Students in hospitals suffer disadvantages through being disconnected from educational opportunities. To limit lost opportunities, hospital schools are using video conferencing as a form of transformative pedagogy. There has been research published on linking students in hospitals to their home schools using video conferencing. There is limited research examining connecting students from the hospital ward to the hospital classroom and to the community. This chapter focuses on the use of video conferencing to facilitate interactions of students on hospital wards in support of their education. The research was undertaken in a children's hospital where an intervention was put in place to facilitate interactions between the hospital ward, classroom, and a community setting. The study utilises qualitative methodology employing direct observation, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire. Results of the study demonstrate that teachers were able to provide opportunities to support students to connect to the hospital classroom and to the wider community in ways that support learning.
TopIntroduction
A significant number of young people are hospitalised each year in Australia with a total of 288, 585 hospital separations (when an episode of care for an admitted patient is completed) from 2017 to 2018 involving children aged between five to 14 years old according to the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (AIHW, 2019). According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), during 2017 to 2018, it was estimated that among children aged between 0–14, 24.2% of males and 15.9% of females had a chronic condition (ABS, 2018). A chronic condition is defined as a “a health condition or disorder that has lasted or is expected to last for six months or more” (ABS, 2007). The percentage of those who required or will require hospitalisation is not known but is significant as the figures indicate.
Legally, all youth under the age of 17 in Australia must be provided with an education. Where they are in hospital for a period of time or in and out for short stays, the hospital school steps in and fulfils the role of the home school. Whilst there are no firm regulations regarding how soon students should be enrolled in hospital schools, in the school where the research was undertaken, the guidelines were that once students have been in hospital for five days, they were then enrolled as a student.
If students are unable to attend the hospital classroom because of health-related issues but that are not too serious to prevent them from learning, then a teacher visits them in the hospital ward for approximately 30 minutes a day. Even though this occurs, the students are isolated from their peers and miss out on many of the educational opportunities that students in the hospital classroom experience.
One way that students on wards can have their learning supported is by being connected to the hospital classroom and the wider community through the use of communication technologies. Much of the research that examines communication technologies for students on hospital wards tends to focus on using the internet to connect students with similar health conditions or connect to the students’ home school. To date, there has been limited research conducted focusing on the use of communication technologies to connect students on hospital wards to the hospital classroom and the wider community. It is argued in this chapter that facilitating communication in such a way has benefits for students, both socially and educationally.
This chapter follows on from preliminary work carried out in Sydney, Australia, where teachers and parents in four Australasian hospital schools were surveyed about the use of ICT in the schools (Perry et al., 2014). Results of the survey indicated that over 80% of teachers and 85% of parents believed that online access was beneficial both socially and academically for reducing isolation for children whilst in hospital.
In this chapter the use of Skype and Google hangout as communication tools to facilitate communication between wards, the hospital classroom and a community setting is explored where transformative pedagogies are employed. The research consisted of recording two lessons. In the first lesson, Skype was used to connect a student on the hospital ward to the hospital classroom. In the second lesson Google Hangout was used to connect students on the hospital ward to the hospital classroom and to a dental surgery. The two lessons were developed in conjunction with the researcher and hospital staff.
This chapter focuses on transformative pedagogy, which emphasises the democratisation of knowledge and educational practice (Cummins, 2015). In the context of this chapter, communication technologies are able to provide opportunities for students who would otherwise be prevented from continuing their studies due to health conditions. Additionally, access to social connections among hospital students’ is also crucial. Such connections provide for a democratisation of social practices.
A report by the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education and Training (NSW DET, 2003) on quality teaching reinforces the importance of quality of pedagogy as being the factor that “...most directly and most powerfully affects the quality of learning outcomes that students demonstrate...” (p. 4). This chapter examines the types of online pedagogies used by teachers and how this enabled students on hospital wards to have access to learning and social opportunities.