Understanding the differences between home and school

During Phase 3, understanding the physical differences between the school and home reading areas was important, particularly for teachers, as they tried to work out how school strategies might be applied in the home. In 11 of the 15 initial school videos, teachers worked one-to-one with a child in a small separate room, away from the busy classroom. The other four school videos showed the teacher and child in a corner of the classroom. It was notable that these reading areas were plainly decorated and relatively quiet. All teacher and child videos showed them working at a table, with eight pairs sitting face-to-face across the table, six sitting side-by-side at the table and one teacher sitting partially behind a small child, supporting him to stay seated and focus on the task in front of him. In contrast, the five initial home videos showed three children sitting with their parents side-by-side at dining tables, one child sitting with their father on the sofa and one boy sitting at a ‘reading table’ opposite his mother in his bedroom. Handleman and Harris (1980) suggested that it was important to teach skills to children with autism in a range of different environments so that they were better able to generalise their skills across settings; however they also advised that classrooms should be set out more like homes so that children would be more likely to use skills learned at school in their homes too. To replicate features of each setting in the other, it was important for parents and teachers to be able to see how they were each organised. Thus the videos were vital as time and resources did not allow for home and classroom

108 visits. In this study, there was very little evidence to suggest that teachers changed their classroom environments, although some later videos showed more ‘busy’ backgrounds with children’s artwork on walls that had previously been plain. Parents, however, found it particularly useful to see the school videos and how the teacher arranged the workspace and some tried to copy what they saw this. As the mother of the boy with the bedroom reading table explained:

I used to sit with him on the bed but now we do it like he does at school. We have a table and I sit opposite him at the table and I find he reads better; it’s a more structured approach.

Similarly, two other home videos of two siblings, which were taken half-way through the 12-week programme, also showed use of a small ‘reading table’ in the family kitchen which had been put in place following the parents seeing the school videos of classroom practice.

Some parents chose not to copy the school layout but to adapt existing reading times and spaces. Three parents spoke of how their children were more relaxed during, and straight after, bath time, so they chose this as the time for reading (with one boy actually reading in the bath!). In contrast, several other parents mentioned that their children were too relaxed after baths and at bed time (the time they always used to look at books) and so they moved home-school reading to an earlier time in the day, keeping bedtime for listening to stories. Some parents made a distinction between the expectations of the child at the different reading times. During home-school reading time, the expectation was on the child to read, or to participate in some way with the parent (using props, turning pages or doing the activities, for example), whereas bedtime reading was a time for parents to read to the child, ‘listening time’ as one parent couple called it.

The potential for distraction in the home settings was very evident. Three home videos featured a television on in the background and three videos showed children reading with their parents whilst siblings were otherwise engaged with noisy motivating activities nearby. It is perhaps understandable that the home-reading environments were not as plainly furnished or as quiet as the classroom reading environments but teachers saw this as an added level of challenge for the parent. Not only did the parent

109 have to change the child’s routine to incorporate the shared reading, but they were also expecting their child to settle with more environmental distractions than at school. There was limited evidence that some parents managed to reduce distractions over time. Only five families were able to provide two home videos for comparison, with one filmed at the start of the programme and one a much later in the programme, but it was noticeablethat one family had the television on in background in the first video but not in the second; another showed a sibling helping with the reading alongside the parent in the second video, whereas in the first, the sibling was playing noisily in the background. Another set of videos showed that the parent had changed seats with their child so that the child was sitting nearer to a plain wall, reducing space to wander off and limiting access to household distractions.

Some parents mentioned in the interviews (Phase 4) that they found changes to home routines happened gradually as the child began to realise that the parent was using similar techniques and resources as the teacher and therefore became more interested in what the parent was doing, almost lured in by familiarity with the texts, tasks and expectations. Other parents found it helpful to adopt reward strategies, which were being used in school alongside work tasks, to encourage their children to participate. In these cases, the teachers also sent home sticker charts or showed parents how to reward achievements by giving a small piece of chocolate button each time the child matched flash-cards correctly, for example (evident in the school videos for one of the pupils in the study, then subsequently seen in the parent’s video). In these ways, the children learned that doing work tasks with their parent was very similar to doing them at school: i.e. they were comfortable, familiar and rewarding. Scrutiny of the diaries indicated that the parents of at least four children took on reward strategies from school (such as sticker charts or ‘Let’s Make a Deal’7 _{(Bondy and Frost, 2001)), alongside reading} activities, their comments indicating that these were new to them.

7 _{Let’s Make a Deal is a reward system in which the child chooses a reward that they will receive in} exchange for a specified number of tokens. The number of tokens is agreed between child and adult at the start and tokens are earned through good work and/or compliance with a set task or rule.

110

Children’s behaviour and performance in different settings

Through the videos in Phase 3, teachers and parents were given their first insight into how the children behaved and performed in each setting. In some cases, this sharing was important so that parents could understand the level of challenge inherent in the learning objectives set by the teacher. For example, whilst watching the class video of her son with his teacher, one mother exclaimed, ‘Wow! He’s sitting! He’s actually sitting

and looking for a long time!’ At home, this young boy rarely sat with anyone for more

than a minute or two, so it was difficult for his mother to understand how the set reading tasks would be possible. Similarly, a father said, ‘Very impressive!’ on seeing his son read through a reading scheme book with very little distraction. In the father’s home video, his son was seen to be fiddling with pipe-cleaners and getting agitated when his father tried to encourage him to ‘keep going’ through a similar book. One teacher described the home videos as ‘a big eye-opener,’ whilst another expressed her surprise and interest in how different the child was at home:

It was just something that was never said, so it was very helpful actually…with [the child] throwing the books on the floor and just screaming…and I had no idea that she just wasn’t reading at home. And mum said, “Oh, I thought she was doing that at school!” so that was very interesting.

Thus, appreciation of the differences in the two settings helped parents to understand the learning objectives which teachers had set, as well as helping teachers to understand what might be possible in the homes and whether learning objectives for the classroom needed to be adapted for home-school reading. It could be seen in half (six of 12) of the home-school reading diaries that learning objectives for the home were different to those the children were working on in school. This may be explained by the differences in circumstances of the home and school settings and the parents needing to begin at a different stage to that which the teacher was working on with the child in school.

Parent and staff expertise

Appreciation of the differences in expertise of parents and teachers also benefitted the participants of the study. Rudney (2005) describes how a parent’s insight helps the professional to know about the child as an individual and a professional’s insight helps the parent to know about children in general (e.g. how they interact and learn). Both sources of knowledge are important in creating optimum learning opportunities for each

111 child. During the evaluative interviews (Phase 4), all parents and teachers spoke of how the project had helped them get to know the children better through insight into each other’s knowledge and experience and that this helped them to improve their practice in working with the children. Teachers were able to ‘give true professional help by placing their knowledge and skill at the disposal of the children and the parents’ (Rudney, 2005:50) and all 11 parents who were interviewed agreed that teachers had helped them develop their home practice. Comments made by several teachers during the interviews also resonated with this theme. One teacher spoke of working with the parent as ‘like working with another professional’ and another teacher described the parent’s comments and feedback as ‘another set of hands to help me work out what’s

right [for the child]’.