Powerful networking in school programs for students with disabilities

The professional literature on students with disabilities suggests that many have poorly developed peer relationships (Aitkin, Buultjens, Clark, Eyre & Pease, 2000). Further, if, as with others categorised as being ‘at risk’, they do have friends, these sometimes seem to be the kinds of friends thought to exert a negative influence on achievement and motivation (Evans & Matthews,1992).

Our interest in networking as a topic that is particularly important to individuals with disabilities and those who support them, developed from research on peer rejection indicating that:

• rejection by one’s peer group can contribute to making school an aversive experience for adolescents thus motivating them to drop-out from school prior to their graduation (Meyer & Henry, 1993);
• positive social support can contribute to buffering a child against the development of various behaviours and personality disorders that might otherwise emerge
• a child who is already vulnerable to some disorder is further stressed if his or her negative peer relationships are not altered for the better (Kupersmidt, Coie & Dodge, 1990).

Our own discussions with teachers and observations of students with disabilities, particularly with those having combinations of sensory and other disabilities, persuades us that many such children are socially isolated and might perhaps be labelled as clinically depressed. These students have virtually no ‘school behaviour’. They are often absent. When they do attend, they are often ignored since they are relatively passive, and seldom participate unless prompted, in interactions with other students. The initiation of peer support networks for students with disabilities by the professionals who support them seems to us to be of critical importance in the schooling enterprise.

Of equal importance to the professional special educator is the need to seek competent support from a resource network for his or her needs in the complex task of educating students with disabilities. Becoming a willing and competent practitioner and ‘networker’ in today’s rapidly evolving ‘information society’ is one of the keys to professional success and survival. It is, in 2008, highly important as a professional to be well informed about the goals, aspirations and work of other agencies that deal with disabilities, and particularly, multiple disability.

This brief paper will introduce and discuss for the professional educator, the rationales on which professional networking is based and provide a model of the networking process as it affects, and is affected by, the use of electronic media. It will attempt to answer the related questions; (a) what is professional networking? and; (b) how are such networks engineered and maintained?

What is professional networking?

The self-proclaimed ‘information society’ is now well entrenched and, in less than a decade and a half, our professional lives have been completely changed. Quite suddenly the world wide web has enabled us to have almost instant, cheap access to a wealth of information that only a short while ago would have been hidden from most of us. The world of the internet has become part of our professional reality. It is sometimes, however, easy to forget that many of the people you correspond with on the network are real people with lives, careers, habits and feelings of their own. For example, things you write or say by email can make you friends or enemies, can increase your professional visibility, help you to become included in your particular professional special interest group or become ostracised by its members. All of us in the human service professions need to take the electronic part of our professional lives seriously and give more thought to the ways we think about and use the new forms of network that have so swiftly become available.

In recent years, our professional environments have undergone dramatic transformation. In 2008, they are invariably characterised by rampant change, interconnected to a greater degree than ever before, and are consequently highly unpredictable. Many of the agencies in which we work are action-orientated organisations that attempt to manage through a combination of administrative autonomy with a high requirement for collaboration.

Within a few years we have started to think of electronic mail as part of a larger ecology of communication media and genres. In 2008, many of us treat our email little differently than we treat our daily reliance on telephone conversations. However, the complex nature and impact of this relatively new form of medium reveals it to offer the potential for access to an array of other supports. These, for example, include archival journals and newsletters, a variety of forms of professional meeting, as an alternative to paper mail, voice mail, chatting in the hallway, lectures and colloquia, job interviews, visits to other research sites, and a variety of related uses, each with its own unique potential.

Forms of network and networking

Whenever people talk to other people, they produce a network of idea sharing, sometimes formal in nature, sometimes informal. The term ‘network’ is believed to have originated in the American Civil War, from comments made about the primitive telephone systems used for communication at that time. The telephones were connected by elaborate systems of criss-crossed wires, hanging like vines from trees. This phenomenon gave rise to the term ‘grapevine’ in connection with message transfer and such expressions as ‘I heard it on the grapevine’ eventually led to an association of the term with inaccuracy, garbled messages and eavesdropping.

In considering networks as systems of social and professional support, at least five dimensions may be noted. These include the following:

• network size, relating to the number of contributors or members involved,
• network density, having to do with the extent to which members know one another (density in this context refers to member interrelatedness) (Lin, 2004)
• boundary density, relating to the portion of a network shared by individuals of a particular category, for example, parents or speech therapists.
• network reciprocity, relating to the degree to which affective and instrumental aid is given and received
• network dimensionality, relating to the number of functions served by the network relationships, for example, the types of help given. Joyce, Veitch & Crossland (2003).

With regard to electronic networks, it is possible for the human service professional to employ several forms of communication via the internet. These might include one-to-one electronic correspondence, participation in network discussion groups, web publishing, and a variety of similar activities. All of these forms of internet interaction might be made to support a wide array of professional activities. As examples of the internet’s potential, professional interactions might involve sharing raw data, debating standards (whether technical or otherwise), collaboration in research projects, seeking literature references, commenting on discussion papers and draft plans, editing journals, planning professional meetings and visits. As the ‘back-drop’ to these myriad activities, is the absolute necessity of building and maintaining professional relationships. Electronic communication is only partially useful to the professional unless it is used as a tool for seeking, cultivating and nurturing connections with other human service professionals.

