Locations of Site Visitors László Szögeczki's CE blog

Tuesday 31 December 2013

Is it still working?

Is this still working? I am just curious if it is. I did not even signed in or opened it for a long time. Yes, it was a good reason, still there is. I was just curious. Well, if I am here I post something I wrote to a SEN school to introduce CE several months ago.

Introducing Conductive Pedagogical System
Conductive Education (CE) is a contemporary special education concept being increasingly used in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world. Its system fully falls into the so called SEN education. The following article tries to introduce Conductive Pedagogical System (CPS) for professionals who struggling to find information and fail to see, understand CPS as an education due to lack of pedagogical literature and discussion of its nature in not a medical, rehabilitation context.

Dr. Andras Peto was born in Hungary, studied and worked in Austria after finishing high school in Szombathely, Hungary. In the 1920’s he started to construct new effective systems for healing different illnesses as a freshly qualified physician in Austria and his main focus was natural healing and alternative medicine. From March 1945 he implemented with the aid of the after World War II Hungarian State a new pedagogical habilitation, rehabilitation scheme for central nervous system damaged children and adults in Budapest, Hungary. He recognised that people with the above mentioned disabilities can be taught how to live an active life using their all possible potentials and developed his own unique complex education system how to build up individual’s active orientated personality – orthofunction - and progress their life skills and medical conditions. With this idea he was the first who approached central nervous damaged people with a pedagogical focus and put physical developmental actions alongside with emotional, social, mental and communication developments as part of the education approach.
Conductive Pedagogical System (CPS)
CPS which was mistakenly introduced as Conductive Education to the English speaking part of the world is a pedagogical system, a “special education” structure traditionally for people who have physical disabilities due to damage of the Central Nervous System (CNS) such as Cerebral Palsy, Ataxia, Stroke, Parkinson Disease, MS, Spina Bifida. However, in the last two three decades CPS’s educational structure was recorded to be successful approaching a much broader field of disabilities i.e. Global Development Delay, Dyspraxia, Carbohydrate Glycoprotein Deficiency, Mucolipidosis type IV (ML IV), Down Syndrome, Hydro-cephalous and Micro-cephalous caused disabilities, mental impairment and many others.
Conductive Pedagogy is an assistive (lifelong) process, approach of recovering and living with physical and related complex problems. CPS believes that rehabilitation as a phenomenon not the word which expresses the best way its systematic complex approach as usually different professionals refer to it in most of the countries. People with physical difficulties having complex problems; emotional, social, mental-cognitive, medical issues alongside of the physical concerns, therefore they require a complex approach. A fundamental believe of CPS is that as long as people are alive they are learning and learning is not passive. CPS states that everybody, all human, is capable to learn and expectations should be tailor made for the learning individual. We all learning from others and from models through self-experiences. Learning is a complex phenomenon it involves emotional, social, cognitive, physical aspects and they all linked together; learning is therefore a personal transformation of the individual. The value of culture, family, close and broader social relationships are accounted and reflected in CPS. The practitioner, Conductor, Conductor, Conductive Education Teacher, is not only habilitating, rehabilitating individuals, but transforming the whole person in which process he is very much personally involved, so CPS is a pedagogical approach. Conductive Education Teachers therefore facilitate to live in society and shaping society as a whole.
