Martians in the playground: researching special educational needs

This article offers a critique of what has become known as ‘inclusive education’ under the New Labour administration. The initial impetus for the article was a research project designed to ascertain the impact of the ‘presumption of mainstreaming’ contained in Section 15 of the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc. Act 2000. This stipulates that the needs of disabled children and others with ‘additional support needs’ should be met in mainstream schools. The authors reflect on the implications of this change in terminology, and examine the consequences of the attendant ‘disappearance of disability’. They also explore how ‘inclusion’ became a largely self‐referential concept that has generally failed to attract critical scrutiny. The authors argue that a highly politicised and ideologically‐charged ‘mission inclusion’ has had the unfortunate effect of tightening the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This, they argue, is demonstrated by the emergence of a significant new ‘‐ism’—disabilism—at a time when inclusion was already firmly embedded in New Labour policy.

Take me to the station

And put me on a train

I’ve got no expectation

To pass through here again.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, 1968, from the album Beggars Banquet

     

Teacher development and educational change: empowerment through structured reflection

Reflection and change are pivotal themes in this paper, which outlines the rationale, methodology and principal findings of a research undertaking on teacher development in Ireland. The study was based on the premise that teachers’ practices are guided in large measure by a ‘tacit knowledge’ of education, formed in response to personal and contextual factors. It was held that sustained teacher and school development relate primarily to acquiring an awareness of and engaging in ongoing reflection on this implicit theory. Participants were facilitated in structuring such reflection through images—as subjective knowledge structures which capture their latent understandings of teaching and learning processes. It was an enlightening and empowering experience for the teachers involved, who, as a consequence, could both envision and initiate necessary improvements in their educational practices. The findings have notable implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education.     

HISTORY MATTERS: AN INVITATION TO REFLECT ON AN ORGANIZATION'S STORY

The Centennial Anniversary of the Religious Education Association is a historic event that situates us at the crossroads between a past and a future. At this juncture, we are rightly called to recount the unfolding story of a movement begun in 1903 which first drew focused attention to the inextricable connection between education and religion. This history matters! And, the process of historical reflection on it is an essential one. Most especially, our reflection on the story of the REA- on the organization's story- is important because it can make possible the formation of a picture of the life course of the organization. For some this is occasion for recalling and re-experiencing our ardent participation in and contributions to the organization. For others this may provide a new or renewed awareness of a neglected past. As we read this volume, we are invited to discover what is revealed to us about the REA.     

Occasions and the Reliability of Classroom Observations: Alternative Conceptualizations and Methods of Analysis

Student–teacher interactions are dynamic relationships that change and evolve over the course of a school year. Measuring classroom quality through observations that focus on these interactions presents challenges when observations are conducted throughout the school year. Variability in observed scores could reflect true changes in the quality of student–teacher interaction or simply reflect measurement error. Classroom observation protocols should be designed to minimize measurement error while allowing measureable changes in the construct of interest. Treating occasions as fixed multivariate outcomes allows true changes to be separated from random measurement error. These outcomes may also be summarized through trend score composites to reflect different types of growth over the school year. We demonstrate the use of multivariate generalizability theory to estimate reliability for trend score composites, and we compare the results to traditional methods of analysis. Reliability estimates computed for average, linear, quadratic, and cubic trend scores from 118 classrooms participating in the MyTeachingPartner study indicate that universe scores account for between 57% and 88% of observed score variance.     

SATISFACTION WITH CAREER PLANNING AND JOB PLACEMENT SERVICES AT TWO‐YEAR PUBLIC COLLEGES

The purpose of this study was to examine 2‐year public college students'satisfaction with career planning and job placement services offered at their college by gender and job cluster. The 2,873 students included in this study attended 212‐year public colleges in 11 states, predominantely in the Midwest. The results revealed significant differences in students'satisfaction with career planningandjob placement services. Women were more satisfied with these services than were their male counterparts. Students in the Business Operations job cluster were significantly more satisfied with career planning and job placement than were students in other job clusters. Students were significantly more satisfied with career planning services they received than with job placement services.     

The Model-Size Effect on Traditional and Modified Tests of Covariance Structures

The integration of modern methods for causal inference with latent class analysis (LCA) allows social, behavioral, and health researchers to address important questions about the determinants of latent class membership. In this article, 2 propensity score techniques, matching and inverse propensity weighting, are demonstrated for conducting causal inference in LCA. The different causal questions that can be addressed with these techniques are carefully delineated. An empirical analysis based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 is presented, where college enrollment is examined as the exposure (i.e., treatment) variable and its causal effect on adult substance use latent class membership is estimated. A step-by-step procedure for conducting causal inference in LCA, including multiple imputation of missing data on the confounders, exposure variable, and multivariate outcome, is included. Sample syntax for carrying out the analysis using SAS and R is given in an appendix.     

Predictors of Orthographic Learning of Regular and Irregular Words

The aim of this study was to explore the reading and language skills that are associated with orthographic learning and to examine whether the effects of these factors are influenced by word regularity. Grade 2 and 3 children learned the phonology and meaning of novel words and were subsequently exposed to their orthography, with either regular or irregular mappings. At the participant level, phonological decoding skill, orthographic knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge were associated with orthographic learning for both word types. However, at an item level, reading novel words correctly did not directly relate to the successful acquisition of the representations of those novel words. In addition, item-specific vocabulary knowledge was a predictor of success in orthographic learning, but only for irregular words. The findings are discussed in relation to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995).