Today's learning objective is to have a party: playing research with students in a secondary school special needs unit

Abstract

The use of creative methods has been advocated within disability and childhood research as a means of including voices of inarticulate participants in research, as it can support and supplement the use of conventional language. This paper draws on a research project aimed at designing 'the best school in the world' with five students in a special needs unit of a secondary school in a socially deprived community in England, to suggest the use of playful creative methods in generating and representing data in inclusive education research. Play, as an activity occurring in an actual social reality yet not completely governed by its rules, offers an interesting starting point for researchers interested not only in describing the existing world but also in imagining viable alternatives to it. This paper discusses how using a playful methodology had an impact on power relations and provided an accessible context to foster participants' engagement in reflexive discussions about social norms and values. Creative and playful methodology was also useful in transgressing the primacy of language in educational research, thus opening spaces for other aspects of experience to be included in the analysis.

Thewhileof participation: A systematic review of participatory research involving people with sensory impairments and/or intellectual impairments

“…[8];Dias et al, 2012 [9];Draffan et al, 2016 [10];Erdtman et al 2012. [11];Flood et al, , S., Bennett, 2013 [12];Fudge Schormans, 2014 [13];Garcia-Iriarte et al, 2009. [14];Gates & Waight, 2007 [15];Greenstein, 2014. [16]; Grundy et al, 2005 [17]; Haak et al, 2015.…”

‘Happy and excited’: Perceptions of using digital technology and social media by young people who use augmentative and alternative communication

“…Using narrative techniques to explore the experiences of people with complex communication needs may seem counterintuitive (Booth and Booth, 1996), and other methods were considered. Creative activities (art, photography, dance) have been used successfully to support abstract discussions within concrete contexts (Greenstein, 2013), but the existing physical challenges for operating VOCAs raised concerns that using creative methods may have introduced novel disabling factors. Observation could not have captured the meaning that participants may attribute to their experiences.…”

Group Art Therapy, Aesthetic Experiences of Difference and Belonging

“…As coding progressed I looked beyond the semantic meaning of content to develop "latent or interpretative themes" (Braun &Clarke, 2006, p. 84). This means I have interpreted underlying ideas and theorised on the themes in relation to concepts from both group art therapy (Skaife & Huet, 1998;Waller, 1993), group analysis (Foulkes, 1975(Foulkes, /1986Nitsun, 1996Nitsun, , 2006, feminist critical theory (Butler 2006(Butler /1990Haraway, 1988), and disability studies literature (Clare, 2001;Goodley, 1999Goodley, , 2001Goodley, , 2005Goodley, , 2011Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2012;Greenstein, 2013Greenstein, , 2014Reeve, 2002). I was not only interested in the themes and how they developed across the groups, but also in the differences between them, the themes that were given space in some groups but not addressed in others.…”