CPS offers guided participatory for its learners which is based on or close to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) however,  Peto’s concept projected practice from social-cultural to motor learning in a specific way and it is being practised in that broader manner. Recently, Barbara Rogoff’s (UK) works are correlative in many ways of CPS.
CPS identifies the following principles of education which relates generally to every age:
• The child/person must be humanly respected even if there is serious damage to the nervous system as well as its environment; parents, peers, carers, etc.
• Central role of relationships with others
• Positive attitude coaching, welcome into the society - emotional well-being is seen as fundamental of involvement; children/people without a sense of well-being will find it difficult to concentrate, fully engage (by CP facilitation) in activities, experiences, and interactions with others
• Directive but very friendly, questioning, open minded, supportive and responsible teaching attitude
• Group setting; collective approach but/and person centered dealing with each person
• Importance of the positive atmosphere
• Central role of communication in every aspects (it is an activating system)
• The importance of the personality (dysfunction, orthofunction)
• Person as a whole/ outlook as a whole
• Working (upbringing/training/educating) towards orthofunction
• The importance of regularity, daily routine, structure of life
• The importance of consistency, consequence
• Complex, holistic nature of development
• Age appropriate conscious active learning
• Regular, complex- meticulous and continuous observation of the children/people – identifying emotional, social, mental, physical needs , particularly concerned with execution of movement that can be used for functional tasks
• Aim setting is crucial
• Learning academic as well as movements, skill(s) is cognitive issue
• Motivation is central – intrinsic, extrinsic, Adequate task motivation
• Focus on what children/people are able to do (not what can not to do) and expect as starting point of learning
• Praising, searching positive feedback - Positive regard - Rogers
• Persistent adjustment of expectations in physical performance as development took place - immediately build the learnt skills into daily living activities
• Importance of the professional control, evaluation, feedback, and the more sided transformative communication throughout the teaching-learning process in all possible contexts between the children/people and the teacher
Specific / Special Physical Education characteristics of CP
• Motor learning is embedded of daily living complex activities and it is cognitive issue
• Motor learning through lived experience – active guided participation: The importance of opportunities to experience and act age appropriately even if physical difficulties obstruct - the child/ person is entitled to have opportunity to (1) engage him affectively and socially (2) set him in meaningful and relevant activities and contexts for learning (3) promote his curiosity and the use of imagination and creativity in learning, particularly in motor learning (4) open ended and trial-and-error learning without fear of failure (5) experiential skill development activities with a variety of contexts
• Age appropriate physical expectations – approaching with adequate facilitations
• Setting of long term and short term physical objectives with the person and his family and working towards consciously every day
• Body as a whole
• Facilitations: CP refers to any assistance which serves to develop the clients’ complex needs towards orthofunction.
Orthofunction refers not to the physical condition of the person but physical circumstance is part of it. Orthofunction is the opposite of dysfunction which is an inactive, demotivated emotional, social, physical status due to complex social, health, medical problems. Orthofunction means therefore that the person, despite of his complex difficulties, is self-motivated, lives an active life, takes an immense amount of responsibility of organising his own life in all aspects, bodily; tries not to rely on help and try to use his body (by CP learned techniques) to utilise his full potential to live more independent life.

