Briefing Paper for Trainee Teachers
Of
Citizenship Education
Citizenship Education and Pupils
with Learning Difficulties
Produced by citizED
(a project of the Teacher Training Agency)
AUTUMN 2004
More information about the series of
Briefing Papers for Trainee Teachers can
be found at www.citized.info
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
Citizenship Education and Pupils with Learning Difficulties
pg Contents
1 Key issues and useful links
2 Differentiation in the classroom
3 Citizenship in the school community
4 Citizenship in the community
Key Issues
Citizenship teachers share the general responsibility of all teachers to understand and
implement the principles of inclusive practice. There are a number of general observations to
make about this area though, before looking at specific strategies for classroom and community
activities.
Key Issue 1: Learning from SEN colleagues
Aspects of Citizenship education are very closely aligned with established practice in special
schools and there is much we can learn from special education colleagues about good inclusive
practice. Fergusson and Lawson (2003: Ch.4) advise teachers of pupils with special educational
needs that “those who have worked in the citizenship field advocate principles that already hold
a high profile within the world of severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties.” These
are explored under three broad headings: (i) developing a meaningful sense of community, (ii)
developing a pedagogy that is active and child-centred, and (iii) developing structured
opportunities for participation. These themes are developed in this briefing paper.
Key Issue 2: The PSHE link
In KS1&2 Citizenship forms part of a broader programme for Personal, Social and Health
Education. This integrated approach reflects the principle that children find it easier to make
sense of some of the more complex areas of Citizenship knowledge and understanding when
they are embedded in activities that build on their own life experiences. In this sense,
developing skills and understanding for personal awareness (in the private arena) precedes the
awareness of the more general issues concerning citizenship (in the public arena). It is
important to remember that the KS3 division between PSHE and Citizenship is premised on
assumptions about what has been achieved in KS1&2. In planning for 11-16 year olds with
special needs it may be appropriate to retain explicit links with PSHE goals and to draw on the
KS1 and 2 PSHE and Citizenship guidance.
Key Issue 3: Differentiation
Differentiation is a term often used to describe the process teachers go through to make
lessons accessible for pupils with learning difficulties. In fact differentiation lies at the heart of
effective teaching and learning. Whether classes are organised by ability or not, all teachers
must understand how to match work to the capabilities of individuals or groups in order to
extend their learning. Differentiation is not simply planning more class work or different
homework, it starts with a thorough understanding of the concepts to be taught and informs
planning from the outset. Understanding how to do this should be at the core of evaluating and
developing your own practice. (see page 2)
Key Issue 4: Information
You will not be expected to become an expert in all learning difficulties, but all staff are
expected to know how to access the information required to do their job effectively. Key sources
of information in mainstream schools include:
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
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The Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) who will be able to give you advice
about specific types of learning difficulty and specific pupils.
Individual Education Plans (IEP) which contain specific information on a pupil’s learning
difficulties and targets.
Assessment records that will indicate prior attainment for pupils in your classes.
Useful links
www.qca.org.uk
 Planning, Teaching and Assessing the Curriculum for Pupils with Learning Difficulties:
 General Guidelines
 Developing Skills
 Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship
www.nc.uk.net
 Inclusion Statement explaining 3 principles:
 Setting suitable learning challenges
 Responding to diverse learning needs
 Overcoming potential barriers
www.citizen.org.uk
 The education pages include a SEN section with links and free teaching resources.
Fergusson, A and Lawson, H (2003) Access to Citizenship: Curriculum planning and practical
activities for pupils with learning difficulties London: David Fulton
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
Differentiation in the classroom
This section provides suggestions for practical approaches to try out. You may identify others
from your own observations of classroom practice – this is one area where observing teachers
from a variety of subject areas is likely to reveal a wide variety of strategies.
(1) Differentiation by content / resources
All pupils may work towards answering the same question, or work within the same project
theme, but with a variety of resources. The teacher may decide to provide everyone in the class
with all resources, or direct specific resources to specific pupils. For example, a project on a
local planning issue may include some groups working with photographic evidence, some using
maps, some interpreting statistics and others using newspapers and other written reports.
(2) Differentiation by activities / task
Here all pupils might have the same resources to use, but will be working on different questions
or tasks. For example, the same local planning project might be differentiated by asking one
group of pupils to describe key features, another to outline different perspectives of different
groups, and another to evaluate proposals against established criteria.
