Listening to Learners; whose voice are we hearing?
- Dr Sharon Arnold
- Jul 3, 2024
- 3 min read
Advocacy can play a vital role in amplifying the voices of children who are non-speaking. However, how can we ensure that the systems we develop for pupil voice are our absolute best effort for gaining an understanding of the views of learners who are non-speaking?
We can collaborate with a range of health professionals, and parents can advocate for their children's rights, but when it comes to involving pupils in how we evaluate provision, how can we know whose voice is being heard? When we gather stakeholder feedback following an enhancement of an area of the building, or changes made to curriculum provision, is it the children and young people who feel positive in relation to the changes, or the adults?
Children who are minimally verbal can make a meaningful contribution when given the right tools and support.
For example, so that our children can feel safe in school, we can incorporate the teaching of visual symbols into our everyday curriculum that will help them to develop the capacity to report feeling unsafe, upset, or worried. These could be very basic representations of emotions, body parts, or situations/scenarios that might be considered uncomfortable. Do we have 'pupil friendly' safety posters on the wall? If we do, how often, as part of our everyday routines, do we draw children's attention to them, and check for understanding?
Empowering learners involves providing opportunities for decision-making and self-expression, which goes way beyond finding out what snack they would like to eat, or toy they prefer to play with. Involving children and young people in school development means ensuring that their perspectives shape our educational practices.
Thinking about curriculum design, how often do we use genuine measures of engagement to ascertain the level of success of a new initiative? Can we honestly say that we go to the lengths that would ensure that we have a genuine understanding of the views of our pupils who are non-speaking? Or have we relied, year on year, on the views of parents, staff, or questionnaires to which we have added symbols for pre-readers, regardless of what our pupil's ability to interpret those symbols may be?
Researching the experiences of our learners who are non-speaking in different contexts, as they engage in residential experiences, educational visits, classroom tasks, whole school events etc. can provide valuable insight. To create an authentically inclusive environment, we can then use our knowledge of the things they find the most challenging or rewarding, their interests, and their personal aspirations for learning, whatever they may be.
However, such insight is unlikely to be achieved through 'one-off', or 'tick box' exercises. Ensuring that pupils can use their preferred methods of communication, not only to get their wants and needs met, but to be able to express their preferences, dislikes, and opinions, is an integral aspect of curriculum for a non-speaking child or young person.
There's lots of helpful ideas online which could help you to develop your whole-school approaches for Listening to Learners. Here is a few that I found:
DIAMOND RANKING
Children could be taught to diamond rank their activities using images of activities.
Take time to ensure that the pupil knows what the images represents: you could show them the image before they carry out the activity for example, use the same images on visual schedules in the classroom etc.
Images could represent different categories of activity or activities within a category (for example different art mediums to find out if a learner prefers to work with clay or paint.
Gathering information from diamond ranking would not just inform whole school information gathering to help you look for trends in most or least preferred activities, but also provide valuable information about the learner.
For example, what further questions might you be asking if a learner put 'snack time' at the bottom of their diamond?
TALKING MATS
When used in ways that are well aligned with pupil's learning needs, Talking Mats can be an effective way of engaging learners in expressing their views.
See: talkingmats.com for further information and some free resources.
DRAWING THE IDEAL SCHOOL
The 'Drawing the Ideal School Technique' has been adapted from the approach 'Drawing the ideal self' (Moran, 2001). The technique enables children to become actively involved in understanding themselves and expressing their views.
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