In this context CP differs the following facilitations:
a)Environmental Facilitation
o Emotional Facilitation
o Social Facilitation
b) Physical Facilitation
o Manual Facilitation
o Equipment
o Gravitation
c) Mechanical Facilitation
d) Intention, Rhythmical Intention (activities, tasks are verbally denoted, repeated and execution is rhythmically verbally supported)
e) Audio and Verbal Facilitation
f) Visual Facilitation
• Spiral task series; during lessons the children/people are going through of academically and physically gradually build up programs where certain tasks are repeated in other contexts and positions in order to deepen understanding. The academic tasks are embedded into physical tasks and vice versa
• Age appropriate daily living situations through guided participation
• Regularity, routine
• Self-control, self-evaluation
• Central role of control, evaluation of the physical learning process of the person

Tuesday 14 June 2011

Thank You

There was published a paper on Cyber CE a couple of weeks ago:

www.e-conduction.org/depository/Lacipaper[1].pdf


I expressed my thanks on Facebook for all of those who took part in it on the day of publishing. I wish to repeat my thanks here again since Facebook comments are gone by now.

Many thanks to the Legacy Rainbow House www.thelegacy-rainbowhouse.com to be interested in and make the project available. Thank you for LEE PREECE, conductor, for his interest and and active participation (leading the ce session from New York) in the Cyber experience. Thank you for the children tolerating an "out of routine session" and being so smart during the project. Many thanks for the classroom assistants: Megan Browne, Lucy Betherton, Moira Cannon to facilitate the project and children.

Thanks for being interested and help on site for Becky Wilkinson, conductor.

Many thanks for lecturing and being interested for Jules McDonald, leading conductor.


It was a great pleasure to work with you all. Thank You!

Tuesday 7 June 2011

Challenge Me!

Szinte mar alig van idom s energiam kovetni a konduktiv pedagogiai iranyzatu bejegyzeseket ebben a felgyorsult, felszaporodott blog es facebook vilagban. Ez persze jo, mert elszigeteltsegunk ismet kapott egy sanszot az elettol, hogy nyithassunk a vilag fele es persze, hogy a vilag eszre vehessen bennunket. Vegre megjelent maga a Peto Intezet is a kozossegi oldalon es szamtalan jo es kevesbe jo irodik le mindenfele a vilagon a kondukciorol. Mint uttoro magyar konduktor blog iro sajnalom - de nem banom - hogy szemelyes eletem ugy alakult, hogy sokkal kevesebbet tudok megjelenni blogomban ezidottajt, de remelem, hogy ez a sok-sok, egyebkent nem mas temaval eltoltott ido hatvanyozottan terul meg kesobb konduktiv pedagogiai szempontbol is.


Ajanlo:


Kb. harom evvel ezelott a kezembe kerult Angliaban egy kartyacsomag, amely a Challenge Me nevet viseli. Amikor vegigneztem a kartyalapokat az tunt fel azonnal, hogy a rajzolt kepeken a gyerekek konduktiv pedagogiabol ismert feladtakot mutatnak be, valamint felreerthetetlenul a konduktiv pedagogia altal alkalmazott eszkozok lathatoak rajta. Kesobb, amikor az ismerteto kis fuzetet is vegigolvastam, tisztabb lett a kep. Ez a fuzetecske, amely 47 oldalas, tulajdonkeppen egy rovid koduktiv pedagogiai ismerteto: szamtalan informacio szerezheto meg belole. A szerzo, Amanda Elliott, maga is gyakorlott konduktorkent mutatkozik be benne es az is kiderul, hogy mely konduktiv pedagogiai intezmeny segitette a Mobility Activity Cards elkesziteset. A londoni Jessica Kingsley Publishers altal 2006-ban napvilagot latott kartyacsomagot kovette egy masik, amely a Challenge Me! Speech and Communication Cards nevet viseli es amely az elso kiadvannyal megegyezoen 3-12 eves gyerekeknek keszult feladatokat tartalmaz. E masodik csomag 2009-ben jelent meg. Mindket csomagot hasznosan tudom alkalmazni konduktiv munkam soran, igy szertettel ajanlom mindazoknak, akik meg nem hallottak rola. Az ara egy kicsit borsos...

Tovabbi informaciok a kiadonal,

http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book/9781843104971
http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book/9781843109464

Monday 30 May 2011

Contemporary thinking

Neuroplasticity: Learning Physically Changes the Brain

How lessons and experiences can shape and grow your students' brains over time.
by Sara Bernard

