Faculty of Education
School of Educational Studies
Department of Educational Psychology
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
A collaborative research project on the experiences of parents of inclusive education results indicated that parents' strongest motivation for including their child with a disability in a mainstream school, is the desire of normalcy for their children and for their children to be able to deal with the demands of mainstream society as adults. The decision to include a child with a disability is continuous - it needs to be reconsidered repeatedly during the school years of a disabled child. Support to the educators, preparation of the school for inclusion and financial expenses for learning support are implied costs to the parents. The attitude of the school principal is pivotal in the parents' experiences. The attitudes of other parents in the school are supportive.
Contact person: Prof I Eloff.
Since the asset-based approach focus on assets and capacities, empowerment and self-determination, networks and relationships, collaboration and partnerships, ultimately working with what is available towards intrinsic creativity, control and power, it is the better approach for sustainability in programmes to provide vulnerable children with educational opportunities. The challenges faced by schools to include vulnerable children were aligned with effective inclusive education practices for such children, which have been proved sustainable. Asset-based trends were identified to be present in these programmes. The similarities between the asset-based approach and current discourses regarding vulnerable children focusing on the notion of schools as nodes of support and care were elucidated. It was proposed that knowledge of asset-based good practices could be shared with families in school-based sessions, thereby developing the capacity of schools, families and communities to cope more effectively with this part of educational transformation.
Contact person: Dr L Ebersöhn.
The complexity of assessing the learning outcomes of learners with a disability is considerable. It is necessary to accommodate the specific disability by means of adaptive acts or measures, to make the information and the question of each assessment item equally accessible to learners contending with the disability for which the accommodation is intended, as to learners without that disability. Developing the acommodations concerns issues such as the validity of the exercise itself, the reliability of the results, and deep considerations of equity and quality, also in respect of those learners who experience no barriers – or other barriers – to their learning. A valuable opportunity arose to follow up research on accommodations in the assessment of a relevant group of learners in Grade 3 who have sensory, physical and learning disabilities. Not only were question types and formats refined, but new techniques could also be tested. Clear progress has been made that can feed into assessment at national level.
Contact person: Prof AC Bouwer.
New findings suggest differential intellectual impairment associated with child abuse, with a sparing of visual non-verbal functions. The depressed verbal and elevated non-verbal IQ results provided support for the plasticity of intelligence, with the interpretation being that brain functions are reorganised with stress and that various memory functions are selectively either depressed or activated. These findings imply that the scholastic functioning of abused children might be significantly impaired, often resulting in special school placement. Teachers and practitioners therefore need to rethink assessment practices that might lead to discrimination by proxy, implicating improper school placement and consequent poor occupational preparation as significant causes for continuance of the cycle of child abuse.
Contact person: Mr CS du Preez.
Research was conducted on school-based family counselling in South Africa through questionnaires and interviews to establish how personnel and parents experience family counselling provided by the school. The main findings were presented to educators and parents separately.
The educators regard the group meetings with parents as very effective, although they do not occur regularly, due to limited capacity. They suggest that managerial responsibilities should be re-distributed to free the educational psychologists for their counselling duties. According to them the personal contact with the parents, the opportunity to provide practical advice to assist parents, the opportunity for parents to network with other parents and the possibility of forming support groups were also valuable.
The parents exerience the group-based guidance counselling sessions as very effective. The access to a variety of professional services in one location is regarded as a great privilege and an advantage of the service model implemented by the school. Parents find great value in the contact with other parents. The focus on group support does however marginalise families who have children with rare disorders. A need was expressed for continuous support by the school, more regular feedback on their children, as well as the need for even more networking opportunities and support groups.
Contact person: Ms C Lubbe.
Various transdisciplinary research projects, attempting to merge biomedical research and educational enquiry in order to shed light on learning behaviour, is conducted in collaboration with colleagues from the Faculty of Health Sciences. Research findings established a link between high levels of unconjugated bilirubin and depressed verbal memory, as well as problems in activation and arousal among learners with a medical history of post-natal jaundice. Related findings also suggested a link between high levels of unconjugated bilirubin and Gerstmann’s syndrome. Since unconjugated bilirubin affects the formation of astrocytes, as well the basal ganglia, the hippocampus, the thalamus and central parts of the cerebellum, such impairment might be associated with developmental delay in the areas of numerical reasoning, handwriting, and spatial orientation, symptoms associated with Gerstmann’s syndrome.
Contact person: Prof H Naudé.
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