Hi Sarah, all,
Thanks for the illuminating and helpful clarification. I hope robust
academic debate isn't ever a cause of offence to anyone and when it
leads to clarification I see it as useful.
There was a time when these lists were used much more for debate than of
late - they were exciting times to me. I realise you are constrained in
what you can say so I'll just in passing and closing make three points
that arise from the discussion that might be useful and might not have
emerged otherwise:
1. I hope the world will take care to remember that classifications such
as you describe are (in my view anyway) properties of systems/models and
when applied to people we need to keep in mind that they are
approximations - this is important because they can constrain as well as
enable.
2. There is a very interesting (to me) area of overlap when one
considers adaptation of resources to cultural context - it seems to me
that cultural context is not a million miles from the concepts you are
talking about - in fact one obvious element of that - language - might
be a useful component of any metrics here.
3. It isn't only resources that are classified its people's needs.
People on the Accessibility list will be aware that I have argued for
years that this needs a finer granularity than the world has so far been
able to implement - Whilst its difficult to design physical systems with
the needed flexibility ICT has the potential to respond to this finer
granularity of need and if we do not use it we are wasting an opportunity.
However - I do completely recognise the validity of the vocabularies you
are seeking, particularly in the light of cutural adaptation mechanisms
and research (because research has to approximate) - though I personally
worry about the philosophical foundations of the former. That's a topic
for the bar one day (sorry, can't help it, born philosopher, annoys the
hell out of many people - but for me philosophy underpins what we do).
Good luck with it.
Sorry for being argumentative. :-)
andy
> Hi Andy, all,
>
> I've had a brief chat with Andy offline about this - I can't be too
> explicit because post-election restrictions on communications where I'm
> working ("purdah") are still in place, but I'll just clarify thus:
>
> - I totally agree that one should not reduce people and their
> requirements to a single point of classification ("disabled", "gay",
> "woman" etc.). In educational technology the accessibility philosophy
> that the best way to support accessibility is to classify educational
> resources according to what kinds of things they do and work well for, I
> am in total agreement with.
>
> - The use case my enquiry related to was about classifying materials
> giving evidence-based guidance for practitioners around the needs and
> requirements of ethnic minority children, working class and poor
> children, traveller and Roma children, children with various special
> educational needs, and children's needs by gender. There are also many
> other use cases for vocabularies for tagging or classifying resources
> according to these attributes that are entirely valid, in my opinion. I
> don't know how all the possible readers of bell hooks' work (a favourite
> of mine) would come across her stuff if it wasn't appropriately tagged
> or classified somewhere!
>
> I do hope this clarifies somewhat, and if I caused anyone offence or
> concern, I apologise.
>
> Best wishes
> Sarah
>
>
>
> On 26 May 2010 22:10, Andy Heath <[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Sarah,
>
> individual needs (described functionally) I can see a reason for.
> But personally I would have to question whether Ethnic Minority,
> Social Class and Gender are useful concepts to base provision around
> in the future. They seem to me to be a one-size-fits-all approach
> and in many domains there has been strong scientific argument that
> the concepts are not useful.
>
>
> This podcast very makes the argument about genetic traits having a
> finer granularity than provided for by such categorisations in a
> very entertaining way
>
> http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/11/28
>
> Should we be continuing to support such concepts or looking for ways
> to move forwards towards more personalised approaches ?
>
> andy
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I said I'd summarise response to this for the list: I didn't get
> much
> that was useful as a taxonomy for describing Special Educational
> Needs
> or Ethnic Minority, Social Class and Gender. I got quite a few
> responses re vocabs and specs for assistive technology and Web
> accessibility which wasn't quite what we were looking for.
>
> I did however get one response with some SEN terms in the
> vocabulary:
> from Lesley Mackenzie-Robb, re the DCSF Family Information Directory
> vocabulary she has worked on. So contact her if that's of interest:
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>
>
> It still wasn't quite what I was looking for so we're creating
> our own
> vocabulary which will be made publicly available as soon as
> we're done.
> I'll let the list know when that happens.
>
> Best wishes, and many thanks to all those colleagues who took
> the time
> to respond, I do appreciate the effort!
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
> On 4 May 2010 11:23, Sarah Currier <[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> I'm currently trying to identify existing controlled
> vocabularies/taxonomies for description around inclusion of
> learners
> with different needs (at primary and secondary level- but other
> vocabularies are of interest). If you have such a
> vocabulary that
> is openly available for reuse, please read on!
>
> I've currently used the Lexaurus Bank
> (http://public.lexaurus.net/
> which used to be the Becta Vocabulary Bank - oh how I wish
> they'd
> funded this as a proper service because even as it is, it's
> been SO
> helpful- yay registries!) to identify vocabularies from QCA, QIA
> (LSIS), NDRB and Curriculum Online. So I'm looking for any
> *other*
> vocabularies. Probably UK-only as this is the type of area that
> tends to be very jurisdiction-specific (but if you fancy
> sending me
> a non-UK vocabulary I'm sure it would be of interest for later
> collation).
>
> Just to be clear, I'm looking for vocabularies that describe
> learner
> attributes such as their Special Educational Needs (SEN -
> disabilities, learning difficulties, etc. etc.), and things like
> ethnicity, social class and gender.
>
> Please email me off-list and I'll collate for the list later.
>
> Many thanks
> Sarah
>
> --
> Sarah Currier
>
> *Sarah Currier Consultancy Ltd.*
>
> EdTech | Resource Sharing | Web 2.0 | Metadata | Repositories
> w: http://www.sarahcurrier.com/
> e: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> <mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>
> t: +44 (0)7980855801
>
> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarahcurrier
> Skype: morageyrie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> andy
> --
> ______________________
> Andy Heath
> http://www.axelafa.com
>
>
Cheers
andy
--
______________________
Andy Heath
http://www.axelafa.com
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