Farzana Pahad-22287477Research Proposal The experiences classroom teachers’ face when establishing educational and psychological support when trying to include learners from child-headed homes in their classrooms.centercenter1000001000000914400bottom8/20/2018100000150008/20/2018centertop10000025000centerbottom1000000Contents TOC o “1-3” h z u 1.
Introduction and Rationale PAGEREF _Toc522974156 h 22.Problem Statement PAGEREF _Toc522974157 h 43.Research Question PAGEREF _Toc522974158 h 63.1 Primary research question: PAGEREF _Toc522974159 h 63.2 Secondary questions are: PAGEREF _Toc522974160 h 64.Aim PAGEREF _Toc522974161 h 65.
Objectives PAGEREF _Toc522974162 h 65.1 Keywords: PAGEREF _Toc522974163 h 76.Definition of concepts PAGEREF _Toc522974164 h 76.1 Child- Headed Homes (CHH) PAGEREF _Toc522974165 h 76.2 Institutional Level Support Teams (ILST) PAGEREF _Toc522974166 h 76.3 Barriers to Learning PAGEREF _Toc522974167 h 87.Search Strategies PAGEREF _Toc522974168 h 88.Conceptual Framework PAGEREF _Toc522974169 h 88.
1Optimising contact opportunities to help with integrating identification and support as well as monitoring into services PAGEREF _Toc522974170 h 88.2Conceptual framework diagram to help with identification, support and monitoring of children from CHHs PAGEREF _Toc522974171 h 9References PAGEREF _Toc522974172 h 10The experiences classroom teachers’ face when establishing educational and psychological support when trying to include learners from child-headed homes in their classrooms.Introduction and RationaleIn today’s society one notices that there are major changes that are being faced by most households; and with times changing drastically we now notice an increase of homes where children are the sole providers, meaning that there has been a higher number of child headed families which has gained an increasing amount of attention, thus is due to children being orphaned as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Meier, 2003, p75; UNAIDS, 2002, July). Other factors that also contribute to caring for these children not only in South Africa but other countries as well are problems such as poverty and unemployment; which makes it much harder for family members, educators or even society to care for them. Therefore it does not only become a responsibility for the school to see to some of these children’s needs such as spending time with them in school or providing them with food during the day (Feeding scheme), as most of their time is spent here.That is why we need to make provision for Inclusion at our school for these learners. Learners who come from child headed families have qualities and attributes that enable them to achieve just as other children from normal homes (Shilubana & Kok, 2004), one needs to also acknowledge that these children face countless difficulties as well as many challenges along the way, some of them can be fears of not making it as an orphan or even worrying of their meals for the next day (Ebersohn & Eloff, 2003; Sloth-Nielsen, 2002), this resulting in learners having numerous barriers to learning (Evans, 2002) impacting on their ability to benefit from proper education (Bennell, 2005; Nesengani, 2006; Simikins, 2002).With regards to inclusion in the education system, all education system’s or institutions need to able to have a way to manage and provide support to these learners and also to the educators as they need a diverse support system that can the different requirements’ that they may require (DoE, 2005a:16).
In South Africa our Constitution states that education is very important and every child should receive an education, this is then where Inclusive education comes in as it is part of our education system. Inclusive education is also reflected in the Education White Paper 6; these are policies that are put into place for education and different factors that can arise in the teaching system. The White Paper 6 deals with Special Education – which is to build, inclusive education and training system and screening identification, assessment and support (SIAS) document.
Inclusive education is a formal support structure that is in place for teachers and learners, as well as teachers’ and learners viewpoints. The support structures that are in place for teachers include the following: District-Based Support Teams (DBSTs), Institutional-Level Support Teams (ILSTs), Full-Service Schools (FSS), Special Schools as resource centres (SSRC), Learning Support Educators (LSEs) as well as the community. Other support services that can also be a potential support provider include: school counsellors, educational psychologists, and the help from social workers who are able to respond appropriately to the type of situations that may occur. Discrimination against learners with special needs, negative attitudes, non-flexible curriculum which does not adapt to the needs of the individual learner, language and communication issues can also lead to barriers to learning (Nel, Nel and Hugo (2012:15). The National Strategy on Screening, Identification and Assessment and Support (NSSIAS) (DoE, 2008:14) also states that the ILST must support these learners by ensuring that teachers are responsive in differentiating their lessons or classroom strategies to be able accommodate diverse learning needs and create a welcoming school environment for all learners.Mittler (in Mariga, McConkey ; Myezwa, 2014: foreword) explains that inclusive education can succeed as long as there is “political will, good leadership, preparation of teachers and parental and community support”. Inclusive education, as well as finding ways to remove and identify barriers to learning in South Africa, is a never ending process, thus resulting in the many challenges that is being faced in the education system today (Engelbrecht and Green, 2007).
