Researching Special Needs

In the March 2002 issue of BJSE , Richard Rose argued that the agenda for research in special education should be determined by establishing 'effective partnerships' between teachers and researchers. He suggested that teachers are beginning to be more involved in research but that educational researchers needed to 'take a lead in involving classroom practitioners in the development of school–based projects'. John Wilson, an author of many books on philosophy and education, and currently Senior Research Associate at the Oxford University Department of Educational Studies, agrees that, if educational research is to drive forward improvements in practice, it must engage 'the minds and understandings of practitioners'. This article takes the debate further, however. John Wilson proposes that research into special educational needs has also to engage with an exploration of the meaning of the phrase 'special needs' and a review of the values that underpin the use of this phrase by practitioners, policy makers and researchers. He concludes that this process will entail the development of new forms of enquiry, new ways of working, and new ways of thinking about research and special educational needs.     

Stepping out of the classroom: involving teachers in the evaluation of national special education policy

Since Richard Rose relaunched BJSE's Research Section as a forum for the discussion of practitioner research, BJSE has published a series of very successful accounts of individual teacher enquiry and action research. In this article from New Zealand, Roseanna Bourke, now working at the Ministry of Education in Wellington, and her two colleagues, Alison Kearney and Jill Bevan-Brown, both from the Department of Learning and Teaching at Massey University, present an alternative view of the involvement of teachers in research.
In 1999, the Ministry of Education asked a team of researchers from Massey University to evaluate the introduction of New Zealand's first national policy for special education, known as Special Education 2000. The 16-member research team was contracted to provide a three-year, multi-method, longitudinal evaluation incorporating both quantitative and qualitative approaches. This article looks specifically at one aspect of the approach used in the evaluation – the use of teachers as fieldworkers. Teachers across the country were trained as fieldworkers to assist in the collection of data in schools and early childhood centres. Training was given to all teachers on the research aims, methods, ethics, including cultural sensitivity, and rationale for the evaluation. By participating in large-scale research and acting as 'fieldworkers', 68 teachers had the opportunity to develop their skills as researchers, while learning about other schools' perceptions and experiences of the special education policy. The experience provided a means for teachers to become apprenticed into a research culture, and to talk with principals and other teachers about common areas of interest. It also ensured that the research had knowledgeable and credible fieldworkers to collect data in schools.     

Grappling with collaboration: would opening up the research ‘base’ help?

Richard Rose, writing in this journal in his role as Research Section Editor (BJSE, Volume 29, Number 1), argued that teachers should learn to do research in collaboration with other professionals, as part of a drive to make teaching a 'research-based profession'. In this article, Joan Forbes, Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Aberdeen, explores this idea in greater depth from her perspective as course leader for an MEd module on inter-agency collaboration. She proposes that recommendations for collaboration to support children with language and communication disorders do not attend to the difficulties involved between professionals from different backgrounds who use different discourses and draw upon different research evidence as a basis for practice. Her paper draws on 'postmodern' research approaches and Michael Foucault's views of 'discourse' to examine a variety of theoretical perspectives previously applied to collaboration. It argues for the value of further theoretical diversity and methodological plurality and introduces discourse analysis as a tool for helping to understand the notion of collaboration. At the end of her challenging and intriguing paper, Joan Forbes offers some suggestions concerning the value of 'new' questioning kinds of analysis.     

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH WITHOUT CERTAINTY

In this essay, Robert Floden reviews three recent volumes in the Philosophy, Theory, and Educational Research series that address the philosophical implications of three “isms”— postpositivism, pragmatism, and poststructuralism — for empirical educational research. These volumes, written by D.C. Phillips, Gert J.J. Biesta, and Michael A. Peters, each in partnership with Nicholas C. Burbules, draw on several lines of currently active philosophical work to address a challenge to educational researchers: What can empirical research hope to accomplish, given the evident difficulties in discovering any tight connection between, on the one hand, instructional methods and policy directives and, on the other hand, student outcomes, especially student learning? The traditions discussed are rough groupings of scholars, with views that are loosely overlapping, rather than clearly defined. Floden observes that the general ideas represented in postpositivism and pragmatism offer researchers frameworks that support optimism about the contributions of empirical work. In contrast, the book on poststructuralism illustrates scholarship in that tradition, but suggests that most research reports will be colored by power relations and be open to multiple interpretations. Floden concludes that empirical researchers may find material in these books enlightening, but will probably need assistance from philosopher colleagues to see how they can inform the practical work of empirical research.     

