• Question: Do you work in schools for children with special educational needs or just mainstream ones?

    Asked by anon-204628 to Sally, Lucy, James, David, Dan on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: David Chadwick

      David Chadwick answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      I don’t work in schools, I work in a university. But at Kent we have facilities for people with disabilities (like lifts, ramps, doors that open automatically etc, room for wheelchairs in lecture halls etc.) plus we video all our lectures so that those who are hard of hearing can watch them again later.

    • Photo: James Munro

      James Munro answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      Like David, I don’t work in schools except for occasional visits to demonstrate some psychological science. I teach students at university with special educational needs, however 🙂

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      I don’t no. Much like David I work in universities, we make accommodations where possible, where I work (University of Sunderland) we have a good pastoral focus and try hard to support those with complex physical, emotional or mental needs 🙂

    • Photo: Lucy Maddox

      Lucy Maddox answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      Hello! Great question.
      I work with young people from a range of backgrounds – I don’t usually see them in school settings. I work with some children who are in foster care and some children who are living at home, and also young people who are a bit older and who are at university. I used to work on wards for young people with mental health problems so they were staying on the ward while I was meeting with them. Sometimes young people I work with have special educational needs as well as mental health problems or sometimes not. The stuff I help with is less educational needs and more tricky problems to do with big feelings or tricky behaviours.

    • Photo: Sally Tilt

      Sally Tilt answered on 13 Mar 2019:


      I don’t work in a school – as I work in prisons. There are some prisons for school age children however – I used to work in a prison for 15 – 17 year olds. It left me thinking that keeping people in custody at such a young age is a pretty big decision to make – and we really shouldn’t do this except as an absolute last resort.

      Many of the young people in prisons do not have positive views of their education – and so finding alternative ways to engage and inspire them to be interested in learning can be quite tough.

      Maybe we should try an ‘I’m a scientist, get me out of here’ live chat in a prison?!

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