We can teach values in any subject?

While in Malaysia teaching of values is tasked to Moral / Islamic Study classes, across the causeway it has been incorporated in all subjects. An approach based on common sense as well as good application of learning concepts. They call it holistic approach, I prefer to call it Integrated Social Development (just like Integrated Marketing).

 

If the whole idea of Integrated Marketing is to consolidate all efforts towards marketing communication and incorporate communication elements in all business activities, then for Integrated Social Development, I suggest that the idea is to consolidate all efforts towards developing social competency by incorporating social development elements in all education activities. 

Social Competence - start 'em young

Interesting news. UNICEF is campaigning "Teach Respect" to your children. What's more interesting is that our children develop social competence with or without our guide. So start guiding your children's social development before they grew up with the perception that their social values, influenced by others, is correct.

At Pro Mind Resources, we are concern. Our Pro Mind Camp for school children is designed to develop social competence among school children using school subjects (English/BM/Science/Math/History/Geo) as the platform.

Communicative challenges of Special Children

This posting is a follow up to my earlier posting titled "AQUA KASEH and Social Competence". Halberstadt, Denham, and Dunsmore in their paper titled Affective Social Competence (in Social Development, 10, 1, 2001, Blackwell Publisher Ltd. 2001) discussed on the need to conduct their research to understand Special Children social competence deficits. I had extracted from their paper the communicative issues faced by the nonnormative populations namely Autism, Behavior Disorder, and Maltreatment. These issues posed communicative challenges to the special children in their social competence development.

Autism

·         Less able to imitate others’ emotions (Hertzig, Snow, & Sherman, 1989)

·         Often facial expressions are incongruent to situation (McGee, Feldman, & Chernin, 1991)

·         Do not attend to social messages (Dawson, Meltzoff, Osterling, Rinaldi, & Brown, 1998; Osterling & Dawson, 1994)

·         Delayed understanding of basic, unequivocal emotional situation (not immediately show excitement); show deficit in comprehension of emotions caused by beliefs (Baron-Cohen, 1991)

·         Spend less time looking at distressed or fearful adults and focus on objects instead (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992)

·         Similar physiological experiences of the emotion event but more ambiguous facial expressions (Steinhilber, Jones, and Dunsmore, 1999)

·         Rarely engage in joint attention (Dawson, et al.,1998; Lewy & Dawson, 1992; Osterling & Dawson, 1994; Steinhilber, et al., 199)

Behavior disorder

• Send emotional messages that are proportionally more negative (American Psychiatric Association, 1987)
• Showed more extreme responses to a negative mood induction (Cole, Zahn-Waxler, Fox, Usher, & Welsh, 1996; Cole, Zahn-Waxler, & Smith, 1994)
• Deficits in ability to receive others’ emotional messages (Casey & Schlosser, 1994; Cook, Greenberg, & Kusche, 1994; Nowicki & Duke, 1994; Russell, Stokes, Jones, Czogalik, & Rohleder, 1993; but see Cole, Usher & Cargo, 1993)
• Spend less time scanning the social environment and, consequently, recall fewer details of emotional stimuli (Casey & Schlosser, 1994)
• More often attribute hostile intentionality to others (Casey & Schlosser, 1994; Dodge & Frame, 1982; Dodge, Murphy, & Buchsbaum, 1984; Dodge & Somberg, 1987)
• Less awareness of their own affective experience, and they clearly have more difficulty identifying and understanding their own feelings (Casey & Schlosser, 1994; Cook et al., 1994)
• Diminished abilities to constructively manage and regulate their emotions, may express emotions impulsively as they are felt (Greenberg, Kusche, & Speltz, 1991)
• Displaying anger at inappropriate times (Cole, et al., 1994);
• May show brittle control or denial of negative emotion (Cole, et al. 1994)
• Less well able to integrate nonverbal skills (Russell et al., 1993)

Maltreatment

·         Less likely to use internal state words; will do so in restricted manner (Beeghly & Cicchetti, 1994)

·         Less able to recognize photographs of child and adult expressions (During & McMahon, 1991)

·         Less able to recognize ‘pure’ and ‘masked’ emotions (Camras, Ribordy, & Hill, 1988; Cassidy et al., 1992)

·         Do not habituate to interadult hostility involving their mothers; they become aroused and aggressive themselves, attempting to help or comfort their mothers, or intervene in the conflict on their mother’s behalf (Cummings, Hennessey, Rabideau, & Cicchetti, 1994)

·         Show deficits on self-reported empathy measures (Straker & Jacobson, 1981)

·         Show more inappropriate responses (such as anger, aggression, or withdrawal to their peers’ distress (Howes & Eldredge, 1985; Klimes-Dougan & Kistner, 1990; Main & George, 1985)

·         Show more despressed/dysthymic and anxious affect (Toth, Manly & Cicchetti, 1992)

·         Show more anger and more situational inappropriate and inflexible emotions (Erickson, Egeland & Pianta, 1989; Shields, Cicchetti & Ryan, 1994)

AQUA KASEH and Social Competence

I read with interest a research paper titled Affective Social Competence by Amy G. Halberstadt (North Carolina State University), Susanne A. Denham (George Mason University) and Julie C. Dunsmore (Hamilton College) published in Social Development, 10, 1, 2001 (Blackwell Publisher Ltd. 2001). What's interesting about this paper is the way it explains the process of emotional exchanges in social interactions, especially among children. But what compelled me to share this paper is when the writers explained how their research is relevant with "nonnormative populations". What they referred to as nonnormative populations is populations that have conditions such as Autism, Diagnosed Behavior disorder, and Maltreatment which caused them to have social competence deficits. Children with the above conditions progressed in their social competence development slower than the normal populations. Therefore, their ability to blend with the general  population or society is less compared to their normally developed  peers.

It gives me some sense of the challenges faced by teachers, parents and caregivers of Special Children to ensure that these children are prepared face "normal" life i.e. to blend in, to gain acceptance in society. I use quotes for the term normal  because to the special children their world is normal, as much as we view our world as normal.  We called them Special Children because to our normal standards they need special care and attention just to survive in our so called normal world. Nonetheless, society is becoming more aware of the needs to provide special education and development program for this segment of society.

When I designed Aqua Kaseh my intention was to provide an opportunity for Special Children to acquire one survival skills i.e. swimming (or more accurately Aquatic Competence), so that they are at least one skill closer to the their normally developed peers. By acquiring the Aquatic Competence, they will also be one step ahead most of the normal population as not many of us have Aquatic Competence.  The program equipped them with skills to be as normal as any person,  in the water the water that is.