Sharing Student Projects

This qualitative research project aimed to discover how EWB of SEN children was promoted and supported through interventions, within mainstream primary schools. EWB, is a complex multi-dimensional aspect of well-being which relates to self-esteem, self-reliance and self-efficacy. For this project, EWB has been defined as crucial for children’s emotional health, happiness and functioning. Over recent years, the UK government has advocated for improving EWB by developing children’s social and emotional skills, to buffer against emotional dysregulation and dysfunction. More specifically increases in numbers of children with SEN attending mainstream primary school, has coincided with a decline in well-being. Educators have identified these children are showing increases in maladaptive behaviours resulting in inattentive outbursts within the classroom. Yet, these psychophysical behaviours are indicators of dysregulation which affect EWB. Therefore, this project aimed to identify how teachers perceived interventions as promoting and supporting SEN children’s EWB.Considering this educational climate, the target population of teachers were selected to provide detailed insights from their experience of delivering interventions in everyday practice. Following liaison with several primary schools, teachers with five or more years mainstream teaching experience were selected from diverse socio-economic regions, across the Northwest. All teachers consented to take part in an online semi-structured interview which consisted of 13 questions related to the three research aims. Semi-structured interviews and a flexible interview style, allowed topical trajectories to be probed to develop insightful lines of inquiry. Data collected from interviews was systematically coded using the analytical process of thematic analysis. Patterns in the data were abductively coded and interpretated using themes from literature and the data with three main themes identified: intervention implementation and delivery, emotional regulation and staff knowledge and experience. Further review of the data enabled three subthemes for each theme to be established.Historically research has shown that universal interventions are crucial for developing children’s emotional and social skills. However, findings from this project have more specifically illustrated that both interventions support the development of SEN children’s higher cognitive (e.g: evaluation) and language skills required for emotional regulation, competence and awareness, key components of EWB. Interestingly, participants observations revealed that targeted interventions when purposively adapted had sustained a greater impact for reducing maladaptive behaviours. Yet the success of both interventions was interdependent on external factors of adoption, cost and fidelity, which influenced the delivery and implementation in practice. Overall, these findings bridge a gap between policy and practice, providing insight into how interventions provide therapeutic and preventive support, to buffer against emotional dysfunction. Therefore this project makes several recommendations, that interventions are purposefully applied to ensure that SEN children can receive consistent and sustained EWB support. To ensure educators make informed implementation and delivery decisions, compulsory government backed-training should be introduced. More specifically, this training should provide SEN specific guidance recommending how interventions could be adapted for diverse SEN children. Additionally, adopting a selection criteria would support teachers to make informed decisions regarding how to effectively deliver interventions. This would ensure that SEN children are accurately identified for a specific intervention and school-based outcomes. Thus, fulfilling wider policy requirements for a child’s needs to be met, continuing to make age-related progress alongside their peers.

This project has implications for educational research, UK educational policy and practice. It provides insight into how interventions can be used purposefully as therapeutic and preventative strategies, to support SEN children’s EWB. The project highlights that SLTs and SENCOs can drive policy change through implementing school-based intervention. Advancing this, the project acknowledges the importance of voicing teacher perspectives that provide crucial insights into SEN specific EWB needs. At the classroom level teachers can be essential agents of change, driving school and policy based decisions to improve EWB. Notably, the success and quality of this depends on teachers feeling secure in their knowledge and skills to purposefully adapt interventions to meet identified socio-emotional needs. Therefore, providing mandatory training on interventions specific to SEN, would develop a collective awareness of how to evaluate the effectiveness of school-based interventions to more accurately target EWB priorities.