This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.
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Author: Hunter Knight, Assistant Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies, Western University
A recent report entitled Crisis in the Classroom: Exclusion, Seclusion and Restraint of Students with Disabilities in Ontario Schools shares accounts of the frightening use of seclusion rooms in schools. It makes recommendations towards improving inclusion, belonging and educational achievement for disabled students.
The report is from Community Living Ontario, a non-profit organization that advocates for people who have an intellectual disability. It analyzes the results from a survey of 541 caregivers of students with disabilities about their experiences in Ontario schools.
Seclusion rooms are spaces where students can be kept in isolation and are not permitted to leave. Respondents to the Crisis in the Classroom report detailed incidents such as a student being secluded in a padded room, and a student being isolated in a small, closet-sized room.
While some school boards have developed guidance independently, there is currently no provincial policy on the use of seclusion rooms in Ontario. The Crisis in the Classroom report calls for clear and enforceable provincial regulations and policy around seclusion and restraint.
As an assistant professor of childhood and youth studies whose work examines constructions of the “problem child” and everyday injustices against disabled and racialized children, I believe it is critical for Ontario residents and policymakers to take stock of the negative effects of seclusion rooms and commit to alternatives.
I am unaffiliated with this report, but earlier in my career, I worked as as a one-on-one educational aide for students who attended a special education school that used seclusion.
Defining seclusion rooms
As education researchers Nadine Alice Bartlett and Taylor Floyd Ellis show, there is inconsistent terminology used to describe seclusion in schools, meaning that “the conditions under which such practices may be used in some instances are subjective,” and this “may contribute to a broad interpretation of what is deemed acceptable … in schools.”
As opposed to sensory rooms, which students can usually leave at will and are often designed with sensory tools available for self-regulation (like weighted toys), seclusion rooms serve to isolate or contain students.
Across North America, there are reports of seclusion rooms being built into schools or constructed in classroom corners.
In the Crisis in the Classroom report, 155 survey respondents said seclusion was used on their child in the 2022-23 school year, where seclusion means having a locked/blocked door (83 respondents) or being physically prevented from leaving (25 respondents).
Regular, sustained seclusion
Crisis in the Classroom notes that almost half of the students who had experienced seclusion were secluded on a regular basis, and more than 10 per cent were secluded for longer than three hours.
Research shows that seclusion is often discriminatory along lines of race, class and ability. Reflecting these patterns identified in larger research, the report flags that students had a higher risk for being secluded if they came from households with lower parental education and income levels, and if they were labelled with a behavioural identification or a mild intellectual disability.
More than half of the caregivers surveyed had never given permission for their children to be secluded, and the report includes quotes from caregivers who were never told it was happening.
Response to perceived source of school violence
Seclusion rooms are commonly justified as necessary tools to keep teachers and (other) students safe.
This justification ignores the evidenced success of schools that have reduced seclusion or eliminated it entirely through adequate staff support and trauma-informed training that draws from research-proven de-escalation strategies.
I argue that turning to these alternatives, as the report recommends, is of dire importance. Investigations elsewhere repeatedly find that seclusion rooms are most frequently used for discipline or punishment — not for safety.
Outside Ontario, where policy requires tracking the reasons why children are sent into seclusion, seclusion has followed incidents like spilling milk or asking for more food at lunch.
Seclusion rooms act primarily as a disciplinary tool that targets the most vulnerable students in our schools.
Ineffective, dangerous tools
Seclusion is an ineffective educational and therapeutic practice and highly dangerous: research shows that seclusion rooms increase injury and violence in schools.
This appears in the physical harm (for students and staff) that can occur in the physical restraints often required to force a student into a seclusion room. It also appears in the trauma that can ensue from seclusion (for students and staff) that increases the likelihood of future physical confrontations.
Placing students, often in high distress, into a locked space where they cannot be closely supervised can and has resulted in their deaths.
Seclusion without regulation
As the Crisis in the Classroom report and repeated exposés illustrate, a lack of policy does not mean seclusion isn’t happening in Ontario. It means seclusion is happening without provincial policy to regulate things like:
- Which students can or cannot be secluded, for how long and how often;
- What rooms for seclusion must look like and essential safety features;
- What data staff must collect about why seclusion rooms are used;
- When caregivers must be notified.
Without these guidelines, sometimes no one knows that seclusion is happening — much less in what spaces, for which students and why — beyond the students and school staff who may be traumatized by this practice.
Reports of violence in schools
Crisis in the Classroom notes that teachers’ unions have reported there’s been an increase in violence by students against teachers, often presented in a way that suggests that disabled students are a primary source of this violence. The report acknowledges that the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has said that students with special education needs have been “chronically under-served by the government.”
News media coverage, the report suggests, “often takes the side of educational staff, and has an unfortunate habit of conflating disability with aggressive behaviour.”
Unfortunately, the faulty perspective that disabled students are a source of school violence depends on an ableist logic that has worked historically to subject disabled people to over-incarceration. It effaces the fact that disabled children are actually more likely to be subjected to violence than their peers.
The report points to the dire need to eliminate seclusion and turn towards possibilities that do not increase violence in schools and target disabled students.
The report’s recommendations echo calls from teachers’ unions for appropriate, adequate staffing in schools and increased professional development, especially trauma-informed training, that would support teachers’ work delivering supportive and inclusive education that keeps everyone safe.
And these recommendations make an urgent call for strong and clear policy on seclusion and restraint in Ontario that would severely limit it or eliminate it entirely — and at least track when it’s occurring.
Safer and more humane schools
This devastating report illustrates that we need policy on seclusion in Ontario now to protect everyone in our schools.
I know first-hand that teaching, especially for educators working with students with disabilities, is underpaid and underappreciated work.
More humane practices will keep schools safer for everyone, including teachers and all students, especially students who are still being subjected to seclusion today.
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Hunter Knight receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.?
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article: https://theconversation.com/seclusion-rooms-dont-make-schools-safe-and-ontario-needs-a-policy-259010
Hunter Knight, Assistant Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies, Western University, The Conversation