Teachers struggle when it comes to implementing new strategies or ways, this allowing the continuation of struggle that they face, therefore educators are required to continue to fight with implementation but also required to maintain a high quality pass rate in the education practice system (McLeskey, Waldron and Reddy, 2014). A 65% of mainstream teachers do not have the initial teacher education qualification training to help them in being able to respond or even deal with situations that may arise within the mainstream classroom, with the much diverse learning needs that may be required from them (Dreyer, Engelbrecht and Swart, 2012). These teachers have only being trained in the general mainstream education or “specialised education” in different or separate educational settings. Specialised intervention is needed in order to support them by specialists in the Education Support Services. Teachers have a belief that they are not able to provide the support needed in classrooms and that the needs of learners that are faced with challenges (child headed homes), orphans, disabilities or special needs are best met with them being in separated classrooms to be able to deal with them (Armstrong and Barton, 2008:6; Florian and Rouse, 2010:190; Donohue and Bornman, 2014; Dreyer et al..
, 2012:285-286; Geldenhuys and Wevers, 2013; Hay, 2012; Nel et al., 2013), thus resulting that majority of learners who have special needs are still attending special schools to this day, due to the fact that there is hardly any provision that has being made for them (Donohue, 2014:2).There is a limited support based structure in schools and it is only governmental based support, there has to be an increase as well as teachers making or forming their own ways in which they can make their own experiences in the classrooms easier not only for them but all these learners as well no matter what type of disability or background they come from. However there is a need for a strong support system that should be provided for learners by the ILST, but studies have shown that there is no support to help these learners. The question that arises is: How prepared are teachers to make these implementations and recommendations at a school level, at a psychological level, at an emotional level?Problem StatementHow do classroom teachers’ view their experiences with regards to establishing educational and psychological support when trying to include learners from child-headed homes in their classrooms and how are they prepared for change?In 2001 the Nelson Mandela Children’s fun reported that South Africa has the highest or fastest growing rate of children who come from child headed families (Phillips 2015). A graphical illustration made to show how CHHs have increased alone from 2014 to 2015; this shows how we need to make recommendations in our schools to be able to support these children and teachers. Sources: Statistics South Africa (2005, 2006) General Household Survey 2004; General Household Survey 2005.
Pretoria, Cape Town. Statistics South Africa. Analysis by Debbie Budlender, Centre for Actuarial Research. UCT.-425302-4380100 Figure 1: Estimates of Child Headed households in South AfricaThis is where the need to establish weather teachers are able to sufficiently be well equipped in dealing with them. Teachers have become frustrated by these learners as there is a high rate of absenteeism thus resulting in a low performance in class, other factors also include to the suffering they face either at school or at home. According to Kuhanen et al.
(2008:128), Maqoko and Dreyer (2007:717,726), Ayieko (2003:9) and Van Dijk (2008:2) this results in a high rate of school dropouts from children from CHHs. Wilson (1996) had agreed to this stating the acknowledgement that teachers are either frustrated, irritated by these children (CHHs) as most of these teachers have no sort of experience in teaching children who have being raised without their parents or guardians. Therefore there is a need to establish teachers readiness, as it is a cause of concern as the number of children coming from CHHs is constantly growing.Children whose situations are not that severe are referred to the DBST this is where they undergo psychological testing; as soon as they get referred they’re tested as soon as possible and usually these tests are technically inadequate resulting in a large number being placed in full service schools and at Special Schools as Resource Centres (Swart and Pettipher, 2005:20). The problem with SBST is that the DBST seems to be failing to develop schools and educators in being able to accommodate learners with barriers to learning (Makhalemele, 2011:87-88). Research Question 3.1 Primary research question: The following primary research question has being formulated to guide this research:How do classroom teachers’ view their experiences with regards to establishing educational and psychological support when trying to include learners from child-headed homes in their classrooms as well as being prepared for the change?3.