"There are a few broad principles that we can state come out of neuroscience," says Kurt Fischer, education professor and director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard University. Number one? "The brain is remarkably plastic," Fischer explains. "Even in middle or old age, it's still adapting very actively to its environment." Translation: All those little brains in your classroom are physically growing and changing every time they learn something. And there are ways to keep that happening.
Despite the fact that the concept of neuroplasticity is broad, vague, and hardly new (the theory was born in the mid-1800s and was heavily researched throughout the 1990s), it is one of the most reliable and fundamental discoveries about the brain that we have to date. Intelligence is not fixed, it turns out, nor planted firmly in our brains from birth. Rather, it's forming and developing throughout our lives.
Your Brain on Learning
According to neurologist and educator Judy Willis (and suggested by a research-rich chapter in the second edition of Developmental Psychopathology, among many other publications), neuroplasticity is defined as the selective organizing of connections between neurons in our brains.
This means that when people repeatedly practice an activity or access a memory, their neural networks -- groups of neurons that fire together, creating electrochemical pathways -- shape themselves according to that activity or memory. When people stop practicing new things, the brain will eventually eliminate, or "prune," the connecting cells that formed the pathways. Like in a system of freeways connecting various cities, the more cars going to certain destination, the wider the road that carries them needs to be. The fewer cars traveling that way, however, the fewer lanes are needed.
Neuroscientists have been chorusing "cells that fire together, wire together" since the late 1990s, meaning that if you perform a task or recall some information that causes different neurons to fire in concert, it strengthens the connections between those cells. Over time, these connections become thick, hardy road maps that link various parts of the brain -- and stimulating one neuron in the sequence is more likely to trigger the next one to fire. Thus, says Willis, "Practice makes permanent. The more times the network is stimulated, the stronger and more efficient it becomes."
Changing Brains in the Classroom
It turns out that if you tell students about this, it can have an effect on their brains too. Researchers Lisa Blackwell of Columbia University, along with Kali Trzesniewski and Carol Dweck of Stanford University, published a study in the journal Child Development in 2007 that found that both morale and grade points took a leap when students understood the idea that intelligence is malleable. Not only did those students who already believed this do better in school, but when researchers actively taught the idea to a group of students, they performed significantly better than their peers in a control group. Willis also found this to be true in her middle school classroom. Her students were more motivated to study, she says, when they knew that they were all fully physically capable of building knowledge and changing their brains.
Here are a few tips for making your classroom friendly to malleable brains: Practice, practice, practice. Repeating an activity, retrieving a memory, and reviewing material in a variety of ways helps build thicker, stronger, more hard-wired connections in the brain.
Put information in context. Recognizing that learning is, essentially, the formation of new or stronger neural connections, it makes sense to prioritize activities that help students tap into already-existing pathways (for instance, by integrating academic subjects or creating class projects relevant to their lives). In other words, nix the rote memorization. "Whenever new material is presented in such a way that students see relationships" between concepts, writes Willis, "they generate greater brain cell activity and achieve more successful long-term memory storage and retrieval."
Let students know that this is how the brain works. Breaking through those neuro-mythological barriers that paint intelligence as predetermined may ease students' minds and encourage them to use their brains. Willis notes, "Especially for students who believe they are 'not smart,' the realization that they can literally change their brains through study and review is empowering."

See: www.edutopia.org
http://www.edutopia.org/neuroscience-brain-based-learning-neuroplasticity

Thursday 31 March 2011

Szabo Zsuzsa

Andrew Sutton facebook bejegyzesenek koszonhetoen


ma este todomasomra jutott Szabo Zsuzsa Fokusz RTL riport musora. Hat igen, a kulfoldi elet eltavolit bennunket olyan dolgoktol, amihez korabban komolyabban is kozunk volt. Ez ertendo termeszetesen minden szinten; hetkoznapi elet, baratok, munka, kultura, stb. Zsuzsa riportmusora komplex erzelmeket kavart fel bennem. Termeszetesen, mivel ez a blog csakis a konduktiv pedagogiara osszpontosit, nem szandekozom masegyebrol szolni, de megjegyzem sokkal melyebb kulturalis gondolotaim tamadtak, mint amirol a kovetkezokben olvasni fogtok.


