Jennifer S Leigh

Quality of Life and Quality of Support for People with Severe Intellectual Disability and Complex Needs.

BACKGROUND People with severe and profound intellectual disabilities often spend substantial time isolated and disengaged. The nature and quality of the support appears to be important in determining quality of life. METHODS Structured observations and staff questionnaires were used to explore the quality of life and quality of support for 110 people with severe and profound disabilities and complex needs. RESULTS On average, people spent approximately 40% of their time engaged in meaningful activities, received contact from staff 25% of the time (6% in the form of assistance to be engaged). Just over one-third received consistently good active support, which was associated with other measures of quality of support and emerged as the strongest predictor of outcomes. CONCLUSIONS Quality of life and quality of support were relatively poor, although with about one-third of people receiving skilled support. Consistently good active support was the best predictor of outcome and proposed as a good indicator of skilled support.

Reflection, reflective practice and embodied reflective practice

Although widely employed in professional practice of all kinds, ‘reflection’ and ‘reflective practice’ can be considered ‘success words’. That is, they elicit positive and supportive responses and yet the concepts are vague, ill-defined, contradictory and reflective skills can be hard to teach. Using examples from education and somatic movement therapy, we argue that a purely analytical approach to reflective practice that involves reflecting on thoughts alone is likely to lead into a negative cycle of rumination. Falling into this cycle of rumination, self-focus has been linked to depression, neuroticism, anxiety and the like. In contrast, an embodied reflective practice focuses on an increased self-awareness grounded in physical sensation, although including images, thoughts and feelings. This embodied self-awareness can increase adaptive empathy, and a focus on embodied experience can lead to a decrease in rumination. Embodied self-awareness can be taught, and this, in turn, can be used to teach the skills of an embodied reflective practice, which could be beneficial for both self-development and professional practice.

Imagining Autism: Feasibility of a drama-based intervention on the social, communicative and imaginative behaviour of children with autism:

We report the feasibility of a novel, school-based intervention, coined ‘Imagining Autism’, in which children with autism engage with drama practitioners though participatory play and improvisation in a themed multi-sensory ‘pod’ resembling a portable, tent-like structure. A total of 22 children, aged 7–12 years, from three UK schools engaged in the 10-week programme. Measures of social interaction, communication and emotion recognition, along with parent and teacher ratings, were collected before and up to 12 months after the intervention. Feasibility was evaluated through four domains: (1) process (recruitment, retention, blinding, inter-rater reliability, willingness of children to engage), (2) resources (space, logistics), (3) management (dealing with unexpected changes, ease of assessment) and (4) scientific (data outcomes, statistical analyses). Overall, the children, parents and teachers showed high satisfaction with the intervention, the amount of missing data was relatively low, key assessments were implemented as planned and evidence of potential effect was demonstrated on several key outcome measures. Some difficulties were encountered with recruitment, test administration, parental response and the logistics of setting up the pod. Following several protocol revisions and the inclusion of a control group, future investigation would be justified to more thoroughly examine treatment effects.

An embodied perspective on judgements of written reflective practice for professional development in Higher Education

This paper gives an embodied perspective on the use of judgements of reflective practice and reflective writing for professional development in Higher Education. Programmes for professional development in Higher Education and recognition processes for academics have become prevalent in the UK and internationally. These programmes and processes often assume, implicitly or explicitly, development or evidencing as a ‘reflective practitioner’ through pieces of reflective writing which is then judged against competencies or attainments. However, this focus on reflective practice and reflective writing is not always critical, and does not examine the different theoretical and practical interpretations of what it means to reflect, or the impact of assessing such reflections. Taking an embodied stance allows a new view into a contested area that is more habitually connected with cognitive rather than corporeal processes.

