Meeting Learners Needs. A Case Study of SEND in the Modern Language Classroom

Case Study from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics - Common Didactics, Educational Objectives, Methods, grade: 68, University of Birmingham, course: PGDipEd Secondary (QTS) French, language: English, abstract: All teachers face the challenge of making sure every pupil has the same access to education by adapting their teaching to suit different needs, known as inclusion. Kyriacou defines inclusive teaching as organising teaching and learning to "cater for pupils with a broad range of abilities and needs". Gedge refers specifically to pupils with a special educational need or disability (SEND) when considering inclusion and, although the focus of this study is SEND, it is important to note that inclusion refers to all pupils. As Holmes said: "no learner is the same as any other". Inclusion is not the same as differentiation, which refers to the methods employed by a teacher to make the learning accessible to all (Kyriacou, 2014), although this term is still significant in relation to making teaching inclusive. This study aimed to find out how inclusion works in practice. I focused on Modern Language (ML) teaching and carried out a case study of two Year nine pupils with Aspergers Syndrome, a condition within the wider range of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), in an 11-19 mixed comprehensive. I looked at how changes to teaching and the classroom environment affected their learning over six one-hour lessons. I will consider views from a range of literature on the subject and use several methods of data collection to analyse the results and conclude whether the teaching had an impact. I will then explore these findings in relation to my future practice.