Teachers Working in Special Schools in Scotland Acting with Practical Wisdom: Supporting Children with Additional Needs in COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

The COVID-19 lockdown has substantially disrupted the established facets of teacher engagement with their students, and, given the significance of this multidimensional interaction, it brings into question what we know as teachers’ identity. The lockdown has offered a dilemmatic context where the processes of teaching and learning and being(s) a teacher are being re-visited and re-negotiated. This paper looks specifically at the perceptions of two teachers of their lockdown experience working within a special education context in Scotland, supporting children with disabilities and/or learning difficulties while at home. The question that this paper addresses is: what is the understanding of these two teachers of their role in a specialised educational context while in COVID-19 lockdown? This paper uses ‘practical wisdom’ (also known as phronêsis) as its theoretical basis, where the focus is on teachers’ judgements at precisely those moments where guidelines and procedures are unclear, and the criteria open to multiple interpretations. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly provided this context. Richard Smith’s interpretation of phronêsis as ‘attentiveness’ are central to this paper. In-depth interviews carried out with teachers are analysed through this theoretical framework and two themes are discussed.

The IAFOR International Conference on Education – Hawaii 2023 Official Conference Proceedings

“…The result supports the importance of supplies in the success of the instruction as it was highlighted during the bond paper drive conducted all over the Philippines to sustain the different learning modules relevant to the use of self-learning modules (Rappler, 2020). The statement of one of the SPED teachers corroborates the findings of Mercieca et al (2021) that SPED teachers created relevant decisions or judgments at precisely those moments where guidelines and procedures are unclear, and the criteria open to multiple interpretations. The result supports Formoso (2019) when the respondents in her research also reported that they were mostly challenged by their lack of knowledge and trainings on the proper conduct of SPED but opposed the shortage of material resources.…”

Special Education in a Remote Setting: Stakeholders’ Stories and More

“…The situation is exacerbated by the fact that low-income families and students have limited access to the technology essential for online learning (Radina & Balakina, 2021). The overarching theme also prompted researchers to look into teachers' ability to provide remote special education (Mercieca et al, 2021;Jurčević and Kudek, 2021). Due to the investigation, teachers found it challenging to handle the basic requirements of online learning.…”