[Gentle music]
David Watson: I applied for the Masters in Applied Behaviour Analysis. It offered the skills that I needed to learn at this point in time in my life.
[On-screen text: Master of Inclusive Education Program – Monash University – Applied Behaviour Analysis]
Jonathan Stone: Yarra Me School is a small primary school. We provide specialist programs for essentially primary aged students who are struggling to settle into their regular mainstream learning.
David Watson: My role is the outreach teacher. I go out to the school for two days a week for a term and deal with three children that have been referred that are having trouble engaging in the classroom.
Jonathan Stone: You hear that term which is bandied about now. It takes a village. This is our take on that. It takes a team around the learner to provide the environment within which that student can learn. Applied Behaviour Analysis is attempting to draw out what skills that child needs to communicate the need in a more functional way.
Jonathan Stone: It's David's capability of working with the student, the school, all the adults involved to divine what's going on below the waterline, because if you're influencing that, you're then influencing what's visible outside, so the behaviours.
David Watson: I think the teachers have got to really believe that you know what you're talking about and you believe that the changes are possible. The course – it’s put a structure around the knowledge that I previously had. It's allowed me to go out to schools and more confidently share what I know. I think the main thing I got from the masters was a renewed energy to learn.
Jonathan Stone: To understand complexity, you need to be able to reflect, inquire, explore. An advantage of doing this level of study. It gives you not only opportunity to stop and think. It gives you constructs to use to guide your thinking. And that's real power there.
David Watson: Going back at this age, I was thinking more clearly than I had before. I was writing essays that I wouldn't have thought I could have written. The masters has put me on a road to learn more for the rest of my life.
[On-screen text: Disability Inclusion – Education for All - Victorian State Government – Authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne]
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