Roseanna Bourke

Although education is a basic child’s right, and in many countries is protected through legislation, children with disabilities or support needs are not always afforded their right to experience an education at their local school alongside their peers. There is even less evidence that their ‘voices’ are sought or heard when decisions are made for them. This silencing of children in education results in their views being invisible in practice. When making decisions about children’s education and opportunities, an evidence-based model could feasibly address this, if the child’s right to have a say was afforded the same weighting as that of the input from practitioners, and research findings. Evidence-based practice in education typically relies on three forms of evidence: (i) systematic research that has been published or disseminated, (ii) specific practitioner knowledge and experience of children and their needs, and (iii) the children’s and their family’s experience of their own lived lives and capabilities. Combined, these forms of evidence can illuminate the decisions made for an individual child, and forge the pathway for interventions, actions, and solutions that are most likely to ‘work’ for the child, their culture, and their context, all things considered. However, there remains a tension when weighing up the relative status of these forms of evidence, where ‘research’ or ‘expert opinion’ is given more credence than the child’s capabilities: that is, less weighting is given to an individual child’s expression of their circumstance, their context, their ethnicity, and the opportunities afforded to them. The recent global pandemic became a catalyst for listening to children about their learning and education, in part because the ‘shut down periods’ meant classrooms and schools were closed for periods of time. Children had views on what this meant for them and their learning, and for the first time, practitioners did not really know what was in the best interest of the child. A case study is presented to foreground their views and goals for learning during this time. This means that while practitioners’ expertise be afforded a place in decision-making around inclusion or educational options for the child, the child’s own experiences must be included if evidence-based practice is realised. Placed against rights-based practice, it becomes even more critical to give every child their ‘voice’, and to act on their views, as the children are the key informant for their own solutions, and of their own interpretation and expression of the ‘problem’.

This chapter explores the way alternative and innovative assessment practices in higher education support learning beyond course requirements and allow for more inclusive and equitable experiences for students. Unintended consequences of traditional assessments for students include the impact on student wellbeing, increased anxiety, decreased levels of motivation, and an over-reliance on rubrics and marking criteria to “make the grade”; all of which orientates students away from their learning. In this chapter, the relationship between learning and assessment are presented through the experiences of 110 undergraduate and postgraduate students who engaged with a new way to demonstrate their learning. Through creating their own YouTube clips in an area associated with their courses, and then trialling these with peers outside of the course, these students were able to demonstrate their own learning in novel ways, including observing how their peers learn through the YouTube clips. Along with written critiques, these assignments enabled students to self-assess, adjust their self-knowledge, and create meaningful and authentic forms of communicating their knowledge, competencies, and learning. Although predictable traditional assessments remained the preferred forms of assessment for students, they reported longer term benefits from these alternative and innovative approaches. This chapter argues alternative assessment practices that become normalised will do more for the inclusion of all students and their learning in the long term.

Inclusionary practices in schools are no longer focused on attempts to include all learners into a normative, mediocre system of education. Rather, the teachers, researchers and practitioners in th...

"Bonnie K. Nastasi., Stuart N. Hart. and Shereen C. Naser (eds.), International Handbook on Child Rights and School Psychology" published on 14 Feb 2022 by Brill.

Educational psychologists face challenging decisions around ethical dilemmas to uphold the rights of all children. Due to finite government resources for supporting all learners, one of the roles of educational psychologists is to apply for this funding on behalf of schools and children. Tensions can emerge when unintended ethical dilemmas arise through decisions that compromise their professional judgement. This paper presents the findings from an exploratory study around educational psychologists’ understandings and concerns around ethical dilemmas they faced within New Zealand over the past 5 years. The study set out to explore how educational psychologists manage the ethical conflicts and inner contradictions within their work. The findings suggest that such pressures could influence evidence-based practice in subtle ways when in the course of decision making, practitioners experienced some form of ethical drift. There is seldom one correct solution across similar situations. Although these practitioners experienced discomfort in their actions they rationalised their decisions based on external forces such as organisational demands or funding formulas. This illustrates the relational, contextual, organisational and personal influences on how and when ‘ethical drift’ occurs.