'Interactive approaches to teaching and learning' by Dr Penny Lacy

 Interactive approaches to teaching and learning 

For my blog this week (which are becoming much more infrequent I know, sorry about that) I am summarising a chapter by the late and sadly missed Dr Penny Lacy from the book:

'Intensive Interaction Theoretical Perspectives' (2011) edited by Dave Hewett, Sage Publications, London. 

There is some belting stuff in it!

According to Penny ‘Interactive approaches to teaching and learning ... developed in the UK in response to the prevailing dominance of behavioural approaches in the 1980’s’. She notes the concern prevalent at the time that skills were being taught that did not lead to an understanding of ‘when, where and how to use those skills’, and the skills could only be reproduced ‘in that one [classroom] context’. 

She then goes on to cover some of the history of the development of ‘interactive approaches’ and how difficulties arose due to the adoption of the National Curriculum and the prevailing ‘target driven agenda’. Lacey identifies interactive approaches as influenced by ‘the processes of education rather than by the products’, and such approaches encouraged teachers to consider the importance of ‘intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards’.

Penny states that: ‘Interactive approaches have their routes in cognitive psychology and a desire to understand the development of such processes as thinking, perceiving, reasoning, judging, problem-solving as well as the development of communication and language’. Within interactive approaches children are viewed ‘as being active in their own learning’ and this active engagement ‘lifts learners from ‘learned responses’ to ‘intelligent behaviours’’.

Interactive approaches also support learners in ‘taking control of their own learning’ allowing learners to ‘gradually understand that their actions are the causes of the effects they can see, hear and feel’. She also points out that in the early stages, ‘3 components of learning appear to be important ... exploration, imitation and repetition’ and these are ‘all part of active learning and enable young children to become increasingly autonomous’.

Penny then looks at some theoretical views of learning and language acquisition, initially pointing the reader to Piaget’s theories of the child ‘developing ideas and concepts through trial and error’. She also points to the work of Vygotsky (he of the Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD) who viewed ‘learning and development to be mutually dependent and interactive’, and that ‘learning needs to be organised and structured by teachers to provide an environment within which children can derive the most benefit’ ... ‘children need an environment ... that is interactive, where people around them talk to them, listen to them and generally encourage all attempts at communication’.

Penny also goes on to look at learning through play (for young children) and how adults need to ‘enhance’ the learning of children without ‘taking over’ i.e. they need to ‘take the lead from the child, rather than being didactic’. However, she acknowledges this kind of active exploration and learning can be very difficult for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD), who may also have multi-sensory impairments (MSI), and severe physical and motor impairments, and thus, in such circumstances adults, ‘may need to take a much more leading role’.

She also points out that for children with PMLD ‘progress is likely to be extremely slow’ and they need ‘... a huge amount of repetition’ for learning to accrue. She then advocates the use of the ‘Routes for Learning’ assessment tool (Welsh Assembly Government, 2006) which provides 43 different behaviours (for communication and cognition development) that can be assessed and suggests strategies for moving children on to each behaviour. 

Finally, Penny points us to Alexander (2006) who defines ‘what makes universal good teaching’, i.e. that teaching is:  well organised and planned; reflective; is based on sound subject knowledge; depends on effective classroom management; requires an understanding of children’s developmental needs; uses exciting and varied approaches; inspires; encourages children to become autonomous learners; facilitates children’s learning; stimulates children’s creativity and imagination.

A qualitative study of the practice related decision making of Intensive Interaction Practitioners

'A qualitative study of the practice related decision making of Intensive Interaction Practitioners' 

by Graham Firth, Megan Glyde & Gemma Denby 
(with thanks also to Emily McGall and Cheryl Campbell)

The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the sometimes conscious and sometimes ‘intuitive’ or unconscious decision making processes of Intensive Interaction practitioners. Through interviewing 13 experienced practitioners (all qualified Intensive Interaction Coordinators), this study set out to shed some useful light on how practitioners make judgements when developing 'a dynamic interactive repertoire' with an individual with severe or profound learning difficulties and/or autism.

The main conclusions drawn from this study (hugely paraphrased for brevity!):

The study found that practitioners co-constructed 'a mutually recognised interactive repertoire' with the people then engaged through Intensive Interaction, but also that 'their understanding and consequent enactment of their own practices' evolved through a cycle of:

1. Some pre-engagement considerations: focusing on aspects of the practitioners’ learning or care ‘agenda’ and expectations, possibly with some proactive environmental preparation (including any required changes to the social or physical environment).

2. Some ‘trial and error’ experiential learning: during each engagement (including at the initiation and disengagement phases), this often being based on the practitioner’s ‘in the moment’ decision making (often intuitively but at times consciously considered) that elects to follow or offer particular variations on any established interactive repertoire. Such ‘in the moment’ decisions being concurrently reflected on ‘in action’ by the practitioner in the light of the person’s perceived feedback responses to their interactive offer, either positively so, or otherwise.

3. Some post-engagement conscious reflection: conducted either individually or collaboratively, sometimes involving informal or more structured reflective processes, and focused on either individual practice or developing a greater understanding of broader and thus more general Intensive Interaction principles, or both.

To cut a quite long (but very interesting) story short for this blog, we go on to conclude that:

'Without a clear process to support reflection on our experiences, we are unlikely to develop our Intensive Interaction practices, both individually and collectively, to their full potential.

‘Anybody only gets that [improved Intensive Interaction practice] through reflection and looking at the videos and chatting about it with your staff; nobody’s an expert, we all need each other’s eyes to support each other’ (Practitioner verbatim text extract: #2, 243-245)

'Services that purport to use Intensive Interaction therefore need to create a supportive and nurturing developmental process within which novice practitioners can learn the skills, principles and knowledge required to practice good quality Intensive Interaction – and they need to do this to effectively and consistently provide the people they care for or support with genuine social inclusion and appropriate developmental opportunities to enhance their social communication and connectedness to maximum degree possible'.

(In some of my following Blogs I will lift various more focused aspects out of the main report to illustrate some more detailed areas of practitioner decision making as it relates to particular issues, or temporal aspects, when using Intensive Interaction).

For a copy of the full (and really very interesting) initial draft report, please email: 

graham.firth@nhs.net