(3) Differentiation by organisation
(a) Work groups On some occasions the teacher will want pupils to work in mixed ability
groups so the most able can help the least able to access a group task. On other occasions, the
teacher may decide that ability groups are more appropriate so that pupils are all likely to be
working at a similar level to their peers. This helps to target resources, activities and support.
(b) Paired work McNamara and Moreton (1997) identify paired work as distinctive from other
grouping strategies because the relationship can be set up to explicitly focus on peer tutoring in
which pupils review and assess together, and help each other to target set.
(c) Whole class organisation Using the furniture to establish different patterns and groupings
can facilitate different types of discussion – leading to differentiation in learning. This can
include groups reporting back to others through ‘market-place’ activities, or expert groups regrouping to form new groups in ‘jig-saw’ activities, or working in three’s with paired conversation
and an appointed observer. Used deliberately, with a clear rationale, these can be powerful
strategies for meeting the needs of all pupils in class.
(4) Differentiation by support
In some lessons you may plan to spend additional time with pupils who may experience
difficulties, or to extend those who may need pushing to reach higher levels. You may also have
the help of a teaching and learning assistant.
(5) Differentiation by gradation / extension
Gradation implies that all pupils will work with the same resources, but questioning will become
more difficult as the lesson continues. A more sophisticated version may require all pupils to
start the lesson with a common activity, to be followed by a range of ‘extension’ work to move
pupils on at a different pace or level.
(6) Differentiation by response / outcome
In Citizenship where there is no tiered GCSE, pupils get used to working on open ended
questions and producing an individual response that can be levelled. Careful planning may help
you set common tasks with common resources, but it is likely that teaching (as opposed to
assessment) will also draw on one of the previous strategies.
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
It is important to remember that a single lesson may include any number of these activities and
strategies. Also the balance between different strategies should be influenced by the precise
nature of the learning difficulties pupils have in your class.
Select any of the activities in the other briefing sheets in this series and think about how you
could develop the classroom activities in classes with pupils of mixed ability. You could work on
classes you are teaching or imagine the following pupils with specific learning difficulties:
(a) Adrian has Attention Deficit Disorder and can be disruptive during class.
(b) Claire has literacy problems, is a poor reader, and struggles to write legibly.
(c) Narinda has Asperger’s and finds it difficult to work in groups.
(d) Hassan has Down Syndrome and has difficulty formulating complete sentences and
problems with his short term memory.
Each of these specific learning difficulties might require some research. You should aim to
create an inclusive teaching plan and justify your differentiation strategy.
Useful resources:
McNamara and Moreton (1997)
David Fulton
Understanding Differentiation: A Teachers’ Guide London:
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
Citizenship in the school community
Thinking about differentiation requires teachers to consider the balance between individual
pupils’ needs and whole class planning. It requires us to think about the nature and purposes of
the relationships within a classroom and to maximise them for learning.
Similarly Citizenship requires us to think about the ways in which we use the whole school
community as a resource for inclusive teaching. For many pupils with learning difficulties the
school community will provide a relatively safe community in which to learn about citizenship
concepts and to develop their skills.
Thinking about power
One special school used the school itself as the starting point for a unit of work on power. Pupils
started by undertaking a project on themselves, their friends and families and who had the
power to make decisions within these groups. Then they were sent round the school to
photograph adults who worked in the school and returned to sort the images into order, in
relation to individual’s power in the school. They then discussed the nature of the power each
person had and the relations between them, before inviting some staff members to be
interviewed.
A series of visits to the local community followed, to discover some of the services provided by
the local council and the people responsible for running them, from sport centre managers to
councillors. Taking a longer time to approach a single concept, revisiting it in different contexts
and building on personal knowledge were all deliberately planned features of this project, to
ensure it was accessible for a range of pupils with moderate learning difficulties.
How else could this approach be developed in your school? What other Citizenship concepts or
elements of knowledge could be planned with this model?
Thinking about change
Another project to get pupils involved in thinking about the school as a community centres
around establishing how things get changed within the school. This project might follow on from
the previous one, in which powerful people in the school are identified. Pupils are asked to
photograph aspects of the school they think are good and aspects they think are problematic,
dangerous or just not very nice. Pupils pool their images and discuss what they like about some
areas and what concerns them about others.
Having decided which areas are of most concern to them, pupils need to imagine what they
could be like in the future. How could they be improved? What are the implications of the
changes they would like to see – costs, resources, time etc?
This kind of project can be developed through creating questionnaires to find out what other
people think of the proposals before finalising a plan and then devising a plan of action to try to
achieve it.
What are the practical obstacles that might hinder such a project? What measures could you
take to minimise any risks?
