The impact of a professional development programme on teachers' attitudes towards inclusion

This article describes a study that aimed to answer the following question: ‘Will a programme of professional development in the area of special and inclusive education be effective in achieving attitudinal shift in teachers?’ Forty‐eight teachers who were enrolled on a Master's programme in Special and Inclusive Education were surveyed via a questionnaire at the beginning and end of a ten‐week introductory module. The results indicated overall attitudinal shift and attitudinal shift for four categories of inclusion to suggest more positive attitudes at the end of the module, compared with at the beginning. The implications for providers of pre‐ and in‐service education and training courses for teachers are discussed.     

Who goes to SLD schools? Aspects of policy and provision for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties who attend special schools in England

This article focuses on aspects of policy and provision for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) who attend special schools in England. The findings reported below are from a larger study, which aimed to answer the question: ‘Who Goes to SLD Schools in England?’     

Imagining the Future: What Anarchism Brings to Education

The authors review Judith Suissa's provocative book , Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective, a text that demonstrates the central role of education in anarchist theory. Suissa compellingly argues against the charges that anarchism is overly idealistic and impractical, instead seeing its potential for innovative and liberatory educational change. The authors suggest, however, that an enhanced conversation among critical pedagogy, antiracist pedagogy and anarchist thinking on education can help to show both the continued relevance of radical and creative thinking, and that anarchist thought has been part of the development of oppositional, critical, collaborative, teaching and learning projects .     

Insight into Industry: one school's approach

Leadership provided by the headteacher is widely acknowledged to be a crucial variable in determining the effectiveness of schools. However, the majority of leadership studies consist of either surveys or interviews which the researcher has conducted with head teachers or case studies written by the head teachers which draw heavily upon their own experience, and as such are essentially 'autobiographical' in the perspective they provide on leadership in schools (Ribbins &; Sherratt, 1992). The objectives of this article are to: set out a new model of effective school leadership based on recently completed empirical research; demonstrate how the multi-perspective methodology adopted contributed to a critique of existing models of leadership and the development of a new grounded model and discuss the analytical issues raised by the multi-perspective methodology which involved all the stakeholders in a school community.     

Significant Life Experiences and Formative Influences on the Development of Adults’ Environmental Awareness in the UK,Australia and Canada

Environmental educators in Australia (n = 82), and Canada (n = 48) wrote autobiographical statements describing the formative influences and significant life experiences (SLE) which led to their concern for the environment. Content analysis identified the influences/experiences mentioned most often, both as single factors, e.g. ‘close family’, and as groups of logically related factors, e.g. ‘people’, a group composed of the factors ‘close family’, ‘older friends'’, ‘friends'’, and ‘having children’. The final lists of single factors were similar but not identical in the two countries, and both differed slightly from the list already derived from a sample of environmental educators in the UK (n = 233). Here we present the single and grouped factors named most often in Australia, then do the same for Canada, and then compare the principal factors in all three nations.     

40天环游世界

从莱特兄弟那里汲取了灵感的三体帆船“大水翼号”,正试图打破40天驾船环游世界的纪录。