Listening to the Thai Voices of all the students in special schools

Thai Voices

The United Nations in 2006 stated that,

‘All countries shall ensure that children with disabilities have the right to express their views freely on all matters affecting them, their views being given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity, on an equal basis with other children, and to be provided with disability and age-appropriate assistance to realise that right.’ Teachers should recognise that a mentally or physically disabled child should enjoy a full and decent life, in conditions which ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child’s active participation in the community. (Article 23) (United Nations, 1989).

In special schools’ teachers tend to talk all the time giving instructions to their students. They rarely seek to listen and observe the student’s communication. We should explain to parents and carers what we are doing and learning as we seek to respond to the Thai voices of each student. The communication maybe verbal or non-verbal and teachers need to encourage and respond to their desires or wishes.Our aim should be to share and practice positive approaches to effective communication and listening from the student no-matter what their level of ability or mental age. The voice of children must be recorded and taken into account no matter what their age or ability to communicate directly.

This can be done by:

• Direct engagement;
• Observation;
• Discussion with parents, family members, or carers.

A good start is to listen and observe openly and to seek the voice of the child without advising or judging.

This should be embedded in practice and in records and should be updated regularly particularly when circumstances change for the child or there is a change of plan. We should record the voice of the child and for the child. The voice of the child should be recorded within documents and exemplars in the electronic records. They can also be attached or scanned into records where the child has written their own views or tools have been used which are videos completed of the child.

Thai Voices in Thailand

 

Thai Voices is the name of this project with Panyanukul schools in Thailand. It has clear objectives

1. The teachers learn to listen to what the students have to say and respond to their wishes
2. The children are given more power to learn that interests them and to take control of their learning
3. The content of the curriculum is the Basic Thai National Curriculum for all students and it is taught using technology enhanced learning based on the world wide web and a specialist website for Teachers and students in Panyanukul schools to learn.
4. The belief is that the students are much cleverer than they are currently being allowed to be and this is an international concern that is not only to be found in Thailand

The following text explains the three year process of teacher and student learning to achieve the objectives outlined above

The Reformation at Petchaburi Panyanukul schooi 2018 to 2021 

• Petchaburui Panyanukul school has always been a high-quality care centre for students with severe learning difficulties including those with Down’s Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Autism and general brain damage. The students ranging from 5 to 20 years of age have a wide range of abilities. The 428 students are well fed, well dressed, and well loved by all the 79 teachers.

• The school had a weak curriculum and the teachers were not confident on what to teach. When the students failed to learn the teachers blamed the lack of success on the disability of the students. As a consequence the students spent much of the day doing very little except sleeping, whilst the teachers relaxed and talked to each other. The children were unable to talk to each other, many of them did not make friends, they were isolated and loneliness was a common feature.

• There were many problems many of which were the mindsets of the teachers who thought the students were incapable of learning. A special schools academic from Hong Kong came to love in Hua Hin and offered help to the school. The teachers did not realise that it was they the teachers who had the disability as they did not understand the students. All the students were capable of being successful at their own level of ability and all the students had intellectual potential. So We began by talking about ability and not disability, to talk about children and not handicaps

• Then we started to assess the students according to a new Thai National Curriculum scale which was adapted from a mixture of the English assessment for children with severe learning difficulties integrated with the Grades of learning from the Thai National Curriculum. The teachers constructed a Sumret scale (success scale) which allowed every pupil to be assessed on their standard of success in every strand of learning of every subject of the national curriculum. The teachers began to appreciate that all the students had different levels of success and at each of these levels the students could be taught to learn. The document was so successful that it was recognized by the Thai Ministry of Education.

• This was a great achievement by the teachers if the school. The School Director Ajarn Weera King Keaw was essential as he provided time for the teachers to learn and work on the new document. At the same time, it was recognized that the internet infrastructure of the school was weak, and a significant upgrade was required. In providing this upgrade all the teachers started to use the internet to develop their teaching and learning skills.

• Technology Enhanced Leaning was being introduced and text-books were seen as being out of date in 21st century classrooms

• The next major breakthrough was to change from using cartoon based text-books to Schemes of Work with real life examples of learning in the real world. Schemes of Work meant that teachers had to understand the concepts underpinning the national curriculum subjects that were teaching and not to rely on the text-book answers. Teachers had a write creative lessons based on the wealth of modern information based on the internet. The teachers had to understand the subjects they were teaching at the level at which the students were capable of successfully learning. This was very hard for the teachers to realise that a 15year old boy was thinking like a five-year old child or a twelve-year old girl was thinking like a 13 month old baby.

• The current challenge we are facing is that the Thai teachers are taught to teach and to talk all the time. This classical style of Thai teaching is old fashioned in a world of technology enhanced learning, he modern teacher is a learner. The modern teacher creates learning opportunities for students to explore. In the new classroom the teacher does not know what the students want to learn, in the modern classroom the teacher learns what the children are doing and is the facilitating guide to promote the student’s curiosity.

• This video is the ultimate example of the modern teacher who is not really a teacher, but rather she is a learner using all the examples of the real world with internet enabled computers, electronic tablets, and blue tooth linked televisions to create exciting learning opportunities where children collaborate and talk to each other about their new learning without the teacher’s interference. They record their work on tablets and computers and they share their new learning with the whole class.

• As a famous philosopher Bruno Bettleheim once wrote, ‘Love is not enough. The students now are too busy, too excited and too curious to fall asleep.’ This is education, this is the new Reformation of Petchaburi Panyanukul school.