Special Interest Group (SIG)

Hi guys.

Looking to set up an special interest group to help to communicate with people from this course.

Let me first remind you a little about myself. I am currently working full time in schools over the borough. I have 2 years experinace in working in early years. I have worked running playschemes also for the past 5 years in a senior possition. I went to chickenshed theatre to do my diploma in performing arts then on to my foundation degree in inclusive performance. I have also previously worked in retail for 5years.

I have made a new email address, please feel free to email me to spark a convo. earnoldbapp@hotmail.co.uk

i have also created a seperate facebook account to help generate a community of proffesional practise feel free to add me up http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=wizard#!/emily.arnold.73157

I look forward to hearing from you all and hopefully to get some interesting convo started.

Developed Questions

After analizing my original questionaire, i have re-looked at them and changed them.
Im hoping that this will make people look at them differently and create better responces...

1. How do you think we as parents, professionals, adults can help to prevent exposing young children to things they shouldnt be exposed to?

2. What do you think are the key aspects in making a school inclusive?

3. What are your childhood memories?

4. What are the benifits of doing home visits?

5. A lot of children with additional needs are being educated in mainstream schools nowadays. what are your views on this?

6. Analise the impact of mixing children that are classified as 'mainstream' with children who have additional needs?

7. Why is it important to build good reltionships with parents?

8. What are your feelings on using technology as a teaching resource in classrooms?

Reflection on Questions 4a

In reflection to my questions, im very glad that i made the decision to make a questionaire and give it to other professionals that work in schools.
These questions are ones that i raise on a day to day basis with myself and i found it extreamly useful to get back other peoples opinions and try to relate them to my own.
First of all i had to create the questions, now looking back on the responces i got some where short and some were long with lots of depth. I put this down to peoples reactions to the questionaire. either they took the time to fill it out and look carefully at what i was asking or they simply couldnt be bothered to fill it out. Anyhow my view is that any responce, is a good one.
I had the opitunity to give the questions to some students studying childcare and then a team of T.As on a training course. This ment i got a variety of answers from people just starting in their career path to others that have been pursuing this career and have gained great knowledge and experiance.
Much of the good responces i got were along the same lines of how other people thought. This made me realize that maybe my questions were to 'comfortable', they didnt push the barriors of peoples opinions.

The biggest fault i felt i made to my questionaire was not having an introduction to it. i feel that this could have made people look at it and think 'ah another questionaire that i have no desire to fill out and why should i waste my time doing it for someone else'. I should have given reason as to why i would like peoples opinions, how it will help me in my personal profession and possibly help people to express their views that they may not feel they are able to in their environment. Also i may not have got responces that were completly honest. I have definatly learnt in my experiances that sometimes people will just say what they think people want to hear. Their are lots of politics involved in working in schools. I feel that peoples fear of this lead them to masking their opinions.
Even though i got good responces i do feel that i could have made my questions more to the point. First of all i should have thought 'what do i want to get from this'.. then when writting my questions i should have gone back over them to make sure they were clear, understandable for all people, and not closed so that people had to elaborate on them. I also could have kept my questions to one specific area of interest.

By reflecting on this its made me think more carefully about questions i will continue to post and ask other professionals. I hope this will create people to continue to ask other questions.