DISruptABILITY Conference

Thursday 18 November Friday 19 November

THURSDAY 18 NOVEMBER
9.00 – 9.30am	Conference Opening
	Welcome Andrew Klein, Master of Ceremonies
	Welcome to Country
	Blessing and prayer Bishop Richard Umbers – Auxiliary Bishop for Sydney
	Opening Address Dallas McInerney, CEO, Catholic Schools NSW Alistair Henskens MP, Minister for Family, Communities and Disability Services
	Our Tradition Danielle Cronin, Director of Education Policy, Catholic Schools NSW
	Navigating the Virtual Conference Platform Andrew Klein, Master of Ceremonies
9.30 – 10.10am	KEYNOTE ADDRESS
	Looking below the surface to understand impacts of language, literacy and attentional difficulties Dr Linda Graham, Director of The Centre for Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology Haley Tancredi, Educational Speech Pathologist and PhD candidate, Queensland University of Technology Students with language, literacy, and attention difficulties hide in plain sight in all classrooms. Teachers are often alerted to “red flags” such as difficulty following directions and distractibility but may not know what this means for learning. Understanding the presenting characteristics of language, literacy, and attention difficulties can help teachers to interpret potential learning impacts and barriers within the teaching and assessment process. When teachers know what to look for (and why), they can become more attune to identifying language, literacy and attention difficulties. In this presentation, we will discuss some of the common characteristics of language, literacy and attention difficulties and describe the underlying cognitive processes that impacts on students’ learning. Using this information, teachers can work to minimise or remove barriers using accessible learning and assessment experiences. Finally, we will invite you to complete an interactive quiz, which aims to put theory into practice.
10.10 – 10.15am	Questions
10.15 – 10.30am	Interactive Q & A Session 1
10.30 - 10.45am	Time for a break - Let’s get moving
10.45 - 10.55am	Student Showcase 90 seconds with Microsoft

10.55 - 11.35am	Concurrent Session One
Session 1a Part 1	Developing Student Profiles to Plan and Implement Inclusive Practices Dr Linda Graham, Director of The Centre for Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology Haley Tancredi, Educational Speech Pathologist and PhD candidate, Queensland University of Technology Teachers in modern classrooms often adopt multi-modal pedagogical approaches to engage their students. However, care must be taken to ensure teaching and assessment practices are accessible to all students, including students with language, literacy, and attentional difficulties. As introduced in our keynote presentation, this group of students may not comprehend crucial information and/or instructions, negatively impacting their educational experiences, engagement, and academic outcomes. In this workshop, we will (i) build profiles of students with language, literacy, and attentional difficulties, (ii) share a template that teachers can use to map the presenting characteristics of exemplar students to identify potential barriers, (iii) guide participants in the use of accessible pedagogies and relevant adjustments, and (iv) discuss how teachers can use student consultation and professional collaboration to support inclusive practice.
Session 1b	From Shopping Lists to Shakespeare: Teaching Writing to Students with Extensive Support Needs Dr Robert Pennington (PhD BCBA-D), Lake & Edward J. Snyder Jr. Distinguished Professor in Special Education, Department of Special Education and Child Development, University of North Carolina Charlotte In this session, Dr. Pennington will describe an approach to teaching students with intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, and complex communication needs to express their ideas through written communication. He will present strategies to increase students’ motivation to engage in writing instruction and to improve skills in spelling, sentence writing, and constructing narratives for multiple purposes.
Session 1c	Self Care Isn't Selfish Carrie Benedet, Global Leadership Coach, Emotional Intelligence Specialist
11.35 - 11.40am	Time for a break - Let’s get moving
11.40 - 11.45am	Student Showcase 90 seconds with Microsoft
11.45 - 12.25pm	Concurrent Session Two
Session 2a Part 2	Developing Student Profiles to Plan and Implement Inclusive Practices Dr Linda Graham, Director of The Centre for Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology Haley Tancredi, Educational Speech Pathologist and PhD candidate, Queensland University of Technology Teachers in modern classrooms often adopt multi-modal pedagogical approaches to engage their students. However, care must be taken to ensure teaching and assessment practices are accessible to all students, including students with language, literacy, and attentional difficulties. As introduced in our keynote presentation, this group of students may not comprehend crucial information and/or instructions, negatively impacting their educational experiences, engagement, and academic outcomes. In this workshop, we will (i) build profiles of students with language, literacy, and attentional difficulties, (ii) share a template that teachers can use to map the presenting characteristics of exemplar students to identify potential barriers, (iii) guide participants in the use of accessible pedagogies and relevant adjustments, and (iv) discuss how teachers can use student consultation and professional collaboration to support inclusive practice.
Session 2b	An Instructional and Person-Centered Approach to Challenging Behavior Dr Robert Pennington (PhD BCBA-D), Lake & Edward J. Snyder Jr. Distinguished Professor in Special Education, Department of Special Education and Child Development, University of North Carolina Charlotte In this engaging session, Dr. Pennington will use humor and anecdotes from his over 30 years of working in classrooms to illustrate a framework for understanding why challenging behaviors occur, persist, and sometimes, appear unpredictable. He will offer powerful and practical strategies for arranging the classroom environment to facilitate student self-determination while reducing challenging behavior.
Session 2c	Putting The Pieces Together Dr Bree Jimenez, Associate Professor of Special Education, University of Texas, Arlington and Honorary Research Associate, University of Sydney The premise of evidence-based practice (EBP) is to identify and use practices and instructional strategies that have been shown, across multiple rigorous research studies, to positively affect student outcomes. Over the past decade several useful, valid, and free resources and tools have been developed by research centers to support teacher preparation and classroom application of identified EBPs. Despite the development of critical supports and resources, educators often fail to utilize EBPs (Cook, Smith, & Tankersley, 2012). Even when aware these resources exist, educators may struggle to put the pieces (i.e., literature reviews, fidelity checklists, professional teaching standards) into use as professional development (PD) tools. Commonly the PD provided is not specific to “whom” and “what” a teacher is teaching nor interconnected to how to identify EBPs useful to them (Courtade, Test, & Cook, 2015). This sessions will focus on the use of teacher-directed professional development to build the implementation and fidelity of EBPs to support grade-aligned instruction for students with intellectual disabilities and/or Autism Spectrum Disorder.
12.25 - 12.45pm	Interactive Q & A Session 2

