Ben Simmons | Bath Spa University (original) (raw)

Books by Ben Simmons

Papers by Ben Simmons

This paper reports on a study of parental involvement in children's mathematics learning in the c... more This paper reports on a study of parental involvement in children's mathematics learning in the context of a series of workshops carried out in four primary schools in the United Kingdom. Previous research suggests that, while there are high correlations between parental involvement and positive student outcomes, it can be difficult to raise student achievement via parental involvement interventions. We suggest that part of the reason for this, at least in relation to mathematics, is that parents experience considerable difficulties in negotiating school-centered definitions of and approaches to mathematics. We employed a design and analytic approach informed by Derridean concepts including decentering and différance. We encouraged parents to work with their children to " find the math " in everyday life and activity. A significant component of the discussion in each school involved sustained, critical reflection about the meaning of " mathematics " and about parents' interpretations of parental involvement in children's education. We made sense of parents' discussions during the workshop by offering an account whereby parents grappled with mathematics as a socially constructed domain, dominated by school-centered ideology. As parents became more confident in their own analysis of the mathematics in everyday family life, they developed new strategies for sharing this mathematical thinking and awareness with their children. Implications for school parental engagement strategies are discussed.

Disability & Society, 2008

PMLD Link 26 (3) pp. 25-27

In this paper we show how developmental definitions of ‘PMLD’ in the academic literature can redu... more In this paper we show how developmental definitions of ‘PMLD’ in the academic literature can reduce children with PMLD to the status of ‘non-persons’. We highlight some of the innovative dimensions of our work which challenge this status quo. These include the application of new theory and research methodology, and our studies of the social interaction of children with PMLD. We argue that these aspects of our research help reinstate the value of children with PMLD in the academic literature and arguably have important practice implications. However, we conclude that much more work is needed in our fight against the exclusion and degradation that some children with PMLD face.

Child Care in Practice, 21 (1), pp. 50-66, 2015

Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are said to experience severe co... more Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are said to experience severe congenital impairments to consciousness and cognition stemming from neurological damage. Such children are understood as operating at the pre-verbal stages of development, and research in the field typically draws conceptual resources from psychology to devise educational interventions and assessment tools. Criticism has been levelled at studies which treat children with PMLD as objects of research rather than subjects to be consulted. Proponents of the latter view have attempted to redress the situation by exploring how personal experiences can be gleaned through adapted qualitative methods. Debate about methodology in the PMLD field tends to coalesce around these individualist polemics: children with PMLD are either positioned as incompetent and lacking voice; or researchers are positioned as lacking the appropriate tools to gain access to such voice.
This paper offers an alternative position to the individualism of post-positivist/constructivist approaches, identifying the need for a critical and participatory approach which sees knowledge about children with PMLD as situated and co-constructed through regular and longitudinal interaction between the researcher, children with PMLD, and significant others. Context to this argument is provided by exploring the application of this approach to an inclusive education research project for a child with PMLD.

Smith, C. (Ed.) Proceedings of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics 33(2) June 2013

This paper presents the content and preliminary findings of the Everyday Maths project workshops ... more This paper presents the content and preliminary findings of the Everyday Maths project workshops for parents. Research suggests that support from parents and/or carers can have a significant impact on children’s mathematics learning. While parents are motivated to help their children learn, they often have little confidence engaging with mathematics as presented in the school curriculum. The Everyday Maths workshops were designed to help parents reflect upon and find the mathematics in their everyday lives, and support parents in developing conversations with their children around everyday mathematics. Workshops were run once a month in four primary schools in the Southwest of England, from November 2013 to February 2014. Preliminary findings suggest that through the workshops some parents were afforded opportunities to develop a ‘mathematical lens’ which led them to identify the mathematical reasoning underpinning decisions and actions in everyday life. This inspired parents to initiate conversations with their children about mathematics and construct activities which engaged children in mathematical thinking.

