Opinion and Perspective

Special Needs Training in ELTPrograms as a Part of Continuing
Professional Development
Robert J. Lowe
Tokyo Kasei University
In my final year as a teacher working on a large ELT program at a Japanese
university in 2014, I was tasked with integrating a blind student into my class.
This was a situation for which neither my practical nor my academic training had
prepared me and was one that therefore presented something of a challenge. The
specific ways in which I dealt with this situation are the subject of another article(Lowe, 2015), but being placed into this position made me aware of a wider issue
within the tertiary-level ELT industry in Japan: the lack of teachers with special
needs training in large English teaching programs at Japanese universities. This is
an issue that is likely to become more pronounced with the increase of English
programs that are mandatory for all undergraduate students, and so it is one, I
believe, which merits our attention.
In this article I will first provide some background on the number of disabledstudents in Japanese higher education (particularly those with visual impairments,
auditory impairments, and physical disabilities), and the kinds of support
available to these students in universities. I will then discuss some of the specificdifficulties that may be faced by students with disabilities in English classes, aswell as the difficulties that these issues can present to teachers when planningand conducting lessons. Finally, I will attempt to make the argument that special
needs training should be a part of the continuing professional development ofteachers in large English programs in Japanese universities in order to provide a
positive classroom experience both for learners and for teachers. I do not claim to50

Special Needs Training in ELT Programs, OnCUE Journal, 9(1), pages 50-58

be an expert in special needs teaching myself, and in fact it is my lack of training
in this area that has inspired my concern about the need for more specialized
training for English language teachers.

Disabled students in Japanese higher education

In this section I will look at the number of Japanese university students who
are registered as disabled, the laws that have been passed to help improvethese students’ educational experiences, and the steps that have been taken by
universities to provide for the special needs of these students.
Number of students
As with many other countries, there are a significant number of students enrolled
in Japanese universities who are classified as having disabilities. In 2014, thenumber of students with disabilities studying in Japanese universities was 13,449
out of a total of 3,213,518, or 0.42% of all students ( Japan Student Services
Organization, 2014). This may seem like a fairly insignificant number, but it iscertainly large enough to be a concern for their educators. And for each student
who may find themselves in a class with a teacher who has not had the opportunity
to undergo appropriate training, it is clearly of significance.
Laws and provisions
There have been recent changes to the law in Japan aimed at increasing provisions
for people with disabilities, including students. In 2013 the Japanese Act on
the Elimination of Disability Discrimination was passed (“Dare mo okizari ni
shinai” sekai ni, 2013), which requires public universities to provide support
and accommodation for students with disabilities, as well as encouraging private
universities to do the same. This law was introduced in 2013, and institutions
were required to have fully complied with it by 2016. Despite this, it is possiblethat these measures may not have been fully enacted. However, this is not to saythat disabled students do not have access to certain levels of support from their
universities already. Universities often have a student support center, designed
to care for the needs of all of their students, including those with disabilities. In
addition, universities may be able to provide specific services to students who
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have special needs. For example, disabled students may have access to student
volunteers who can help guide them around the campus or to assistants who may
help students in note taking during lectures.
These provisions are useful, and it is of course important that students haveaccess to these kinds of resources. However, it is often not a requirement thatteachers and lecturers have any specialist training in teaching students withdisabilities. This is surprising, as this was one of the recommendations madein the Tokyo Foundation Policy Proposal on Higher Education for Individuals
with Disabilities (Tokyo Foundation, 2013), which argued that “assistance forstudents with disabilities can be enhanced by nurturing faculty members withspecialized knowledge and skills” (p.55). If this is accepted, then it is crucial for
us to look at making improvements to the ongoing and professional developmentof practitioners. In the following section I will discuss some of the problems that
may be faced by students with visual, auditory, and physical impairments in theirEnglish classes.

Potential difficulties for disabled students in
English classes

There are a number of potential difficulties that may be faced by students withdifferent kinds of disabilities in English lessons, some of which I will describe inthis section. These difficulties are not necessarily specific to English study, but
are certainly relevant to language teaching and are issues that have been written
about in the professional literature surrounding disabled students in foreign
language learning contexts.
Issues with mobility and classroom management
It is common for English classes to feature a lot of movement, as a teacher may
wish to switch pairs, change group members during tasks, do activities involving
movement around the classroom, ask students to come to the front of the class,and so on. These kinds of activities are likely to cause problems for students
with physical disabilities for whom movement may be challenging and may alsopresent difficulties for visually impaired students, who may require guidance52

