What it is

School-Based Support Service is a professional service that helps a child learn, take part, interact, and carry out school activities in an increasingly effective and independent way.

A School Support Professional (shadow teacher or accompanying teacher) is an external professional who works collaboratively with the teacher and the school to understand the child's individual needs and decide what form of support fits everyday learning. Support can include learning accommodations, modifications where needed, executive functioning support, emotional and behavioral regulation, social skills, and the child's functional abilities at school.

The form of support is always adjusted to the child's needs and to the school's curriculum and learning system. For some children, the academic curriculum stays the same as their peers' and only certain accommodations are needed. For others, more individualized adjustments are set out in a Program Pembelajaran Individual (PPI), Indonesia's equivalent of an Individualized Education Program (IEP).

This principle of support based on individual need is in line with the reasonable accommodation policy for students with disabilities in Indonesia's Ministerial Regulation No. 48 of 2023 (Permendikbudristek No. 48 Tahun 2023), which covers support through educators and education staff, facilities, and curriculum.

Supporting Independence, Not Dependence

At Temenos, the School Support Professional is not simply a helper who stays constantly at the child's side or takes over things the child could learn to do alone. Support is directed at helping the child gradually do more things independently, including:

  • understanding and following the demands of school activities;
  • starting, organizing, and finishing tasks;
  • sustaining attention and using learning strategies;
  • asking for help appropriately;
  • managing emotions and behavior;
  • solving problems;
  • interacting with peers; and
  • carrying out functional school activities with growing independence.

The literature on one-to-one support shows that support that is too close or poorly planned can increase reliance on the School Support Professional and limit student independence. Support is therefore planned with clear goals, reviewed regularly, and reduced step by step as the child's skills develop (Scheef et al., 2023).

Supporting Independence, Not Dependence.

The Temenos Collaborative Approach

Collaboration does not only mean working with the school and parents. Within the Temenos team itself there is shared observation, professional discussion, supervision, reflection, and continuous professional development.

Depending on the child's needs, one child may be supported by two Temenos professionals who take turns working on different days, using jointly agreed targets, principles, and strategies. This is not simply a rotating schedule. The two School Support Professionals work as one team: sharing observations, documenting the child's responses, discussing strategies, and reviewing progress regularly.

With more than one perspective, the team can discuss which strategies are effective, which situations are challenging for the child, how much help is still needed, which supports can start to be reduced, how the child responds to different people and contexts, and which skills need further development.

The literature stresses role clarity, communication, collaboration, training, and supervision for school support staff. When the School Support Professional's role is unclear or support is too close, they risk taking over instructional and social roles that should stay connected to the teacher and peers (Sharma & Salend, 2016). The two-professionals model is Temenos's own service model; the literature cited supports the principles behind it.

Supervision and Continuous Professional Development

Support professionals do not work alone without direction. Cases and the child's progress are discussed through supervision to review observations, evaluate the effectiveness of strategies, make sure the School Support Professional's role stays appropriate, and plan next steps. The team considers, for example:

  • Are the accommodations effective?
  • How can the child do particular parts more independently?
  • Do strategies need adjusting, individually or for the whole class?
  • Is the difficulty more about the child's ability, the task demands, or the learning environment?
  • Are the teacher and the School Support Professional using strategies consistently enough?
  • How can support be reduced gradually without taking away the child's chances to succeed?

Shared goals. Shared strategies. Professional supervision. Continuous learning. Regular reflection.

From Consistency to Generalization

One important aim of support is to help the child use the skills they learn with different people, in different activities, and in different situations. In the learning sciences this is called generalization.

A child may manage a skill with one particular person, but not necessarily with a different teacher, in a different class, or in a different situation. Generalization therefore has to be planned for, not assumed to happen on its own (Stokes & Baer, 1977).

In the Temenos model, consistency does not mean the child must always be with the same person. What stays consistent are the targets, expectations, structure, support principles, and the way the team responds to the child's needs.

From "I can because a particular person helps me" toward "I have strategies I can use in many situations."

Working with the Classroom, Not Separately from It

Temenos School Support Professionals do not work as a system separate from the teacher and the class. Together with the teacher, the School Support Professional looks at the child's needs and at the environmental factors that can be adjusted so the child can learn and take part better. Adjustments can include:

  • seating and learning-environment arrangements;
  • how instructions are given;
  • the use of visual supports;
  • breaking tasks into more structured steps;
  • transition strategies between activities;
  • classroom management;
  • emotional and behavioral regulation strategies;
  • executive functioning support;
  • opportunities for peer interaction; and
  • academic accommodations or modifications where needed.

This approach helps the team ask not only "What should the child do differently?" but also "What can be adjusted in the environment so the child has a better chance to succeed?" (Sharma & Salend, 2016).

Collaboration with School and Parents

A child's development does not happen in one place only. This service therefore involves communication and collaboration with teachers, the school, parents, and other professionals involved, as needed. Collaborative meetings can cover the child's progress, learning targets, accommodations or modifications, regulation strategies, growing independence, the strategies used at school, and next steps.

If the child has a PPI/IEP, the Temenos team can be one of the professional parties that contributes observations and discusses them with parents and the school, so that support at school, at home, and in individual intervention is coordinated.

Integrated with Educational Therapy

At Temenos, School-Based Support Service is delivered in an integrated way with Educational Therapy. The two have different functions but complement each other.

School is a complex natural environment. At any one time a child may be expected to listen to instructions, sustain attention, remember information, organize tasks, start and finish work, regulate emotions, adapt, interact, and meet academic demands.

How does the child function in the real learning environment?

School-Based Support Service lets the team observe how the child's abilities are really used in context. Educational Therapy then provides an individual setting to target the relevant skills, for example executive functioning, attention and self-regulation, language and comprehension, working memory, learning strategies, problem solving, academic skills, and independence.

Difficulties seen at school inform the individual targets in Educational Therapy. In turn, the strategies developed in Educational Therapy are brought back into school with the School Support Professional's help. Progress is reviewed through observation, documentation, team discussion, and supervision.

Our Goal

Temenos's aim is not to keep support going for as long as possible. It is to help the child build their own capacity, so that step by step they can use strategies, take part in learning, and meet the demands of school with growing independence.

How can today's support help the child need less support tomorrow?

Support follows these principles: avoiding over-reliance on one-to-one support and planning to fade it; keeping roles clear between teacher and School Support Professional; building collaboration within the educational team; providing supervision, training, and coaching; planning generalization across people and settings; using targeted intervention suited to needs and context; and providing reasonable accommodations.

References

  • Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, dan Teknologi Republik Indonesia. (2023). Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, dan Teknologi Nomor 48 Tahun 2023 tentang Akomodasi yang Layak untuk Peserta Didik Penyandang Disabilitas pada Satuan Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini Formal, Pendidikan Dasar, Pendidikan Menengah, dan Pendidikan Tinggi. Berita Negara Republik Indonesia Tahun 2023 Nomor 612. https://peraturan.bpk.go.id/Details/285711/permendikbudriset-no-48-tahun-2023
  • Scheef, A. R., Hollingshead, A., Malone, K., Sherman, W. M., Seamans, A., Sabala, T., & Carson, J. (2023). Increasing the independence of students with disabilities in the classroom through indirect paraprofessional support. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 56(2), 82–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400599221143457
  • Sharma, U., & Salend, S. J. (2016). Teaching assistants in inclusive classrooms: A systematic analysis of the international research. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 41(8), 118–134. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n8.7
  • Stokes, T. F., & Baer, D. M. (1977). An implicit technology of generalization. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 10(2), 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1977.10-349