‘We were expected to be equal’: teachers and academics sharing professional learning through practitioner inquiry

This paper describes a process in which early childhood professionals, who were novice researchers, engaged in their own research projects in collaboration with academics through a practitioner inquiry group. The aim of the project was to introduce the concepts and practices of practitioner enquiry, and learn about, plan and implement a self-initiated change project in consultation with academics. The paper details how a group of teachers succeeded in sustaining a community of practice that promoted teacher professionalism and change. Research has previously called for a shift in professional habitus and raised concerns about the value of teacher learning groups, the dispositions of teachers to call on academic research, and by implication, the desire to work actively with academics. Here we draw upon empirical data to raise the hope that the enablement and dissemination of collaborative change-focused research projects, while challenging, may provide viable avenues for successful teacher change.     

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same? A Response to the Audit Commission's Report on Statutory Assessment and Statements of SEN

This article provides a response to some of the issues raised by Anne Pinney's summary, published in the September issue of BJSE , of the Audit Commission's report on statutory assessment and Statements of Special Educational Needs. In developing her critique, Lani Florian, lecturer in special and inclusive education at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and Editor of the Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs , asks a series of important and challenging questions. Can the broad notion of 'special educational needs' complement ideas about 'areas of need' or 'categories of handicap' and enable young people with severe, complex or long–term disabilities to have their needs met? Is SEN funding fairly distributed, among pupils with special educational needs in particular and across the education system in general? Should the relationship between the processes of formative and statutory assessment and Statements of Special Educational Needs be reconceptualised? Can the protection offered by the Statement be maintained in association with the development of good inclusive practices? And if there is to be a move away from provision designed to address children's individual difficulties, what forms of thinking, procedure and practice will enable staff to develop new ways of meeting the needs of all learners? I hope that the questions raised by this article will stimulate other commentators to contribute to the debate about our responses to special educational needs in the pages of BJSE     

Developing the role of schools as research organisations: the Sunfield experience

We are entering a new phase in learning about childhood disabilities. While we have found out much of what we need to know about their causes and aetiology, solutions to many of the challenges we will face in the future will come from the evidence base held by practitioners. Practitioners are ideally placed to carry out 'real world' research but they often need support in carrying out setting-based enquiry. In this article, Barry Carpenter, Chief Executive and Director of Research at Sunfield, discusses the relationship between academic and practitioner research and the role of practitioners as researchers. He goes on to explore the development of a research culture in special schools, focusing on Sunfield, a residential special school for children with severe and complex learning disabilities. Barry Carpenter shows how research projects at Sunfield have generated evidence which has guided the school's development. The inter-disciplinary approach adopted in this setting has encouraged involvement in research from many staff in diverse professions throughout the school.     

SCHOOL INSPECTION: Thirty‐five years of school inspection: raising educational standards for children with additional needs?

In this invited article, Chris Marshall, teacher, educational psychologist, university lecturer, and a former book reviews editor for BJSE who has been a leading figure in Her Majesty's Inspectorate, examines the inspection of schools over a period reflecting the 35 years during which BJSE has been published. Chris Marshall provides here a history of school inspection as an activity and traces key changes in provision for pupils with special educational needs in England. He examines the purposes of inspection and explores the role that inspectors have played in monitoring the impact of profound changes in legislation and policy upon pupils with special educational needs. He asks searching questions about whether the inspection regime has fulfilled its purposes in respect of these pupils – especially in relation to the vexed question of raising standards. Chris Marshall then provides a critique of inspection methodology – and an overview of the changes that have been introduced in the inspection system as a result. He reviews the contributions that inspection has made to our understanding of how children with special educational needs learn, and looks to the future to consider how inspection could be made to contribute more effectively.     

Research Schools: Grounding Research in Educational Practice

ABSTRACT— Education lacks a strong infrastructure for connecting research with educational practice and policy. The need for this linkage grows as findings in cognitive science and biology become ever more relevant to education. Teachers often lack the background knowledge needed to interpret scientific results, whereas scientists often lack an understanding of pedagogical goals. We need to build an infrastructure that supports sustainable collaboration between researchers and teachers and creates a strong research foundation for education. A primary agent of the lasting collaboration between researchers and practitioners in medicine is the teaching hospital, where researchers and practitioners work together on research that is relevant to practice and the training of young professionals. Education needs analogous institutions—research schools—that join researchers and teachers in living, community‐based schools. In these schools, practice shapes research as much as research informs practice. Research schools will provide a fundamental infrastructure for linking transdisciplinary research on learning with educational policy and practice.     