Special Needs Training in ELT Programs, OnCUE Journal, 9(1), pages 50-58

around the classroom.
In addition, instructions may need to be adapted in order to be comprehensible
to all members of the class. Blind students, for example, may require more oral
reinforcement of instructions through repetition, as they do not have the writtenmaterial to guide them. They may also find it beneficial for the teacher to use thenames of the other students in their instructions, especially when putting groups
together, as they will otherwise be unaware of who is engaging in each activity(Lowe, 2015). Deaf students may also need special consideration in terms of
instructions, as they will need to be positioned in a part of the classroom where
they can see either the lips of the teacher or the instructions written on the board.
Issues with materials
For students with visual or auditory impairments, special considerations may
have to be made with regard to materials in order for them to be accessible to allmembers of the class. Enjelvin (2009), in a case study of a blind undergraduate
student studying French, found that through the use of a number of strategies it
was possible to adapt materials in a way which made the content of the course
accessible to the blind student as well as to his sighted classmates. These strategies
included the use of Braille translations of materials, as well as the creative
employment of learning technologies such as quiz programs and specialized Web
sites. Similar techniques were utilized in a case study of an undergraduate student
at Coventry University (Orsini-Jones, Courtney, & Dickinson, 2005), in which
the instructors adapted materials to make them less text-heavy and otherwise
more accessible to their non-sighted student.
Materials and course design may also pose a challenge to deaf learners enrolled
in foreign language courses, as these students do not have access to the auditory
support available to the other students. As Mayer (2009) notes, “the deaf ESL
learner lacks access to a primary form of the L1” (p. 6) and therefore makes thecase that “the design of typical ESL programs, with their initial emphasis onconversational English, is not appropriate” (p. 6). In addition, Mayer (2009)
argues that “deaf students require programs which address the fact that theyoften lack basic aspects of English which other ESL students have ‘picked up’
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via their ever-expanding knowledge of its spoken form” (p. 6), meaning that amore systematic approach needs to be taken in teaching these students, as they
do not have a store of linguistic knowledge that they have absorbed from theirsurroundings. This gives some idea of the challenges facing ESL learners withauditory disabilities compared to their hearing classmates and also provides someinsight into the amount of effort that is required on the part of teachers when
integrating these students in their classes.
A further point is that students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia
may need their materials to be written on different colored paper or on speciallydesigned Web sites in order for them to make text easier to understand andrecognize (Schneider & Crombie, 2003).
Issues of production
Students with disabilities may also have problems with producing aspectsof their second language. Blind students may have issues producing written
English, especially in terms of handwriting and may require more time than theirclassmates to produce written work. They may even need an assistant to whomthey can dictate their work during lessons. Producing written work may also be
an issue for students with physical disabilities, who may not have the dexterity to
produce handwritten work during classes.
Problems of production may also be an issue among deaf students, particularly,
as Swisher (1989) notes, in terms of pronunciation. Having not heard thelanguage spoken and not being able to hear themselves speak, their production ofEnglish sounds may be inaccurate or unclear. Consequently, teachers may need tospend more time than usual on coaching deaf students in the mechanical aspectsof their speech production.
This overview of some of the issues that may face disabled students in EFL
classes is not intended to be exhaustive, and it is likely that other issues may also
occur in the classroom. Nevertheless, it is clear even from this brief discussionthat there are a number of potential issues that may emerge when attempting tointegrate students with disabilities into English classes, and it is important forteachers to be aware of these potential issues in order for students to effectively
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Special Needs Training in ELT Programs, OnCUE Journal, 9(1), pages 50-58

learn. This naturally raises the question of how this can be achieved, and it is thisto which I shall turn in the following section.

