teachers do it, but how appropriately and effectively they do it”
(Whitaker, 2020)
As I gained more experience in teaching, I noticed that programmes and strategies only work when we have developed a positive classroom culture. For example, we might see a teacher able to stop students from disrupting the class by confiscating their phones. If we reverse the time to ten months ago and follow the teacher, we would have observed that the teacher has built an excellent relationship with their students. When he confiscated the phone, they knew the teacher was very disappointed with them. Because they respected the teacher so much, they did not want to disappoint the teacher further and stop their behaviour. One of the most important ways to build better teacher-student relationships is to put in time and effort to understand the needs of individual students.
“Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.”
(Palmer, 2009)
Our Inclusive PE workshop will always start the session by sharing ways to understand the students. Using the Ecological Framework (EF) (Wikipedia contributors, 2023), we suggest that teachers work with other teachers and stakeholders to understand the students better. When we look at the EF (an example), we can see the students’ complex challenges in learning at home and with peers. As such, we can support them more effectively.
I will discuss a few common challenges faced by students with learning difficulties and how some teachers develop a positive classroom culture to help them overcome the obstacles. For easy reference, I shall call these teachers “effective teachers.”
Lower self-efficacy and self-esteem
Students with learning difficulties may develop lower self-efficacy when they have negative classroom experiences, for example, being judged by teachers and peers for not getting the skills right. As such, there is a high chance these students feel threatened (fear of being judged) when they have to learn a new sport. In neuroscience, when people feel threatened, a part of the brain called the amygdala triggers a fight-or-flight response (Holland, 2023). That is why students with learning difficulties sometimes show anger (fight) or refuse to play (flight).
The root of the problem is not that they have anger management issues or are defiant. The root of the problem is the students do not have the self-belief to learn the new sport, resulting in the behaviour.
“Highly effective teachers have high expectations and beliefs of their students.”
(Hattie, 2012)
Effective teachers solve the problem by developing a safe learning environment and helping all students develop growth mindsets. Students with a growth mindset are more willing to try even when they see more failures than their peers. Hence, we often see effective teachers setting expectations for the students to have a growth mindset. For example, they expect the students to enjoy learning and embrace failures. They also expect them to be empathised and believe in one another. And they mean it. They do not set such expectations and forget all about it.
Effective teachers give the students the impression that they only want to see them improve and enjoy learning. And they are firm with that. They care more about developing students who believe in themselves than whether they are good at the game. They celebrate when students take one small step at a time and show disappointment when students decide to give up.
“Individuals develop their self-efficacy beliefs by interpreting information from four main sources of influence.”
(Bandura, 1977)
Student empowerment is often seen in the classrooms of effective teachers. The teachers empower the students because they believe the students can. Students with low self-efficacy may not be confident to take charge of their learning, but effective teachers keep going; they use different strategies to motivate these students. For example, the teacher may use verbal persuasion, provide easy-to-follow examples and build a routine of asking students to modify the task to suit their abilities. They also believe that students will enjoy the lesson when they learn by themselves.
Students with low self-efficacy need teachers with such expectations. Because the teachers only cared about progress and their enjoyment of learning, they knew that their teachers would do everything they could to support them when they met obstacles. Unlike in the past, when they used to worry about teachers and peers judging them, the environment has become safe, which motivates them to go for PE lessons.
Poor working memory
Many of them have poor working memory (short-term memory). This means too much information will easily overwhelm them. Have you ever had the experience of giving three-step instructions, and the students just seem to remember the last instructions? I get that all the time, and it is very frustrating. For example, I tell the students, “I want you to group yourself in fours, then play a game of 2v2. The winning team moved to the left to play with the two students there.” What happens is either the students play 4v4, or the students do not know who to play with after the game.
Effective teachers use short bite-size instructions and ask the students to practice a lot. Bite-sized instructions do not overload their working memory, making them more likely to master the skills. Bite-sized instructions not only work for students with learning difficulties, but they also work better for everyone else (KOH et al., 2018).
Effective teachers also task the stronger students to guide the lower readiness group members. Constant feedback helps the students move faster towards the success criteria. Moreover, when given the next instruction, they already have some prior knowledge from the previous practice. This makes it easier to achieve the new success criteria. Research has shown that linking new learning to prior knowledge helps all learners to learn better (Ausubel, 1968).
