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29 JANUARY 2010
NO 1535
The learning environment
The value of looking at the whole child and emphasizing social competence with observable skills is that workers can be eclectic in their approach to learning tasks with children. More to the point, the emphasis on individual differences in learning style, rather than individual pathology, may assist workers to make more practical sense out of assessments and to formulate more clearly practical goals in learning environments committed to teaching competence skills. Most important, since the focus of attention is the child as a whole person with a consistent learning style, then the methodological emphasis of an educational or group care programme changes as interventions are redefined.
By turning attention to each child being helped to acquire competence skills in any or all areas of functioning, workers can emphasize personal strengths and only secondarily focus attention on individual weaknesses. This represents an important technical and clinical shift in thinking for those engaged in group care practice. Although a child's weak or problem areas are acknowledged, primary attention is given to existing competence skills which can be exploited (and which a child can learn to use on his own) in any new learning situation. The whole group care programme thus becomes a comprehensive learning environment which is responsive to learning style as well as special learning needs. Several programme features require consideration if workers are to use their group care centre as a learning environment for children, where social competence skills receive primary attention.
Assessment of competence
In setting up an effective learning environment, group care workers must
compile a record of information about the personal learning style of
each child. Such a record may be informally held
amongst a team of workers, or more helpfully written in summary form in
a quickly referenced file, as in the Kardex or ProblemOriented Record
systems. Compiling a record of information about a child's functioning
must be understood as involving a process of continuous assessment,
rather than a diagnosis of the 'problem'. All too frequently, workers
are tempted to use assessment typologies to 'diagnose' a child's
problems and, just as frequently, such an approach has resulted in
constant struggles around a child's incompetence in social situations.
With the focus on deficiency, everyone working with a child – and more
importantly the child himself – may be blind to areas of strength in his
overall pattern of functioning. Even the most seriously handicapped
child has some capacity to learn, and more importantly, she/he
approaches learning with his/her own special combination of strengths as
well as weaknesses.
The daily
curriculum
In daily programme terms, an emphasis on social competence requires that
the learning opportunities available for children should possess three
basic attributes. First, the daily curriculum and expectations for every
participant in the programme should be easily comprehended by each
child. A child should be able to understand where she/he is headed
with particular learning tasks, what skills she/he is using or
struggling to master in a given task, and how she/he can use the skills
she/he does have to engage in problem solving. Second, the daily
curriculum should be directed at specific goals, both in academic terms
and in relation to daily living. Non-specific or esoteric objectives may
result in basic survival skills – reading, writing, and arithmetic – being unlearned, thus undermining the social competence of a child when
she/he reaches school-leaving age. Basic cookery, laundry, and self-care
skills should probably become concrete goals in any group care centre
for adolescents. Finally, the daily curriculum should be continuous,
in that formal academic learning parallels learning in other areas of a
child's life. Ideally, a child should experience learning to read as
part of the process of growing up and changing, which includes learning
how to make friends, purchase an item of clothing at a shopping centre,
or deal with angry feelings after an argument.
RICHARD W. SMALL AND LEON C. FULCHER
Small, R.W. and Fulcher,
L.C. (1985). Teaching competence in group care practice. In Leon C.
Fulcher and Frank Ainsworth (Eds.) Group Care Practice with Children.
London and New York. Tavistick Publications. pp. 148-149.