Special needs training as a part of continuing
professional development

In the case study at Coventry University referred to earlier (Orsini-Jones, Courtney,& Dickinson, 2005), the authors note that this was the first blind student who
had entered the modern languages course, and that the staff members accordingly“were on a steep learning curve,” during which they found that “adjusting material
was very time consuming” (p. 150). This brings us neatly to the central argument
I am seeking to make in this article: that it would be beneficial both for students
and teachers if the continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers were
to focus, to some degree, on ways of teaching learners with disabilities.
CPD is an important part of the professional lives of teachers and isencouraged in many of the large EFL programs in Japanese universities. This
professional development may take many different forms. In some cases, CPD
may occur as a series of in-house faculty development training sessions, focusing
on the development of the specific methodology used on the program. It may also
involve the invitation of outside speakers to give talks or to present workshops
focused on improving the teaching skills and knowledge of the faculty. CPD may
additionally take the form of individual action research conducted by teachers on
particular aspects of their own classroom teaching. Whatever form CPD takes,
it is usually strongly encouraged by the management of these programs, as it islikely to lead to more skilled teachers, more effective methods of instruction, andconsequently a better reputation for the faculty and potentially higher student
numbers. I believe that, considering the number of students with disabilities
currently studying in Japanese universities and the fact that laws recently passed
will require reforms to the ways in which these students are treated, CPD in large
EFL programs should feature a focus on teaching students with disabilities.
This CPD could take a number of different forms. As mentioned earlier, I wasrecently placed in the position of teaching a blind student without any formal
training. As such, my professional development took the form of action research,
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during which I experimented with different approaches to integrating the blind
student into the class while maintaining the core learning aims and features of thecourse. I then relayed these experiences to other instructors in the department
through informal discussions and internally distributed written documents.
While this was a suitable approach to take in this one exceptional case, it
seems unlikely that such an approach to CPD would be able to achieve the wide
coverage needed to bring all teachers up to an equal level of skill in teachingthese students. In order to achieve this, other approaches to CPD are likely to
be more effective. In particular, it may be useful to bring in outside experts who
can run workshops on how to teach students with different kinds of disabilities.
The benefits of these kinds of workshops are numerous; they can be presented
by experts with specialized knowledge, can be conducted with large groups of
instructors, and can achieve the kind of wide coverage that individual action
research would be unable to attain.
While specialized workshops like this may be the ideal form for this kindof CPD to take, it may not be feasible for all courses to host workshops of thisnature, due either to cost, scheduling, or other factors. In this case, it may bepossible for program managers or instructors to research appropriate techniqueson their own, and then present faculty development sessions on particular aspectsof teaching practice or class management. These CPD sessions can take place
on a number of different topics but may most fruitfully focus on some of theissues outlined above—those concerning classroom management, accessibility ofmaterials, and issues of language production.
In whatever way these CPD sessions are conducted, I believe that this kindof training is important for teachers working on large ELT programs in Japanese
universities to have an opportunity to develop their teaching skills to include theeducation of students with disabilities.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that the teaching of students with disabilities should
form a part of the continuing professional development of teachers on large ELT
programs in Japanese universities. As more of these programs are created, and as56

Special Needs Training in ELT Programs, OnCUE Journal, 9(1), pages 50-58

the law changes to enforce the equal treatment of disabled students in universities,
it will be important for teachers and instructors to be versed in some of the ways
in which disabled students can be effectively integrated into English classes.
This, I feel, should be undertaken as part of the CPD of teachers and should
be encouraged and facilitated by their faculties and departments. The additionof these features to CPD sessions would contribute positively to the ability of
instructors to teach disabled students alongside their classmates and create apositive teaching and learning atmosphere for both instructors and students.

References“Dare mo okizari ni shinai” sekai ni [We shouldn’t leave anyone in the world].
(2013, September 23). Mainichi Shinbun, p .8.
Enjelvin, D. G. (2009). Teaching French to a non-sighted undergraduate:
Adjusting practices to deliver inclusive education. Journal of Further andHigher Education, 33(3), 265-279.
Japan Student Services Organization. (2014). Shougai no aru gakusei no
shuugaku shien ni kan suru jittai chousa [Fact finding survey on supporting
higher educational opportunities for students with disabilities]. Retrieved
from http://www.jasso.go.jp/tokubetsu_shien/chosa.html
Lowe, R. (2015). Integrating blind students. English Teaching Professional, 99,
16-18.
Mayer, C. (2009). Issues in second language literacy education with learners
who are deaf. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism,
12(3), 1-11.
Orsini-Jones, M., Courtney, K., & Dickinson, A. (2005). Supporting foreign
language learning for a blind student: A case from Coventry University.
Support for Learning, 20(3), 146-152.
Schneider, E., & Crombie, M. (2003). Dyslexia and foreign language learning.
Oxford, England: David Fulton Publishing.
Swisher, M. V. (1989). The language learning situation of deaf students. TESOL
Quarterly, 23(2), 239-258.
Tokyo Foundation. (2013). Shougaisha no koutou kyouiku ni kan suru teigen
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[Tokyo Foundation Policy Proposal on Higher Education for Individuals
with Disabilities]. Retrieved from http://www.tkfd.or.jp/files/doc/201204.pdf (Translation available at: http://www.tokyofoundation.org/en/
articles/2013/expanding-academic-advancement-opportunities)

Author Bio

Robert Lowe has been living and working in Japan since 2008 and is currently
a lecturer at Tokyo Kasei University and a co-host of the TEFLology podcast. He
holds a diploma in TESOL, an MA in Applied Linguistics, and is a PhD student inApplied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University. robert-l@tokyo-kasei.
ac.jp
Received: March 4, 2015
Accepted: August 28, 2015

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