What would the learning outcomes be of such a project? How would you review this project for
pupils with learning difficulties? Pupils who were Gifted and Talented?
Consulting young people
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
Many schools make decisions without consulting pupils and this means opportunities are lost for
these kinds of enquiry based projects. It is important to see them as part of the strategy schools
should be implementing on consulting young people, and for many pupils with learning
difficulties, such activities are important to enable them to participate in consultation seriously.
Structured activities and time to think and formulate ideas about issues are important to enable
everyone to voice a valid opinion.
School and class councils
These can also be important vehicles for inclusion and many special schools have student
councils that take an active part in the life of the school and meet regularly with other members
of the local community – other school council members, local government and service
providers. One school has developed a system of school council working groups which provide
a broad range of pupils with opportunities to get involved in areas of interest to them from toilet
re-design, fund-raising, curriculum consultation, sports events etc. Even if not all pupils are
involved, school councils provide an immediate experience of democracy at election times.
Similarly developing class councils is also important to provide everyone with experience of
‘representative’ democracy.
Useful resources:
Working Together: Giving children and young people a say (DfES 0134/2004). Available in the
teachers’ section at : www.wiredforhealth.gov.uk
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
Citizenship in the community
One of the themes that emerge from the earlier list of strategies for differentiation is that many
of them require the teacher to plan for active, group-based learning. Adopting group work
strategies not only helps with differentiation, but also helps to develop skills of participation and
communication within Citizenship classes. Building a skills-based approach in which
participation drives the project may well help some pupils achieve more than basing work mainly
in covering knowledge and understanding.
Many special schools have demonstrated that the active dimension to Citizenship is in many
ways the most accessible aspect of the subject.
Example 1 School linking
This can be a powerful way to help pupils with SEN build relationships and Citizenship
experiences. For example, one school has matched pupils with moderate learning difficulties to
KS1 readers in a local primary school to act as reading buddies. This provides help to the KS1
teacher and enables the secondary school pupils to experience responsibility within a real
project.
Example 2 Eco-schools
Many special schools work with environmental schemes which enable pupils to engage with a
wide variety of activities. School based programmes can provide a forum for pupils to identify
problems, plan a programme of activities and carry it out and review it. The Eco-schools
approach enables pupils to get recognition for their work. Such projects also provide
opportunities to work with groups outside the school such as Groundwork or other local
organisations. For more information on the scheme and links to environmental groups visit:
www.eco-schools.org.uk
Assisted participation
Although many pupils with learning difficulties will find active and participative work accessible,
this is obviously not an unproblematic area. First, some pupils with severe learning difficulties
will be unable to work independently and so some of the forms of participation envisaged by
Hart, in his ladder of participation, may not be accessible. Second, some of the examples above
may seem to be only vaguely related to the Citizenship curriculum. The link between
participation and developing knowledge and understanding about Citizenship is difficult to
discern.
Youth initiated shared decision making
Youth initiated and directed
Adult initiated shared decision making
Youth consulted and informed
Youth assigned but informed
Non participation:
SEN participation:
Tokenism
Join in with peers
Decoration
Show a positive interest in activity
Manipulation
Develop sense of belonging to group
Adapted from Roger Hart (1997) Children’s Participation: From tokenism to citizenship UNICEF
Student Briefing Paper – CE with SEN Pupils
Fergusson and Lawson (see page 1) observe that some pupils will require such high levels of
direction and support that their participation may seem superficial. However, they argue that
such pupils can nevertheless be helped to build up their ‘action competence’, that is an
increasing awareness of their role and the skills required to be an active citizen. For some
pupils, the ladder diagram above may need to be extended (e.g. with the right hand steps) to
illustrate that participation can be demonstrated by taking an active interest in events, rather
than being passive, and developing a positive sense of belonging, rather than a negative one.
Ultimately they argue, as with all the aspects discussed so far, that teachers must keep a broad
view of the nature of ‘participation’ and develop activities that are relevant to the pupils they are
teaching – a pupil’s progress is relative to prior achievement and our teaching must recognise
this.
The role of reflection
There is a danger in all active citizenship projects that pupils remain focused on the activity, at
the expense of thinking about their learning. Not only is reflection on participation a curriculum
requirement, it is the vital step to enable pupils to understand their learning and the connections
between the current activity and their previous learning. It is important to think about ways in
which this reflection can be built in to the activity in an accessible way.
For each of the examples above, describe a reflection and evaluation strategy the teacher could
implement that would be accessible to all pupils.