Informal networking

The reality of political influence in any organisational setting is that it is generally of an informal nature as well as the more visible formal. In organisations, whether professional in orientation or otherwise, all sorts of people talk about all sorts of topics all the time.

It is impossible to successfully estimate the potency of informal networking. If unchecked, it has the capacity to entirely block formal decision-making processes. Through the exertion of personality and skill, much influence is generated, for better or worse, by conversation. Through ‘chat’, it is often decided who gets nominated and gets support and who does not.

How are professional networks engineered?

The following six steps to successful professional networking were proposed by a member of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (Agre, 2002). They are as follows:

1.Know your goals. Try to work out what you intend to do in advance of making initial contact. Some clear goal or purpose statements are essential for those who seek to contact others on whatever topic has been chosen.

2. Identify and select some key people. On whatever topic you focus, shared interest will be defined by the focus of your inquiry. You might, for example, wish to contact other professionals whose work has an affinity to your own. Your impending network should, therefore, consist of those whose work is reasonably familiar to you. As your network becomes stable, you might think of supplementing it with other knowledgeable people.

You might think of this process of gradual network building as analogous to shopping. Your particular interest might be conceived as a giant department store, and you are shopping for professional colleagues. Over time, start to accumulate a list of potential colleagues. Study their work to learn from it. Consider the elements your work that might be common to theirs.

Some professionals approach the task of building a network in the opposite manner. Their initial question is: ‘which network should I join?’. They then worry that they will make the wrong choice. Your professional network if conceived as a form of social network influences your selection of network colleagues in a profound way. if you select those whose membership tends to make the network an unsympathetic one, you will have thwarted your purpose. Thinking of network creation in terms of selecting a network to join is a particularly unconstructive way to proceed. 

Your professional network consists of individuals – those whose work, research and aspirations have an affinity to your own.

3. Attract network members individually.In approaching potentially high-value professional contacts for your network, let your professional journal and newsletter articles be your emissaries.  If you haven't yet produced any, let your networking wait until you have.

Agre (2000) has proposed the following procedure as useful in establishing networking contact with a professional you have not previously met:

• choose someone you wish to approach and read their work with some care
• ensure that when you write, you cite their work in some substantial way
• mail the person a copy of your recent publications
• include a low-key, one-page cover letter mentioning the value of their work in relation to yours.

In some cultures, custom places high emphasis on formal professional introduction. That is, if you wish to meet with person X, you must first convince Y, a professional peer of X to formally introduce you at some professional gathering, or at least write a letter of introduction

4. Meet your target at a professional meeting.Serious professionals generally go to some lengths to attend conferences and professional meetings. Proliferation of computer networks is unlikely to affect this. Therefore, be rigorous about submitting papers to conferences

5. Follow up.Devise simple ways of being useful to the people in your network. Periodic contact is essential. Circulate interesting information to them. Mention their work to other people. Include them in as many events and activities as possible. Persuade your agency to invite them to speak.

This step-by-step procedure is patently oversimplified. It omits many topics, for example, the claims that effective networking makes on numerous other activities: teaching, giving talks, mixing at receptions, formulating research results, and working with people at your own agency.

References

Agre, P (2001). Networking on the network. Retrieved 31 October, 2001. http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/
Aitkin,S., Buultjens, M, Clark, C, Eyre, JT & Pease, L (2000). Teaching children who are deafblind: Contact, communication and learning. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Joyce, C, Veitch, C & Crossland, L (2003). ‘Professional and social support networks of rural general practitioners’. In Australian Journal of Rural Health 11 (1) , 7–14.
Evans, I.M. & Matthews, A.K. (1992). ‘A behavioural approach to the prevention of school dropout: conceptual and empirical strategies for children and youth’. In M Herson, RM Eisler, PM Eisler & PM Miller (Eds.), Progress in behaviour modification. Sycamore, IL: Sycamore Press.
Kupersmidt, JB, Coie, JD & Dodge, KA ‘The role of poor peer relationships in the development of disorder’. In S.R. Asher & J.D. Coie (Eds.). Peer rejection in childhood (pp. 274-305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lin, N (2004). Social capital. Duke University. Retrieved 14 May 2008 from: sociology.nccu.edu.tw/Chinese/speech/paper-final.pdf
Meyer. LH & Henry, LH (1993). ‘Cooperative classroom management’. In JW Putnam (Ed.). Cooperative learning and strategies for inclusion. Chapter 5 Sydney: Paul H Brookes,

Discussion questions

• Please recall and recount any personal experiences that (a) contradict, or (b) affirm the issues or suggested protocols presented in the paper.
• What in your opinion are the major (a) individual and (b) group benefits of professional networking?
• What advice would you give a colleague who is new to the disability field on establishing and developing a professional network for his/her school or school system?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Mike Steer is Senior Lecturer, Sensory Disability, at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children & The University of Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia.

 

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