The Gender Mix Among Staff in Schools for Pupils with Severe and Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties and its Impact

Phil Goss has extensive experience as a practitioner and manager in schools for pupils with severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties. In this article, he reports on his enquiries into the gender mix among staff in these schools. He finds that there are significantly more women than men working as teachers and in support roles in these specialist contexts. Phil Goss goes on to discuss the outcomes of his research into headteachers' perceptions of the impact of this gender imbalance. In concluding, he makes a series of proposals for future policy on recruitment and staff development, for teachers and teaching assistants. Phil Goss argues that we need to find ways to bring more men into this work.     

Dyslexia and learning style – a note of caution

In a recent issue of BJSE , Sioned Exley published the outcomes of her school-based research into effective teaching strategies for students with dyslexia 'based on their preferred learning styles'. She reported improvements in performance and attainment in spelling and recommended a more wide-scale adoption of approaches focused on learning styles.
In this article, Tilly Mortimore, author of a recent book on dyslexia and learning style, and lecturer in inclusion at the University of Southampton, argues for caution. She suggests that practitioners need to look more closely into recent research into learning style and dyslexia before committing themselves to dramatic shifts in their ways of working. She presents here a review of the research context for learning styles and some reflections on Exley's selection of a research focus. While welcoming practitioner research, Tilly Mortimore suggests ways in which the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of small-scale enquiries could be strengthened in order to increase their impact upon policy and practice.     

‘I know it’s not proper research,but…’: how professionals’ understandings of research can frustrate its potential for CPD

This article draws upon the work of two researchers who facilitated practitioner research with school professionals in Liverpool. The researchers themselves had not been involved in practitioner research before. In this account, the researchers reflect critically upon their own experience. The discussion presents the learning curve that the researchers underwent as well as what they discovered about the relationship between practitioners and researchers when engaged in school‐based research. Crucially the issue of practitioners’ understandings of what constituted ‘good’ research emerged as a significant issue. In particular, positivist notions of research that drew from popular scientific understandings, as well as the culture of numerical targeting in the schools system, seemed to shape these practitioners’ sense of what was expected of them as practitioner‐researchers. The article finishes by reflecting upon the possible lessons that this work presents for education managers considering practitioner research approaches for continuing professional development (CPD).     

Encouraging voices: listening to young people who have been marginalised

When provided with an opportunity to reflect upon their experiences of education, young people can often offer insights into those procedures and actions which have either supported or inhibited learning. In this article Richard Rose and Michael Shevlin describe how a team of researchers came together with a group of young people from marginalized communities, including those with disabilities, from refugee families or from ethnic minorities to explore the ways in which they had been included or excluded by the education system. The project described involved a team of people drawn from the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Their work focused upon the experiences of young people who were concerned to tell their stories and, in so doing, inform teachers and education policy makers about the steps which may be taken to enable the inclusion agenda to be more thoughtfully addressed.     

Neo‐liberal Subjectivities and the Limits of Social Change in University–Community Partnerships

In this paper the authors analyse a university–school partnership that went awry. It was designed to develop a new set of philosophical principles to inform work with violent student behaviour in schools. The project brought together a team of researchers from the university and school sector with a strong record of examining and improving the management of behaviour in classrooms. The authors sought volunteer school‐based educators to work with them as co‐researchers. Despite the team's strong school‐based research background, the mutual interest in developing a new approach to work with violence, and the strong collaborative base, they found themselves, as the initiating research team, unable to progress in the ways they had anticipated. This paper analyses the dynamics at work in that lack of progress. The analysis is put forward with the hope of enlivening discussion about what makes for successful collaborative projects between schools and universities.     

Partnering for Improvement: Improvement Communities and Their Role in Scale Up

There is increasing interest in researcher–practitioner partnerships, particularly those that take the form of a networked improvement community. In this paper, we describe the partnership between the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools and the Fort Worth Independent School District to build student ownership and responsibility. By outlining the organizational structures established to enact the partnership and roles of our various partners, we provide an in-depth look at how one researcher–practitioner partnership operates. We begin by describing the concept of an improvement community as one type of partnership, identify several types of improvement communities currently operating in educational systems, and define the key features of improvement communities. Then, we outline the specific improvement communities that are central to the Center's work, highlighting how these structures help us enact our partnership. We end with our reflections about how the partnership created new roles for both researchers and practitioners as well as the challenges and opportunities that accompanied those new roles.     

