5.4. Inclusive Activities and Approaches

Individuals with SEND may require adapted and engaging methods to support them in participating and feeling confident to contribute within school based anti-bullying initiatives. Developing engaging activities and workshops that are supportive in eliciting opinions are vital. Rather than depending upon groups settings or meetings with involved pupils, the use of inclusive elicitation techniques allows the teacher to incorporate multiple modalities which may be more accessible to CYP with SEND with limited language or use alternative ways of communicating.

A range of examples of activity-based approaches to supporting engagement will be discussed below.

Elicitation techniques, sometimes referred to as participatory tools or methods (Clark, 2005; Goodall, 2018), can be described as tasks that encourage participating pupils to discuss their ideas or contribute their perspectives (Johnson and Weller, 2002). These usually comprise activity based scaffolds or physical resources which encourage engagement. They can include visual, verbal or written material or objects as useful alternatives to direct questioning or instructions (Barton, 2015). 

Their use has the potential advantage of supporting transparency, pupil comfortable and authentic communication. It may also give pupils a greater voice in order to equalize potential power imbalances between the teacher and pupils (Barton, 2015). In addition, they can support pupils confidence, easy and mitigate anxiety or fear. 

Examples of elicitation approaches include, for example, activity-based tasks, photo elicitation/photovoice activities, drawing activities, ranking activities, collage making and walking interviews. Examples will be outlined below: 

Activity oriented interviews: A study by Winstone et al., (2014) explored the perspectives of young autistic people about their sense of self-identity through interviews that included a number of concrete and engaging activities. Two weeks prior to the interviews, students engaged in drawing tasks exploring self-identity during an Art class (for example, Figure 3).  Students were given a small mirror and asked to describe how they felt and what they thought other people would see; students were also invited to discuss the artwork they had produced. Thus, through the use of activity-oriented interviews, students were able to explore a complex concept from their own point of view and articulate their perspectives in multiple ways. 

Figure 4. A student drawing of what they would like to be in the future (Winstone et al., 2014, p.198).

An alternative approach was used in a study by Goodall (2018) which explored the perspectives of a group of autistic young people regarding their own school. The drawing activities asked students to describe a good teacher and a bad teacher by adding drawings and text to two generic outlines of a figure. Pupils were also invited to design their own school activity through drawing, and some also produced a drawing of themselves in school with added annotations (Figure 5); subsequently, pupils were asked to orally describe each of these works. 

Students also participated in a ‘diamond ranking’ activity (Figure 6) whereby aspects of school life were ranked from most important to least important. Additionally, students took part in a ‘beans and pots’ activity (Figure 7) by placing a personalised polystyrene ball into True, False or Unsure pots in response to a number of statements (Goodall, 2018, 2019, 2020). 

Figure 5. Student drawing from the drawing activity ‘Me at school’ (Goodall, 2019, p.21).

Figure 6. Diamond ranking aspects of school (Goodall, 2019, p.17)

Figure 7. ‘Beans and pots’ activity (Goodall, 2019, p.17).