Shaun Brien, a learning specialist at a Victorian secondary school, says many frameworks and tech products within inclusive education appear wonderful but in fact have questionable impact on outcomes for students with additional needs.

There’s huge commercial profits involved too, he adds.

“This all eventuates from the fact that one of the most difficult challenges that teachers face in the inclusion space, is that they often have students in their classroom anywhere from 18 months to multiple years below the achievement level expected in their year level.”

This means that in one class a teacher could have up to five students with additional needs who are all at completely different levels in their learning, he tells EducationHQ. 

“So, this makes it really challenging in terms of their planning, as [those students are] realistically going to need a completely different curriculum or outcome that they’re working towards, and to expect the teachers to be able to explicitly teach those students at the same time as the rest of the cohort is really difficult and a massive burden on their workload.”

Here enters the edtech companies with their slick marketing campaigns and appealing-looking programs that promise a solution, Brien says.

“[They] are incredible at their marketing, they can really sell using individualised specific learning plans they’ll create for each student, and that will be taking them through different levels and testing them along the way – but there’s not a lot of evidence to show the actual results of these platforms and what they’re doing (in terms of improving learning).”

According to Brien, a significant number of programs being used are designed to allow students to simply select answers until they reach the right one, and lack any real method to ensure that cognitive effort is taking place.

This can be a confronting realisation for schools that have invested, Brien suggests.

“Often schools are paying thousands of dollars to use these platforms, and then it becomes a little bit of a sunk cost; you’ve bought in and therefore you must use it because [it’s come at an] expense.”

For parents, this kind of personalised learning scene also looks particularly encouraging, he adds.

Yet engagement is not a brilliant proxy for learning.

“It’s tough when, at the end of the day, say it’s a maths platform and [a] student has been learning algebra, and then you give them a written problem to solve for ‘x’ and if they still can’t solve for ‘x’, then what did they just spend the last six months doing in the platform?” Brien questions.

Shaun Brien says various 'inclusion illusions' are hampering schools' efforts to support students with additional learning needs.

Fidget spinners used as sensory toys in the mainstream classroom are also problematic, proving to be more a distraction than an effective learning aid, the expert flags.

As the team at Shaping Minds have observed, the toys “burst into classrooms with bold claims”, namely to calm anxiety, sharpen focus and lift engagement.

Yet surprisingly, the research on this is murky, especially in the context of classroom teaching.

“Most studies in favour of sensory interventions like fidget spinners were based on weaker measures, like students’ self-reported feedback of the toy’s efficacy.

“In other words, they asked students if it helped rather than measured if it did. Many of the studies also focus on clinical conditions like 1-on-1 and small group settings, not classrooms,” the team warn.

Brien says fidget spinners could be easily replaced with a ball of blue tack that would do the same sensory job minus the distraction factor.

This argument is made in the new book Evidence-based support for children and young people with additional needs, by Caroline Bowen and Pamela Snow with Philippa Brandon, Brien adds.

“They actually point out that fidgets have no evidence base for their effectiveness and [blue tack] would totally do the same thing.

“But instead, we get these wild ranges of fidget toys in schools where they’ve got a box of like a hundred different things from dragons to Rubik’s cubes...

“It’s almost like a fad collection of … who has what, and it becomes more of a distraction to learning rather than a tool for learning.”

Another misguided approach Brien sees playing out is when schools make permanent accommodations rather than temporary adjustments for many students with additional needs.

This risks undermining any long-term progress and may put these students even further behind, he says.

“For example, if a student has fine motor issues, they are provided with dictation or a device forever, rather than being able to put the time and effort into physically writing, which over time should help to improve their functional need.

“Giving a student a dictation or giving them a device sounds really moral and it sounds really good because you’re helping them – but if they have the ability to improve [we need to help them to build up that fine motor movement.”

Over time students become reliant on the props and devices intended to scaffold their learning, Brien says.

“If someone was training for a 5K run and you were their coach and they weren’t a very fast runner, you wouldn’t suggest that they ride a bike instead – you’d put [things] in place to help them get faster.

“Yet we see this all the time with things like headphone use, device use, sometimes one-to-one support, where scaffolds are never removed.

“I think when we scaffold too much for any students, let alone those with additional needs, they become reliant on those scaffolds and then they can’t function independently without it.

“And the purpose of all of our instruction is to eventually (get the student to) move to independent practice.”

Stay tuned for upcoming coverage that shares Brien’s take on how an explicit inclusive lesson should run.