Teaching is an immensely powerful career, we are the only professionals that teach all other professionals (this was a tweet that I saw not too long ago!).
Last month Claire and I attended a lecture at UCL co-hosted by CRAE and The National Autistic Society. The guest lecturer was Professor Roy Richard Grinker from Washington University. He is an anthropologist (a scientist that studies culture) and has a real interest in Autism as his daughter was diagnosed in 1994. This wasn’t the best lecture I had ever been to, but something has really stuck with me. The professor discussed USA statistics on disability in the classroom. What was interesting was that the levels of disability has not changed over the past 10 years, fluctuating at between 12-13%. What has changed, dramatically, is the amount of autism diagnosis, an increase in over 300% across the same time period.
The discussion was then around what this means, and how this can be the case. His argument was that autism is becoming a fairly socially acceptable diagnosis that parents will, to some degree, accept. He used the example of childhood schizophrenia, which had a higher amount of diagnosis and has dramatically reduced. Therefore the amount of children with SEND has not changed, yet the labels that they are being given has.
So this leads me to think of a question that I am asked numerous times a month, is the prevalence of autism increasing? My response to this was by no means scientific, rather based on experience and I would often say that I felt that autism had become a more widely recognised diagnosis, education professionals had more of an awareness, and those that may not have been picked up as needing extra support may now be. What the lecture has thrown up for me, is that is this the case, or has some of the historically more typical disabilities and SEN reduced and autism become more on the radar? I consider dyslexia when I think of this. When I myself was at school, it wasn't anything that I was aware of as being discussed. When my cousins went to school (around 5 years behind me) one of them went for a dyslexia assessment. Now, reflecting back there was definitely a girl that I sat next to who could have benefited from assessment and support, and yet this didn't happen at that time for her. It then became quite a ‘popular’ condition in schools, specialist dyslexia teachers were trained and schools had teams to support the children. Now that I am leading in schools, I see that this has dropped off the radar again and I struggle to find the people to support the children that have signs of dyslexia.
Professor R. Richard Grinkers main point was that disability fits within cultural contexts, and it often shapes the disabilities and diagnosis that we come across. Is this helpful? Does this support good understanding of each individual child’s needs? I will be keeping this in mind over the next phase of my career to see if there are trends and patterns. If anyone has any thoughts on this, get in touch!
Comments
Post a Comment