Parent attitudes are similar when teaching support hours are sought for children with extra educational needs, at mainstream schools in the UK and Ireland. This report from The Guardian defines the challenges of special needs or teaching assistants in the classroom:
Read >> Relying on TA support for SEN students is false economy
In the words of Rob Webster, a research associate in the UK:
“Parents tend to enter the statementing process hoping to secure one-to-one support from a teaching assistant (TA), particularly when their child’s needs can be met in a mainstream school. [Instead], we must help parents understand that relying too much on teaching assistants prevents special educational needs students getting enough quality time with their teacher [and learning to learn off their own bat …] .”
Avoiding Learned Helplessness
Learned helplessness raises its head in this discussion – as mentioned in past posts on this site. There’s also the issue of over-parented students annoying teachers. What about the students who want to be independent outside of their homes, and to manage their own lives, as they wish?
In summer 2013, US student Megan Bomgaars made a powerful video, “DON’T LIMIT ME!” – for educators to have high expectations for differently-abled students in their classrooms, and not to apply perceived limits or biases – unconscious or otherwise.
Technology Is Altering Teacher Performance
Meantime, at eight primary schools in disadvantaged parts of the UK, live classroom transcripts streamed to pupils’ tablets allow teacher performance to be assessed at different levels. With the transcripts, students, staff, parents and principals can monitor and give feedback on teaching impact.
Read >> Aussie technology allows rating of UK teacher efficiency
A new era for ‘Rate My Teacher’ websites may result if these realtime live classroom captions reach all schools, as service provider AI-Media aims to see happening in the UK and in Australia, the founders’ home country.
More Reading
- Learned Helplessness – When Less Support Is More
- When Over-Parented Students Irritate Teachers
- “Don’t Limit Me!” Megan Bomgaars Tells Teachers
- Classroom Captions Entrenching In The UK And US
- Australia To Take Classroom Captioning ‘National’
- Cornell STEM Captioning May Reach High Schools
- TeachNet Blog: Closed Captions In The Classroom
- Deaf Teen Open To IT Work After Captions Support
- ‘Disability Law News’ Blog Cites IDK’s Advocacy
- California Student Seeks Captions Instead of FM
