KEYNOTE PRESENTERS

The Role of Special Educational Needs Officers (SEN) in promoting a whole-school approach to SEN support

Despite the growth of international research on paraeducator deployment, the understanding of its working in Singapore remains nascent.

This research addresses the limited knowledge of paraeducator deployment in Singapore by examining how SEN (previously known as Allied Educators (Learning and Behavioural Support) [AED(LBS)] spend their time in school, how they work with the school community of teachers and school leaders, and the factors that affect the process of working together using Wenger’s (1998) community of practice framework.

The findings encourage a reimagination of the SEN role in mainstream schools, moving from a role mainly concerned with student support to one with a growing influence on the school’s inclusive culture. Beyond having a tangible impact on teachers and school leaders through practical support rendered, SEN were observed to exert an intangible influence on colleagues through their voice and visibility. This intangible influence won their colleagues’ trust, facilitated their inclusion into school communities and encouraged teachers’ willingness to participate in the support of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Through their voice and visibility, SEN enabled a whole school approach to support. Both leaders and SEN played a part in determining the extent of AEDs’(LBS) voice and visibility. Recommendations for increasing SEN voice and visibility will be provided.

ABOUT JUNE:

Dr June Siew is a thought leader in the field of special educational needs (SEN), focusing on dyslexia. She holds a grounded perspective of SEN, developed through her extensive experiences with students and their community of support. She is a pioneer in advocating inclusive practices in schools and has been training allied educators since they were first introduced to the mainstream school system in 2005. She passionately believes that the family and community are key to a child’s success and works closely with them to help students with SEN thrive.

June holds a Doctor in Education from the National Institute of Education (Singapore) and Institute of Education, University College London. She is a Fellow with the Register of Educational Therapists (Asia) and a qualified trainer with a WSQ Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA).

Dyslexia-associated cognition: Not a disorder, but an evolved Specialisation in Explorative Cognitive Search

This research provides a new and different view of dyslexia-associated cognition, reframing it not as a disorder, but rather, as an evolved specialisation in Explorative Cognitive Search, indicating that this form of cognitive processing plays a critical role in how our species adapts to change.

A new theoretical lens, namely information Search, is used to understand the cognition of individuals being diagnosed with developmental dyslexia. Regulating search is fundamental to adaptive success at both evolutionary and ecological (i.e. cognitive) time scales. Appropriately balancing this process is so central to survival that it is believed to be one of the most important selective forces operating in the evolution of cognition.

It has long been argued that individuals with developmental dyslexia possess a talent for global (versus local) information processing and enhanced abilities in realms such as creativity, divergent thinking and invention. These are all ways of processing information that are associated with global information search. It was therefore hypothesised that individuals with dyslexia are specialised in explorative cognitive search - since this would explain both the higher-level strengths and difficulties that have been observed.

The study predictions derived from a new scientific theory of human cognitive evolution - The Evolution of Complementary Cognition - which itself is grounded in complex adaptive systems theory. The purpose of this study was not to debate the existing evidence concerning developmental dyslexia; rather the aim was to use Search as a new framework from which to interpret the evidence. It was hypothesised that higher-level strengths observed in individuals with dyslexia reflect an underlying specialisation in explorative information search. This hypothesis makes two predictions. The first was that underlying cognitive and neurological differences favour global search. The second was that these would be clustered, i.e. a global search bias would be found in more than one area of cognition.

In general, whichever aspect of dyslexia-associated cognition was looked at, evidence indicated a relationship to explorative information search. Even some features previously understood as deficits, such as lower working memory, enhance explorative search. Areas of deficit on the other hand, are consistently related to local information search. The evidence concurs with the hypothesis that the cognition of individuals with dyslexia is specialised for greater explorative search. The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. Specialisation by such a significant proportion of the population indicates that our species regulate search at the group level. In other words, it indicates that our species adapt through group-level cognition. This finding emphasises the urgency of changing educational practices and nurturing the strengths in this group of people, to both value individuals with this way of thinking and to enable us as a global community to move towards a more adaptive and sustainable society.

ABOUT HELEN:

Creator of ‘The Evolution of Complementary Cognition’ – a new scientific theory that explains how our species adapt and evolve.
Project Lead, Complementary Cognition, Business & Entrepreneurship, University of Strathclyde.
Affiliated Scholar, McDonald Institute University of Cambridge.

Helen is currently a Research Associate and Project Lead on Complementary Cognition, Entrepreneurship & Societal Adaptation at the University of Strathclyde. She works in collaboration with Professor Nigel Lockett and Professor Eleanor Shaw. Helen did her Bachelor and Masters degrees at the UCL and won further scholarship funding to do her doctorate at the University of Cambridge where her PhD research investigated the emergence of social complexity in humans. For her subsequent post-doctoral work she researched dyslexia to try and understand what this form of cognition was and why it existed. From this, she developed a new theory of human cognitive evolution which draws on economic and complex systems theory and is supported by a range of evidence from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, evolution, paleo-environmental evidence and archaeology.

Read more here: complementarycognition.co.uk