2 Secondary questions are:How aware are you to any learners in your classroom who come from child-headed homes? If you are (yes), please explain.What has your experience being like with such learners in your classroom?What types of strategies did you use to include these learners in your classroom, with regards to the experiences you pointed out above?What type of support do you think you need as an educator to better equip you to include and accommodate these learners in your classroom?How prepared are you as a teacher to be willing to change and implement these changes in your classroom?Aim To conduct a comprehensive study on classroom teachers’ experiences in regards to establishing educational and psychological support that would be needed when trying to include learners from child-headed homes in their classroomsObjectivesThe objectives of this study are mainly to:To determine the types of challenges educators & learners from child-headed families face.To conduct a study on self-awareness including educational and psychological support neededTo investigate the different psychological problems that learners from child-headed homes have.Determine the essence of CHHs is? 5.1 Keywords: Child headed householdsInclusivityInstitutional Level Support TeamsVulnerable childrenVulnerabilityBarriers to learningPsychological supportEmotional supportDefinition of concepts 6.1 Child- Headed Homes (CHH)An orphan is understood as a child whose parents have died. An orphan has no mother or father; when a mother has died it is termed a ‘maternal orphan’ as society then allocates the primary responsibility for childcare to mothers, rather than fathers, and because the death of the father does not usually re in charge of a caregiver while the death of the death of the mother does (Freeman and Nkomo, 2006, p.
505). However, one must also take into consideration the notion of ‘social orphans’, which refers to children who have been abandoned by their parents for some or other reason. “In Swaziland, the number of social orphans now exceeds that of natural orphans” (Cornia cited in Jones, 2005, p.163). 6.2 Institutional Level Support Teams (ILST)An internal support team that has been established at all EL.
The main function is to support the teaching and learning process by administering and addressing the support requirements that arise from the learners, educators and institution itself. Teachers with or without specialised skills, staff members from the institution, parents and learners can all be part of the ILST. Professionals within the community that form part of this team include healthcare professionals, medical services, full service schools and resource centres.6.
3 Barriers to LearningDefined as any factor that may cause an obstacle within a learners’ learning and which leads to an inability for the system to accommodate diversity (Makhalemele, 2001)Search StrategiesThe following search strategies or search engines were used in the process of gathering information to complete the proposal:EBSCOhostERICThesis Conceptual FrameworkThis study will be primarily based on how educators deal with educational and psychological support and trying to deal with the situation of children who come from child-headed homes, how all of this affects not only the child (orphan) but also how it affects the educator when it comes to teaching and being able to deal with situations that may arise in the classroom or in the home of the child. There are a large number of potentially vulnerable children, therefore it is crucial that there are opportunities for the identification, support and monitoring of these children within existing services are optimally utilised.Optimising contact opportunities to help with integrating identification and support as well as monitoring into services Educators come into contact with many different types of service providers but most of the times don’t know how they can make use of these services to be able to identify, refer or even support or monitor the children who may be especially vulnerable in these types of situations (CHHs). The reason for this from research gathered has shown that the responsibility for the identification and support of children from CHHs is frequently placed within the realm of social workers, volunteers and NGOs; this is the reason why health works and educators tend to fail to recognise the opportunity costs of not responding to warning signs in children who are facing difficulties at home.
What we fail to establish is that for example a child’s caregiver can become progressively sick; the child may then be faced with leaving school to care for their parents or younger siblings. In a school environment one should be able to notice these changes in the learner as well as in their behaviour pattern or even prolonged periods of absenteeism, if a child or learner drops out of school with no follow up home visit or any enquires made as to why the child has not been attending school, as this is often the case, it is an opportunity greatly lost.Conceptual framework diagram to help with identification, support and monitoring of children from CHHs-5103632297800988252863600-244548242024Individual or Organisation 00Individual or Organisation 3094059154940Collaboration between stakeholders needs to be strengthened to facilitate identification, referrals, support and monitoring of CHH children.
00Collaboration between stakeholders needs to be strengthened to facilitate identification, referrals, support and monitoring of CHH children.245554511366500542260112308000-4258051951946Recommendation:Awareness raising, resources and training required to enhance capacity of individuals and organisations to integrate the identification process as well as the support and monitoring of children from CHHs.00Recommendation:Awareness raising, resources and training required to enhance capacity of individuals and organisations to integrate the identification process as well as the support and monitoring of children from CHHs.8506065524600ReferencesActs see South Africa.Bauman, S.A.
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