In Need of Review? The Audit Commission's Report on Statutory Assessment and Statements of Special Educational Needs

Since spring 2001, the Audit Commission has been carrying out research into provision for children with special educational needs. In this article, Anne Pinney, Project Manager with the Public Services Research section at the Audit Commission, summarises the findings presented in an interim report published in June 2002. She reveals widespread dissatisfaction with current approaches to assessment; the process of developing a Statement; the allocation of resources to support children with special educational needs; and the procedures used by schools and LEAs to ensure that SEN provision is effective. Anne Pinney goes on to set out the recommendations made by the Audit Commission in its interim report. These include a collaborative approach to review involving schools and LEAs; increased delegation of resources to schools; and the development of more effective inter–agency approaches to assessment and intervention. This article concludes with a call for a high level independent review of SEN policy and practice focused on resolving the tensions in the current system. Anne Pinney also looks forward to a number of other outcomes from the Audit Commission's work in relation to children with special educational needs. BJSE will be bringing you news of these developments in future issues.     

Working with users: some implications for educational research

In its emphasis in working with users of research throughout the processes of pedagogic research, the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) has reflected a current interest across disciplines in user engagement to enhance research. The scale of the TLRP and the range of research genres encompassed by it have meant that it has provided a useful site for considering in some detail what is meant by enhancing pedagogic research in this way. The authors draw on a TLRP‐funded seminar series which examined a variety of forms of user engagement, their purposes and their implications. The series attempted to understand the intertwined features of new education spaces where research and policy can meet; the negotiations with policy communities that occur there; and the implications for these negotiations and for research design in the production of pedagogic knowledge in partnership with practitioners. The lessons revealed included the following: user engagement strengthens the warrants of research with potential users in both practice and policy communities; it needs to be understood and sustained as an aspect of project management; and research mediation is a developing form of expertise. The authors conclude that TLRP has provided an unrivalled opportunity for the public to ‘speak back to science’ in pedagogic research, and enabled an emerging reciprocity where the public understand(s) how science works but equally science understands how its publics work.     

Education research Australia: a changing ecology of knowledge and practice

Processes of national research assessment, such as Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) are a type of audit technology that confronts and steers established institutional identities and traditions. This nexus between policy and practice drives boundary work that diffracts prevailing policy logics, organisational practices, and habits of mind. We use this notion of ‘boundary work’ as an analytical lens for understanding the nature and effects of ERA in the Australian educational research space. This paper explains the methodology that informed the AARE–ACDE research reported in Strategic Capacity Building for Australian Educational Research. It documents the policy logic of ERA and the way it cuts across the established ecology of educational research, revealing social and symbolic work that is remaking the boundaries of educational research. We report on the historical trajectory of Australian educational research, the way ERA codes research outputs, and how educational researchers are repositioning in this shifting research space. We argue that there are specific loci of boundary work where capacity building in Australian educational research can make a difference to future educational knowledge building.     

Mental health and special educational needs: exploring a complex relationship

The relationship between mental health and special educational needs is both complex and misunderstood. In this article, Richard Rose, Professor of Special and Inclusive Education, Marie Howley, Senior Lecturer, Ann Fergusson, Senior Lecturer, and Johnson Jament, a PhD student, all from the Centre for Special Needs Education and Research directed by Richard Rose at the University of Northampton, discuss findings from a national research project which explored the perceptions of pupil mental health needs by staff working in residential special schools. Teachers and other professional colleagues often feel ill-prepared to address mental health difficulties experienced by their pupils. This is, at times, exacerbated by a wider confusion when atypical behaviours are attributed to a diagnosed learning difficulty rather than being recognised as symptomatic of a mental health problem. The article suggests a need for clarification of the relationship between complex special educational needs and mental health and for increases in training opportunities and the development of resources for teaching about and supporting mental health and emotional well-being.     

近十年我国高等教育微观研究动态综述

高等教育微观研究是较少受到高教界同行关注的领域。从研究内容及研究角度对1997年至2006年近十年来中国期刊全文数据库中有关高等教育微观研究的论文进行简要地分析与评论,可以清晰地看出国内高教微观研究已呈现出以下几个较为明显的发展趋势：日益重视决策、政策与规划研究;关注在较高层次上和多层面上研究高等教育质量与效益问题;更加重视“高等教育学科”基本理论与体系建设工作;高教领域高科技建设与基础性研究工作将进入新的发展阶段。