Friday, November 3, 2017

Mindlab Applied Practice In Context Week 31

Interdisciplinary Collaboration


The goal I have chosen from my interdisciplinary map is in the area of support services.  The present difficulty with support services is they tend lack a shared “empathetic horizon” and shared language (Thomas Mc Donagh Group, 2013).

Most of the reading for week 31 is around integration within educational contexts.  This blogpost is looking at integration between services. “It seems oxymoronic that literature acknowledges the benefit of interdisciplinary scholarship, advocating that “it likely yields more innovative and consequential results for complex problems than traditional, individual research efforts” (Amey & Brown 30), yet institutionalized traditions within academia continue to stymie interdisciplinary efforts (acrlguest, n.d.).  This quote refers to academic fields but equally applies to educational/social service fields.

The ideal would be an integrative model where the distinctions between subject areas disappear and there is a global approach (Mathison & Freeman, 1997).  Again this refers to academia but can be applied to support services.

The following analysis intends no criticism of individual agencies which all work to their brief nor to the dedicated and passionate professionals who work within them.   

When a child is struggling in the whole of their life, within school it presents as learning and/or behaviour difficulties.  Educators know this is the often the tip of the iceberg and we also know that the within school presentation is the only one we can really influence. 

It is hard to get help but the most disappointing thing is once external help is allocated, it is very narrow in its focus.  So each agency only does one thing.  We often find there are combinations of parenting, social need, mental health, nutrition  etc which we have to address through separate agencies.  For RTLB or Learning Support we are coached in providing positive behaviour management systems which is sometimes frustrating as that is our “bread and butter” and we know there's a much bigger picture to deal with.

Sometimes educators have to make a notification to Oranga Tamariki (ex CYFSs).  It could be for a loving family that is struggling and may need parental support for positive behaviour management (for instance).  The result of the notification (which is mandatory) is one of the parents ends up prosecuted, no further help comes to the family and the family leave the school because they don't trust the school any more.  The child may also be on Learning Support or RTLB, or both.  The school may be liaising closely with the public health nurse.  There may be cultural support and connections in place.  Yet there is a lack of integration beyond what the school itself provides.

The Ministry is beginning to address this problem.  There is talk of a new delivery model with six key elements to support ORRs funded students and featuring a key worker who coordinates services and monitors progress (Ministry of Education, 2017b).  The Ministry is also considering how Communities of Learning may prioritise and allocate support services within the COL (Ministry of Education, 2017a).  These would be steps towards a more integrative model.

For my own short term goal I will aim to avoid teacher disappointment by insisting that all support agencies explain their function and limitations to the teacher they will be working with and at the outset there is a clear agreement about the aims and boundaries of the service. 

REFERENCES

acrlguest. (n.d.). A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration | ACRLog. Retrieved November 3, 2017, from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration/

Mathison, S., & Freeman, M. (1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. Retrieved from https://app.themindlab.com/media/32979/view

Ministry of Education. (2017a, August). Extension of Learning Support Trials. Ministry of Education. Retrieved from chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/https://education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Extension-of-Learning-Support-Pilot.pdf

Ministry of Education. (2017b, October). Expansion of Learning Support Service Delivery model. Ministry of Education.

Thomas Mc Donagh Group. (2013). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA


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