Paper given at the European Conference of Educational Research, University of Porto, Portugal, 04.09.2014, Sep 4, 2014

This paper presents the findings of the Everyday Maths project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation... more This paper presents the findings of the Everyday Maths project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation (UK). The aim of the project was to develop and pilot a series of maths workshops which allowed parents to (i) discover their potentially tacit and taken-for-granted mathematical skills and knowledge, and (ii) explore creative ways for parents to share such skills and knowledge with their children, with the view of enriching mathematical dialogue at home. Unexpectedly, some parents who participated in the project’s workshops engaged in sustained, critical reflection about the very “meaning” of mathematics itself (e.g. by reimaging mathematics as being embodied, sensual, discursive and productive). This had implications for how parents felt they should talk to their children about mathematics. In this paper we illuminate parents changing understanding of “mathematics” by drawing Jacques Derrida’s post-structuralist deconstruction. This approach, we argue, helps make parents’ mathematical reflections intelligible and allow us to theorise why and how parents refined mathematics in the way they did.

This project focuses on parents’ funds of knowledge about how they use mathematics in informal, p... more This project focuses on parents’ funds of knowledge about how they use mathematics in informal, practical ways (for example in the home economy, in their work, and in planning activities), and how these funds of knowledge can be used to support children's mathematical development. Research suggests that there are close connections between children's mathematics learning, their economic literacy, and the support that they receive from parents and/or carers. We see this as an opportunity to take an innovative approach to school-home partnerships: developing the means to empower parents to make use of the everyday mathematics that they know and understand to support their children's learning. In this paper we report our project to investigate parents' beliefs and feelings about their own knowledge and understanding of mathematics, and their current perceptions of their role in their children's mathematics learning. This investigation informs a series of workshops designed to help parents find ways to support their children's mathematics learning, drawing on parents’ social and cultural funds of knowledge.

Author: Dr. Ben Simmons Profound and multiple learning difficulties, or “PMLD”, is a label given... more Author: Dr. Ben Simmons

Profound and multiple learning difficulties, or “PMLD”, is a label given to children in the United Kingdom who are said to be affected by the severest of impairments to consciousness and cognition stemming from neuro-developmental disorders. These impairments are deemed to be so extensive that children with PMLD are described as lacking in explicit awareness of themselves, others, and the surrounding world. The severity of such impairments typically precludes children with PMLD from participating in mainstream education. Instead, best educational practice is said to consist of segregated and controlled environments with intense, one-to-one input from members of staff trained in specialist intervention methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to present a project that broke away from conventional (psychological) theory, (positivist) research methodologies, and (special) educational practices found in the PMLD field in order to develop new understandings and experiences of children with PMLD. The project explored the opportunities for engagement that non-traditional (i.e. “inclusive”) learning environments present for children with PMLD, and the kind of growth and learning that can emerge in relation to such environments. Exploration of such engagement was conducted through the application of an interpretivist-participatory methodology that was sensitive to idiosyncratic forms of experience and comportment. A critical phenomenological approach (Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1908-1961) was utilized to analyze differences in experiences and comportment in relation to different learning environments. What becomes apparent through the juxtaposition of alternative theoretical, methodological and contextual approaches is that children with PMLD engage with and experience their environments in ways more complex than existing conceptual frameworks capture.

This paper was presented at the Nordic Network on Disability Research (NNDR) 11th Annual Conference, Reykjavík, Iceland (28.05.2011).

The work presented is based on Ben’s doctoral thesis of the same title (University of Exeter 2010: supervised by Dr. Phil Bayliss (Exeter), Dr. Debbie Watson (Bristol), and examined by Prof. Dan Goodley (MMU) and Dr. Deborah Osberg (Exeter)).

The paper includes draft material written for the forthcoming book:

Simmons, B.R. and Watson, D. L. (in preparation – 2013) {working title} The "PMLD ambiguity": Resisting objectification and articulating the life-worlds of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties, London: Karnac Books

In this paper we examine how positive risk taking for or by people with learning disabilities is ... more In this paper we examine how positive risk taking for or by people with learning disabilities is talked about, conceptualised and enacted. We identify tensions and contradictions in positive risk taking discourses which we suggest is unhelpful in terms of clarifying for educational practitioners how positive risk taking might be implemented. We suggest that a conceptual framework that incorporates creativity and resilience might be helpful in terms of linking talk to practice. We then use this conceptual framework to offer two examples from special and inclusive education (Intensive Interaction and Learning Without Limits) that illustrate how positive risk taking can be found in education practices. We conclude by arguing that conceptual frameworks such as the one proposed, when linked to pedagogical tools that emphasise professional judgement, offer one way to problematise and challenge current risk averse practices in education.