12.45 - 1.10pm	Lunch
1.10 - 1.15pm	Student Showcase 90 seconds with Microsoft
1.15 - 2.00pm	KEYNOTE ADDRESS
	Assuming Competence: Philosophical Basis in Access to the General Curriculum Dr Bree Jimenez, Associate Professor of Special Education, University of Texas, Arlington and Honorary Research Associate, University of Sydney Those of us involved in education – administrators, teachers, parents, students, specialists, policy makers, and researchers – must decide on the level of rigor which will take place in our classrooms. Decisions based on the least dangerous assumption (LDA) are providing outstanding results. Donnellan (1984) wrote that “the …. least dangerous assumption holds that in the absence of conclusive data, educational decisions ought to be based on assumptions which, if incorrect, will have the least dangerous effect on the likelihood that students will be able to function independently as adults” (p. 142). Furthermore, she concluded “we should assume that poor performance is due to instructional inadequacy rather than to student deficits” (p. 142). This philosophy has been the foundation of our research and practice in the classroom with individuals with significant disabilities. As a result, studies have repeatedly yielded data showing students with significant disabilities can make gains in in a variety of areas including grade aligned content, engagement, and quality of life. This presentation will highlight important criteria to promote LDA including (a) evidence based practices with scientifically researched curricula, (b) differentiated instruction which maintains rigor (c) consistent data capture and decision making, and (d) standards based instruction. Special Education has a rich history in advocating for the individual needs of students with disabilities. As we move into the rigor of providing mainstream aligned instruction we see how much more they are capable of. Using best-practices and supports that apply the least dangerous assumption (LDA) is a powerful tool for increasing overall student quality of life and keeping alive a vision of high achievement for all students. This presentation will focus on strategies to promote the LDA for students with significant disabilities.
2.00 - 2.15pm	Concurrent Session Three
Session 3a	UDL and Problem Solving Jen Twine, Middle Leader-Pedagogy, Mater Dei School This presentation will focus on the application of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to proactively support all students, including those with ID/ASD, in developing the problem-solving skills necessary to increase student initiation, communication, and self-determination. Specifically, the findings of a research project investigating student engineering behaviours will lead this research-based presentation. The Engineering for All project (AIS NSW School Research Project) focused on building knowledge and skills in engineering, applied research, as well as UDL (Meyer & Rose, 2014). Specifically, this presentation will share the results of a quasi-experimental research study with 42 students with ID/ASD across Stages 2 and 3. The study focused on the effect of the research-based EiE (Engineering is Elementary) program designed by the Museum of Science-Boston, paired with a Universal Design approach for programming.
Session 3b	Inclusive Education in a Regional Primary School Karen Croake, Amanda O’Halloran and Michelle Martin, St Nicholas PS Tamworth By using three case studies of students who attend St Nicholas PS, this session will focus on the supports provided by a regionally based setting for students with low vision, blindness and other complex multiple disabilities. This session is ideal for those who provide supports for students who are blind, have low vision, or have the following comorbid disabilities – intellectual disability, physical disability, speech and language disabilities, hearing loss.