Experiencing emotion: children’s perceptions, reflections and self-regulation

Abstract Twenty-two children aged 4–11 attended sessions of Somatic Movement Education (incorporating developmental play and movement patterns). They were given the opportunity to express their emotions through movement, and to develop their understanding and processing of emotion through pair work, group work, journaling, mark-making and reflections as part of a phenomenological research project. The children showed that they were able to identify and express their emotions through movement and creative methods. In some cases they were also able to move towards self-regulating their emotions, and articulate their experiences of this clearly.

Effective action research: developing reflective thinking and practice

The emphasis of this book is purportedly about undertaking effective action research in the context of developing reflective thinking and practice. The enhancing of such skills as critical thinking and reasoned argument as well as the developing of reflective thinking and practice are promised. Costello says that his emphasis is on ‘‘the practice of action research’’ (p. 118) and the ‘‘development of reflective thinking and practice’’ (p. 119). Although Costello based his examples on the field of education, he states that his work is relevant to those in other fields including management, archaeology, engineering, and culture studies. The book is divided into 10 chapters and starts by outlining basic characteristics of research and comparing definitions of Action Research (AR). Although the majority of AR is concerned with participants, it is the cyclical process and pursuit of both action and research that are seen as the fundamental characteristics. Different models of AR are presented, reiterating the idea that AR is concerned with problem solving, interventions, and change. The second chapter discusses reflection in the context of a reflective teacher, practitioner, and researcher. The chapter also includes discussions of the teacher as researcher and research in education as part of professional development. How to develop an AR project is the concern of Chapter 3. This chapter includes advice on choosing topics, developing proposals, undertaking a literature review, and working with a tutor. This section reads very much as though it is aimed at students. Some of the links and resources provided in this chapter are not up to date, for example the Teacher Training Resource Bank (ttrb.ac.uk) closed on 31/03/11. Although a companion website for the book is advertised (http://education. costello.continuumbooks.com), up-to-date resources were not available there either. Chapter 4 discusses data collection, ethics, and the importance of rigour and validity in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Three examples of AR projects are given concerning an effective school governing body, the developing of questioning skills, and the developing of thinking skills in an early years setting. The content of these examples seemed rather elementary. Chapter 5 deals with data analysis using examples from the previous chapter. Although questions on data analysis ought to be addressed at the planning stage, this was not mentioned in the earlier section on planning a research project. Chapter 6 moved onto the writing of reports and seemed more focused on the projects and assignments than actual AR. The next chapter addresses the assessment of research projects, again in general rather than specific to AR. This is then followed by a chapter advising on Educational Research and Evaluation Vol. 18, No. 4, May 2012, 395–398

Managers’ views of skilled support

BACKGROUND Quality of life of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities has been found to primarily depend on whether staff are providing facilitative and enabling support that helps to compensate for severity of disability. Managers have a key role in facilitating staff to provide such support. METHOD Qualitative interviews were conducted with 35 managers of supported accommodation services to explore service aims and the nature of, and challenges in providing, skilled support. Key themes were identified using a Thematic Networks Analysis. RESULTS Service aims were rarely formalised, were related to the individuals supported and not to the organisation. Managers found it difficult to define skilled support, other than by reference to individuals. Practice leadership roles were challenged as a result of austerity measures. CONCLUSIONS Front-line managers need more information and training in skilled support, with stronger leadership from senior management to provide the motivation and resources needed.

Ableism in academia: where are the disabled and ill academics?

Abstract Recent coverage in higher education newspapers and social media platforms implies that chronic conditions, illnesses and disabilities are becoming more prominent amongst academics. Changes to funding structures, increased globalisation, marketisation and bureaucratisation of higher education have resulted in a performance-driven working environment where teaching workload and pressures to publish are further intensified due to excellence exercises in teaching and research. The result is low morale and an ever-rising number of reported mental health issues, burnout and stress-related illnesses within academia. This article explores some of these issues in the context of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. We draw on our research and our experiences as speakers regarding ableism in academia to provide food for thought, stimulate a debate and raise awareness of those academics experiencing chronic illness, disability or neurodiversity, whose voices are not heard.