Count me in': Students with chronic illness continue mathematics study through connection with their teachers during absence

Involvement in their school community provides children and young people with opportunities for participation that benefit them educationally. Their inclusion and sense of belonging can be disrupted by the experience of chronic illness. More than 10% of Australian children and young people are considered to have a chronic health condition. Many of these conditions can be managed without significant interruption to a young person’s normal schooling trajectory. For others a chronic illness results in substantial absence from school for prolonged or accumulative periods of time and the likelihood of educational disadvantage, which impacts on their quality of life and employment prospects. Although on-site hospital schools traditionally provide learning programs for children and young people during hospitalisation, medical advances and decentralised approaches to healthcare have resulted in shorter hospitals stays and reduced access to educational support. Recuperating at home, many children and young people are out of reach of hospital schools but are too unwell to attend their own schools, increasing the potential for isolation and disruption to their education. Previous research has found that students with chronic illness want to continue with their school studies and maintain connection to their schools during absence. The need to consider ways to achieve this arose in the context of a research project called Link ‘n Learn. Funded by an Australian Research Council linkage grant, it has investigated the utilisation of increasingly flexible communications technologies to enable children and young people, hospitalised or recuperating at home, to continue with their school studies through connections to their teachers, peers and schools. This paper focuses on one part of the Link ‘n Learn project: a collective case study of 22 participants – Years 10, 11 and 12 students and their mathematics teachers. It discusses issues surrounding the process of establishing and sustaining connections between teachers and their students. A model highlighting different purposes for interaction is presented, and facilitators of and impediments to academic continuity in mathematics are discussed.

Key Phrase: Secondary schooling; chronic illness; school absence; academic continuity; mathematics; digital technologies