The ICF-CY as a tool to enhance communication between education
professionals: Applying the ICF coding rules to education documents
Gregor Maxwell#
Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, Sweden Ines Alves*
Italian National Counselling on Disability, Italy Marta Moretti¤
Zurich University Of Applied Sciences and Arts, School of Education, Switzerland A round table discussion paper presented at the JURE 2010 conference in Frankfurt.
Abstract
The International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) and its child and youth derivative the ICF-CY is meant to be a universal language for professionals working with
functioning and health in children and adults. Use of the ICF-CY's codes in educational documents which refer to individual characteristics – such as individual education plans – could greatly enhance communication between support professionals. To date this has not been attempted. This paper proposes to use and adapt an established health and rehabilitation-based coding
methodology (Cieza et al., 2005) to do this.
This project looks to validate and adapt the use of ICF coding rules on education documents. This project will also validate whether ICF-CY codes give a good description of a child and their learning environment, or whether the ICF-CY could be better used in another way to construct a tool to do this. This study also aims to establish whether the ICF-CY can be directly used to enhanced communication between differing education support professionals and between support professionals and parents.
Initially devised in 2002 (Cieza et al., 2002) with an update in 2005 (Cieza et al., 2005) there currently exists coding rules or guidelines for coding textual information to ICF values. This has so far only been applied in the health and rehabilitation field. We propose to use these in education by coding information specific to individuals (such as that found in individual education plans).
Introduction & background
The ICF emerged in 2001 as a complementary classification of functioning and aims to provide a balanced interpretation of a person's functionality from three key perspectives: the activity and its involvement, the body, and the environment. Descriptions of functioning are given by using codes related to the three perspectives with qualifiers giving an indication of functioning and the level of influence that contextual aspects have. The ICF is based on a biopsychosocial model (Fig. 1) which emphasizes that the needs of persons with disabilities are not just medical but more broadly, social, educational and functional in nature (Simeonsson et al., 2003). Disability is understood as a complex interaction between health condition and contextual factors and not as an attribute of a person (Leonardi et al., 2006). In 2007 a child and youth version – an evolutionary development
based on the same theoretical framework and referred to as ICF-CY (WHO, 2007) – was published to address child-specific aspects.
The ICF (and more recently the ICF-CY) has been strongly adopted by the Health and
Rehabilitation fields as a tool for enhancing interprofessional communication (see Allan et al., 2006; McDougall et al., 2008; Stephenson & Richardson, 2008 for examples). The ICF-CY is also currently being analysed as a potential way to enhance communication and recording of records in Child Health- and School Health-Services in Sweden (Ståhl et al., in preparation 2009) and could similarly be used to enhance communication amongst educational professionals themselves. From Maxwell et al.'s (in press 2011) education policy analysis, applying Cieza's (2005) coding method to educational policy documents is not a useful approach as much of the text comes under poorly defined environment codes (e.g. e585, education systems and policies). The more individual and functional nature of the information contained in documents such as individual education plans would be more suitable and render more useful results.
When coding text because of the interpretive nature of the process a specific approach is needed. Cieza et al. (2002) proposed ten linking rules with a revision to eight in 2005 (Cieza et al., 2005) along with a set of good-practice guidelines based on empirical evidence on which to base further study. These coding guidelines are currently undergoing further revisions (A. Cieza, XXX, & XXX, in preparation, 2009) and this project intends to complement this work.
Research questions
Is the 'coding rules' method valid in education?
Can ICF-CY codes give a good description of the child and their learning situation? Can communication between different support professionals and between support
professionals and parents be enhanced by using ICF-CY domains and/or categories?
Method & Design
Individual support documents which refer to individuals' functioning in a school context (e.g. individual support plans) will be coded using ICF-CY values. Documents will be sourced from schools in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.
Data anlaysis
The overall analysis method will be manifest content analysis after the application of the ICF coding rules to education documents which contain personal/functional information. For each case the information gathered will be divided into meaning units and their related meaning concepts and then, to allow the linking of these concepts, will be coded with ICF-CY values and categories using an adaptation of the guidelines set down by Cieza et al. (2005).
Results
The data obtained will be ICF-CY codes for various functional aspects of an individual from an educational perspective. Exact outcomes can not be predicted however, the ICF-CY chapters and domains themselves may be better received by education professionals as opposed to the extensive and sometimes complex codes.
Discussion
The potential results of this study could better prepare support professionals in an educational setting to provide relevant additional support where currently there exists either complex written reports or simplistic categorical diagnosis, neither of which are particularly effective in practice. There will also be enhanced communication amongst support professionals as some areas of health support in Schools (e.g. school nursing in Sweden, see Ståhl et al., in preparation 2009) already use the ICF-CY and so people from different disciplines can better communicate. A tool based on the ICF/ICF-CY domains could be more helpful than a code-based system as it could be tailored to current education professionals' expectations.
References
Allan, C., Campbell, W., Guptill, C, Stephenson, F, Campbell, K. (2006). A conceptual model for interprofessional education: The international classification of functioning, disability and health (ICF). Journal of Interprofessional Care, 20(3), 235-245.
Cieza, A., Brockow, T., Ewert, T., Amman, E., Kollerits, B., Chatterji, S., et al. (2002). Linking health-status measurements to the international classification of functioning, disability and health. Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 34, 205-210.
Cieza, A., Geyh, S., Chatterji, S., Kostanjsek, N., Üstün, B., & Stucki, G. (2005). ICF linking rules: an update based on lessons learned. Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 37, 212-218.
Cieza, A., XXX, & XXX. (in preparation, 2009). Further revisions to the ICF linking rules.
Leonardi, M., Bickenbach, J., Üstün, T. B., Kostanjsek, N., & Chatterji, S. (2006). The definition of disability: what is in a name? Lancet, 368(9543), 1219-1221.
Maxwell, G. & Granlund, M., (in press 2011). How are conditions for participation expressed in education policy documents? A review of documents in Scotland and Sweden. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 26 (2), 251-272
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WHO. (2001). International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. Geneva: WHO. WHO. (2007). International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Version for Children and Youth, ICF-CY. Geneva: WHO.