Session 3c	Instructional Strategies to Engage All Learners – Video Modelling Julia Meyers and Sonya Piccoli, St Finbars PS Byron Bay and St Joseph’s PS Alstonville Presenters will model how to collect, use and monitor student data to make data-based/ informed decisions to assist in the development of Behaviour Intervention Plans (BIPs) to support specific students within their own class. Presenters will then provide examples and strategies to build support plans for specific students in their own class. A Case Study of a year 2 student using the instructional strategy of video modelling will support participants to identify a social, behaviour or learning goal to promote with a student in their own setting.
2.15 - 2.25pm	Time for a break - Let’s get moving
2.30 - 2.45pm	Concurrent Session Four
Session 4a	The Influencers – Inclusion and UDL Viveca Larcher, Amanda Page-McDonald and Rebecca Tibbey, Catholic Schools Office Diocese of Lismore Two years ago in our Diocese, the word Inclusion was used freely, but was it actually Inclusion? We as a team needed to understand a better way of supporting genuine inclusion as we knew there had to be more effective strategies. This ‘way’ is what we will talk about in the session, our coaching model - how we did it, how it worked and how it's going. Presenters discuss the elements of influence, inclusion and universal design with some examples from our own experiences in the Lismore diocese.
Session 4b	Research becoming practice in inclusive education: A Global Perspective Dr Christine Grima-Farrell, School of Education UNSW Arts & Social Sciences The transition of research to practice in education requires a proactive and supported approach that empowers teachers to successfully engage with a diverse range of students. Nearly 30 years after the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994), collaborative partnerships that promote teachers as change agents in schools have proven to be beneficial in providing equitable and mutually rewarding opportunities for students as well as their teachers and mentors. This presentation describes my experiences on the Brother John Taylor Fellowship tour of how the Governments and school sectors across Europe, Canada and the US are responding to calls to support students, teachers and education stakeholders are providing adjustments for students with disabilities. It also showcases the Research to Practice Model, a conceptual framework that raises awareness of the complex links that are essential to uniting theoretical and practical efforts as we strive to enhance student engagement, success and belonging for all our students (ARACY, 2013; Grima-Farrell, 2017; Grima-Farrell, Loughland & Nguyen, 2020).
Session 4c	Active Engagement of Students with Disability in Physical Education, Sport and Representative Pathway Opportunities Anna Turnbull, Sydney Catholic Schools As educators, we need to determine the abilities of all students and define reasonable adjustments that may need to be implemented to support their participation in physical education, sport and fitness. Some students with disability require an adjusted physical education program to help promote physical fitness, fundamental motor skills and wellbeing, whereas others will simply need support and encouragement to participate in regular physical education activities. Anna will share two distinct elements that have assisted students’ engagement in physical education, sport and representative opportunities. 1. Support mechanisms: providing strategies and outlining the resources available to help support the practical application of reasonable adjustments for active participation in Physical Education and how teachers within Sydney Catholic Schools utilise these mechanisms to support student engagement. 2. Building opportunities: exploring the expanding landscape of participation in sport for students with disability, including both the benefits (self-esteem, sense of belonging and connectedness) and challenges faced (disability misconceptions, the tensions associated with competing participation criteria and building a culture of “having a go”).
2.45 - 2.50pm	Day One Summary Andrew Klein, Master of Ceremonies

Important Dates

Registrations Open

Open

Completing the DISruptABILITY Conference will contribute 8 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Accredited PD in the priority area of Students/children with Disability addressing standard descriptors 1.6.2, 1.5.2 and 7.3.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.

Program Overview

Host Organisation

Contact