Szabo Zsuzsa esete unikum, hiszen konduktor, aki a konduktiv pedagogia nyoman "csodat" muvel, el meg. DE, nem csak o maga, hanem az ot korulvevo "tarsasag" es kozos tevekenyseg-rendszeruk is csodaszamba megy. Ezek az emberek egy letuno vilag csodat veghezvinni kepes utolso elotti humanistai - egyebkent konduktorok. A nyugati vilagban el- es meg nem ismert, a volt szocialista orszagok teruleten devalvalodott kollektivizmus letezesenek es erejenek, meg nem tamadhatatlan letenek biztos evidenciaja. Az a kollektiv gondviseles, ami a filmben kidomborodik Zsuzsa iranyaba, a kondukcio egyik alaptezise (kimondva vagy kimondatlanul: tulsagosan is "szocialisztikus"). A kulonosen izgalmas emberi, tarsadalmi, erkolcsi magatartas-egyuttes ebben az, hogy egyeni erdekeken felulalallo empatikus magatartasat latunk, ami a valoban kihaloban van vilagszerte. Epp ezert, a riport szamomra sokkal kozelebbi kollektiv kapcsolatokrol szol, mint amiben "szerencsem" van elni ma. Egy elkepzelt erkolcs, amibe en meg belenottem otthon Magyarorszagon, itt Angliaban ma bizonyosan nem letezo vonasa a hetkoznapi letnek. A kollektivizmus mint erkolcsi magatartas megkoveteli a magasfoku egyeni felelosseget; "minden ember felelos azoknak a kozossegeknek a sorsaert, amelyeknek tagja, nemcsak csalad, nemzet, de vegso soron az egesz tarsadalom (de legalabb, korulvevo tarsadalom) sorsaert is. Ez a fajta felelossegerzes abszolut alapveto jellemzoje a konduktiv pedagogianak (tradicionalis felfogasban). Mifelenk a nyugati vilagban?

"Aki itt belepsz,hagyj fel minden remennyel..."

Wednesday 9 March 2011

May be it is history

After some weeks preparation finally everything came together and we managed to conduct CE through Skype to a group of six children. I was inspired by a Hungarian e-conference provider, Gyula Takacs, who encouraged me long ago to try such a thing. To be honest, I was quite sceptical about non-personal delivering of CE but when one of our former colleagues left from UK to USA the idea emerged again. We had life experience of e-CE this afternoon and we definitely can see more clearly about the possibilities of cyber CE. Well, the event will be analysed, and I, we will publish an assay on what we experienced and what we think about it.

Saturday 26 February 2011

"Tegnapi" hir

Megszűnhetnek a Pető Intézet ingyenes foglalkozásai.
Az intézmény igazgatója szerint elképzelhető, hogy csak Anyagi gondokkal küzd a Pető Intézet. A nemzetközi szinten elismert intézmény eddig térítésmentesen tudta gyógyítani a mozgásszervi bajokkal született gyermekeket. A támogatások csökkenése miatt azonban lehet, hogy hamarosan pénzt kell kérniük a foglalkozásokért.

Pásztorné Dr. Tass Ildikó igazgató az MR1-Kossuth Rádió Napközben című műsorában elmondta: az elmúlt négy-öt évben több száz millió forint állami támogatástól estek el. Emiatt az intézet bizonyos fejlesztési tevékenységek fenntartására be kellett, hogy vezesse a térítési díjat, ami csak részben fedezi a költségeket.

Az intézet eddig is nyújtott fizetős szolgáltatásokat, igaz azok csak a külföldi betegeket érintették. Az ebből befolyt pénz nem jelentett pluszbevételt az intézménynek, mert az állami támogatás a működési költségek mindössze hatvan százalékát fedezi.

A Pető Intézet fejlesztő foglalkozásaira azért van szükség, hogy a mozgásszervi bajokkal küzdő gyermekek később ne eltartottként éljék életüket, képesek legyenek az önellátásra, esetleg dolgozni is tudjanak.

térítési díj ellenében tudnak foglalkozni a beteg gyerekekkel.

http://www.hirado.hu/Hirek/2011/02/25/13/Ezentul_penzert_gyogyulhatnak_a_gyerekek.aspx