The tensions between the competing discourses of the medical and the social models of disability ... more The tensions between the competing discourses of the medical and the social models of disability have traditionally provided a platform for discussion and research in the fields of disability studies and special needs education. Over the last thirty years, a wealth of literature has consolidated the debate and produced particular knowledge of impairment and disability. In this paper we argue that by privileging notions of “deficit” within these medical or social model perspectives the richness of the lived experience of people with impairments is denied. The individual becomes lost within a framework of medical symptoms or social inequalities. This paper considers alternative approaches which reveal a fuller picture of the lives of people with impairments. The authors conducted two separate empirical studies, one employing a Deleuzoguattarian perspective, the other a Bourdieusian perspective. In this paper we illustrate how these theories of practice can reveal situated understandings of the individual with impairments and his/her daily life. By embracing new understandings and different theoretical perspectives, we show how new knowledge can emerge to illuminate the fluid and ever-changing notions of “disability”, “inclusion” and “exclusion”, which form elements of the individual lived experience of the research participants.

Published: 2008 in Disability & Society, 23 (7), pp. 733-745

This paper presents an interpretivist, qualitative research project which intended to illuminate ... more This paper presents an interpretivist, qualitative research project which intended to illuminate issues related to supporting ‘inclusion’ of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties in a special school for children with severe learning difficulties in the Southwest of England. The research found that, in spite of its reputation, the school struggled significantly to provide an appropriate learning experience for children with PMLD. The paper discusses the need for better staff training to improve current knowledge and skills and concludes by calling for a shift away from the view that special schools are always the best environment for children with PMLD.

Published: 2007 in British Journal of Special Education, 31 (4), pp. 19-24

Website Module by Ben Simmons

Healthtalkonline.org, Apr 2013

Book Reviews by Ben Simmons

This book critically discusses the inclusive education movement. It calls into question the meani... more This book critically discusses the inclusive education movement. It calls into question the meaning of 'inclusion' itself by adopting an international perspective. This is not the first book to adopt such a perspective. However, what sets this book apart from the rest is its balanced examination of inclusive education in both the developed countries of the North (consisting largely of the former colonial powers) and the developing countries of the South (typically, the former colonies). At the heart of such examination is a sustained analysis of the complex and competing concepts of inclusive education that operate in the North, and the tensions that emerge when such concepts (with related policies and practices) are decontextualised and exported to the South. This leads to a sobering account of the colossal differences in economic and social opportunities in different parts of the world, and how these differences relate to the meaning and purpose of inclusion for different communities.

Conference Presentations by Ben Simmons

Profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) is a term used in the UK education system to r... more Profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) is a term used in the UK education system to refer to children with congenital neurological impairments that are said to result in global developmental delay. Traditionally, children with PMLD have been educated in special schools, and research informed by experimental psychology has aimed to develop intervention strategies and assessment tools to push children with PMLD through the so-called preverbal stages of development. There has been growing criticism of the dominance of psychological lenses in the PMLD field to the extent that they construct children's identities in terms of cognitive traits (or lack of). Furthermore, the post-positivist forms of experimental research have been criticised for overlooking the lived experiences of children with PMLD. To address the situation, this paper aims to develop and examine a phenomenological framework that can guide researchers' reflection about the lived social experiences of children with PMLD. The paper explores literature on the experiences of embodiment and relationality, and investigates how a description of the lived experience of intersubjectivity can provide a framework for making sense of, and legitimising those tacit, pre-reflective intuitions about the sociality of children with PMLD. The paper draws from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and his proponents to develop this framework, which is " tested " through application to participatory fieldwork research data that the author is currently engaged in. The paper concludes with a discussion on the strengths and limitations of this approach.

This paper was presented at the Profound Intellectual Disability Symposium in Masala (Finland) on the 15 th June 2017 and is working paper which is open to critique. Material in this paper will likely be developed and published elsewhere, including a forthcoming monograph: Simmons, B. (in preparation) The experience of being and belonging: a phenomenological account of inclusion for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities, Rotterdamn: Sense Publishers.