Different ways of thinking
Children with dyslexia can often have impairment in procedural learning (Lum et al., n.d.). Simply put, this means students with dyslexia require much more practice acquiring motor skills than other students. To compensate for this, they develop exceptional declarative memory skills (Ullman & Pullman, 2015), meaning they learn by interpreting the key ideas and linking them to see the bigger picture. Children with ADHD often become hyper-focus on an activity that they find hard to be aware of what is happening around them, like, for example, teachers staring at them.
“People who think ADHD means having a short attention span misunderstand what ADHD is”
Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D.
To understand students with learning difficulties, we need to understand neurodiversity. This means the students we face each day are all unique. Their brain is wired differently to process information (Brown, 2019); hence, the speed and perception would be different.
One of my students in the water polo team, who is dyslexic, tends to learn everything much slower than everybody else. However, he is very good at explaining concepts, such as when to shoot in a game or how to shoot better. Although he can explain good swimming techniques better than everybody else, he was always the slowest in swimming. However, he worked extra hard because he has a growth mindset and high self-belief. He would stay back to practice swimming and shooting for at least one hour after every training. After one year, he was among the fastest in swimming.
We often hear stories of people overcoming their special needs by working hard. But like my student, all these people have high self-belief and growth mindset. They would give up easily without these values because everyone else seems to be better than them. Effective teachers make the students believe in themselves even when it looks like there is no way these students can improve. We often see these teachers giving pep talks with energetic tones and setting a very positive vibe in the classroom.
“All children need love, encouragement, and support, and for kids with learning disabilities, such positive reinforcement can help ensure that they emerge with a strong sense of self-worth, confidence, and the determination to keep going even when things are tough.”
(Smith, 2023)
Effective teachers do not judge students based on their different pace of learning or their engagement level. When they see students not motivated in the activities, they look at the tasks and the environment. They will ask themselves, “Is the task too difficult?” “Do they have the confidence to try?” “Are the people around him judging him?”. They go around to affirm their effort and positively build a classroom with vitality. Positive energy begets positive energy. Teachers with high energy, enthusiasm, and passion for the students’ learning will significantly impact the students’ motivation (Patrick et al., 2000).
Lastly, we often see effective teachers using a strength-based approach. They look for each student’s strengths and make sure the students know. If we only tell the students that they have poor attention, they might look down on themselves. But if we tell the students that they are very good at understanding the concepts of the game, they will be motivated to practice more. And that leads to a virtuous cycle of increased self-belief and commitment.
References
Ausubel DP. Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston; 1990.
CNA. (2023, April 9). The Big Read: Special needs education has come a long way, but true inclusiveness still a work in progress. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/special-needs-education-inclusiveness-work-progress-big-read-3405306
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
Brown, G. (2019, July 24). Thinking differently: Researching neurodiversity in the workplace. Hult International Business School. https://www.hult.edu/blog/thinking-differently-researching-neurodiversity-in-the-workplace/#:~:text=Neurodiversity%20refers%20to%20the%20many,people%20quite%20literally%20think%20differently
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. London: Routledge
KOH, Noi Sian; GOTTIPATI, Swapna; and SHANKARARAMAN, Venky. Effectiveness of bite-sized lecture on student learning outcomes. (2018). 4th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’18), Valencia, Spain, 2018 June 20–22:Proceedings. 515–523.
Lum, J. a. G., Ullman, M. T., & Conti‐Ramsden, G. (n.d.). Procedural learning is impaired in dyslexia: Evidence from a meta-analysis of serial reaction time studies. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(10), 3460–3476. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.07.017
Palmer, P. J. (2009). The courage to teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life. John Wiley & Sons.
Patrick, B. C., Hisley, J., & Kempler, T. M. (2000). “What’s everybody so excited about?”: The effects of teacher enthusiasm on student intrinsic motivation and vitality. The Journal of Experimental Education, 68(3), 217–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220970009600093
Pendharkar, E. (2023, October 31). 3 reasons why more students are in special education. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/3-reasons-why-more-students-are-in-special-education/2023/10
Poon, K. K., Musti-Ra, S., & Wettasinghe, M. (2013). Special education in Singapore. Intervention in School and Clinic, 49(1), 59–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053451212472230
Smith, M., MA. (2023, February 23). Helping Children with Learning Disabilities. HelpGuide.org. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/autism-learning-disabilities/helping-children-with-learning-disabilities.htm
Whitaker, T. (2020). What great teachers do differently: Nineteen Things That Matter Most. CRC Press.
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, October 23). Social ecological model. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ecological_model
